Top European court says NSA violates privacy of millions

National Journal - The top European court ruled that the Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency is vi­ol­at­ing the pri­vacy rights of mil­lions of Europeans.

Al­though the de­cision by the European Court of Justice is likely to do little to ac­tu­ally curb NSA spy­ing, it could be­come a ma­jor head­ache for thou­sands of com­pan­ies on both sides of the At­lantic.

The court scrapped a “safe har­bor” agree­ment between the United States and the European Uni­on that al­lowed com­pan­ies like Google, Face­book, and Amazon to freely store Europeans’ data on U.S. serv­ers. The court held that, be­cause of the NSA’s “mass and un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated” sur­veil­lance, the United States lacks the ad­equate pri­vacy pro­tec­tion re­quired by EU law.

The rul­ing could em­power each EU na­tion’s in­di­vidu­al pri­vacy reg­u­lat­or to in­vest­ig­ate com­pany data prac­tices. Al­though tech com­pan­ies have been watch­ing the rul­ing es­pe­cially closely, it could also af­fect any busi­nesses that send cus­tom­er re­cords or hu­man-re­sources in­form­a­tion to the United States.