The balkanization of the internet continues.
The European Union’s top court called a halt on July 16 to the main way companies transfer data across the Atlantic. The Privacy Shield, as it is known, allows for data from Europe to remain subject to the region’s data privacy laws when shifted to the United States. However, the European Court of Justice ruled that U.S. law made such data vulnerable to intelligence snooping, breaching privacy regulations.
The case was elevated to the ECJ after years of legal challenges by privacy campaigner Max Schrems against Facebook Inc. in Ireland, the tech giant’s European base. While the ruling might make some processes trickier for the tech behemoths, their global scale means they are better placed to handle its fallout than smaller firms.