Court ruling on Safe Harbor brings uncertainty to privacy dealings

Privacy activists are overjoyed, but for businesses it's what one lobbyist described, only half jokingly, as "the doomsday scenario." 

The transatlantic transfer of European Union citizens' personal data was thrown into a legal void Tuesday when the Court of Justice of the EU declared invalid the 15-year-old Safe Harbor agreement with the U.S. because it provided inadequate privacy protection.

The ruling exposes businesses that are reliant on Safe Harbor to the threat of legal action. The fact that European Commission and U.S. officials are in the middle of negotiating stronger privacy protections offers little comfort, as the ruling also opens that to challenges in national courts. Only a complete rewrite of the EU's data protection regime, already in progress, might help, but it won't take effect for up to two years after the final text is agreed, and that is still many months off.

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