ECJ rules Safe Harbour agreement invalid on foot of Edward Snowden's revelations.

hatrickpatrick

Can't believe nobody made a thread about this before me:

The ECJ ruled yesterday that the Safe Harbour agreement between the US and the EU is invalid. The agreement allowed American companies to store the personal data of EU users on American servers and infrastructure, provided they gave an assurance that the data would be subject to an EU standard of individual privacy and due process. The ECJ ruled it invalid on the basis that Edward Snowden's revelations showed (a) that the companies were dishonest in their assurances, as some of them knew about PRISM and other bulk surveillance programs and yet continued to claim that they were protecting EU citizens' data, and (b) that even those who didn't, essentially could not give any such assurances, due to the NSA's documented hacking of companies who did not voluntarily choose to give direct access (for instance, Google's cloud servers, which the NSA were denied access to and which they subsequently tapped the physical cables of in order to harvest everything flowing from one data centre to another).

This is massive news for a number of reasons. It may actually give the EU some leverage to force the Obama administration into not treating Europeans like potential terrorists and requiring the same probable cause as a domestic police investigation before accessing private data. The US government is not going to risk the economic benefits of silicon valley - in the event that companies were forced to relocate all of their infrastructure to Europe in order to comply with the EU's privacy demands, thousands of US jobs would be at risk. We may finally have at least some cards in our hands to force them to end these programs, even though many companies are tentatively claiming that other treaties and agreements can be used instead - as the court ruled this one invalid purely because of the surveillance, I don't see how any others which allow EU data to be stored in the US wouldn't fall on the same sword.

It's massive for a rather more upsetting reason as well. This case ended up in the ECJ because the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, who is responsible for enforcing EU law on companies such as Facebook which are headquartered here, refused to consider the case and rejected it. It was a high court appeal which handed the case over to the ECJ, which ruled that the Irish DPC was entirely wrong to throw the case out.

This is an example, like the Irish government's tolerance of allegations over Shannon being used to transport prisoners and many other cases, of Irish government agencies preferring to take the path of least resistance, to aim for a quiet life and a non-rocking boat, over actually doing what's right and even in some cases upholding the law. There's an attitude in Ireland that anything which might cause major waves, upset, inconvenience, or economic risk is something we don't do - even if it's very clearly the right thing to do. A challenge to Safe Harbour never had any chance of succeeding with the Irish DPC or in the Irish courts, simply because the Irish attitude to literally anything controversial is "that would cause too much trouble, let's just leave it".

Does anyone else find themselves a little ashamed of this latter point? I'm not particularly thrilled to be living in a state which values a quiet life over standing up for what is right. And I'm not usually one to praise the EU, but in this case if it had been left up to Ireland alone, the case would have ended with "this could uproot the tech industry, human rights aren't worth that kind of hassle".

I find that shameful and depressing. Ireland should be better than this, we should be leading the charge in terms of privacy and human rights rather than being chastised and dragged kicking our heels by the ECJ over our refusal to do so. And as I say, you can apply this to almost anything. The attitude seems to be that if a can of worms is at risk of being opened, even if opening it is the right thing to do, it's better to bury it somewhere and pretend it doesn't exist.

It's very rare for me to say that I'm ashamed of my country, but reading headlines in news outlets all around the world explaining that the Irish data state chose convenience over human rights is sickening.

2smiggy

I can't believe anyone bothered to type all that out

hatrickpatrick

2smiggy wrote: »

I can't believe anyone bothered to type all that out

I can't believe I posted this on AH instead of the Cafe, my bad

darkpagandeath

Laws are being drafted to fix this unfortunately.

hatrickpatrick

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Laws are being drafted to fix this unfortunately.

Depends what you mean by "fix"? As in get around those pesky, annoying human rights which the EU irritatingly holds as being of fundamental importance?

I had a feeling that this would be the government's response, all right. IS this at Irish or EU level?

darkpagandeath

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Depends what you mean by "fix"? As in get around those pesky, annoying human rights which the EU irritatingly holds as being of fundamental importance?

I had a feeling that this would be the government's response, all right. IS this at Irish or EU level?

The EU ability to collude with the Americans.

hatrickpatrick

darkpagandeath wrote: »

The EU ability to collude with the Americans.

The only thing is, European human rights rules including privacy are laid out in EU treaties, are they not? Such that if the European Commission wants to compromise on such rights in an accord with the US, it would first have to amend those treaties and have them ratified in every member state, including ours where we would hold a referendum on the matter?

KomradeBishop

I'm not surprised at the Irish DPC response - all regulatory agencies in Ireland seem to be either toothless or 'captured' - well past time something was done, to force these regulatory agencies, into doing what they are supposed to.

KomradeBishop

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

The only thing is, European human rights rules including privacy are laid out in EU treaties, are they not? Such that if the European Commission wants to compromise on such rights in an accord with the US, it would first have to amend those treaties and have them ratified in every member state, including ours where we would hold a referendum on the matter?

There's an easy loophole for this: International 'trade' treaties. Those will get used to try and backdoor such rights-eroding co-operation.

Nodin

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I find that shameful and depressing. Ireland should be better than this, we should be leading the charge in terms of privacy and human rights rather than being chastised and dragged kicking our heels by the ECJ over our refusal to do so. And as I say, you can apply this to almost anything. The attitude seems to be that if a can of worms is at risk of being opened, even if opening it is the right thing to do, it's better to bury it somewhere and pretend it doesn't exist..

Even if you were to go by just the last 40 years, I'm unsure where you got that expectation from. Generally the state blocks change left right and centre. Legislation on abortion kicked into touch, fighting Lydia Foy over jaysus knows how many years (and how much wasted cash), dodging proper investigations, virtually pointless tribunals, renditions via Shannon, bugger all independent oversight of the gardai....if a state is going to act like that towards its own citizens, why would ye think it gives a crap about anyone elses data?

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's very rare for me to say that I'm ashamed of my country, but reading headlines in news outlets all around the world explaining that the Irish data state chose convenience over human rights is sickening.

Look on the bright side - we're no worse than the rest, and better than some.

Son Of A Vidic

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I'm not surprised at the Irish DPC response - all regulatory agencies in Ireland seem to be either toothless or 'captured' - well past time something was done, to force these regulatory agencies, into doing what they are supposed to.

They'll have to run it past The White Press Secretary first though.