EU-US data pact approved; privacy advocates to appeal because of US surveillance.
The European Commission today decided it is safe for personal data to be transferred from the European Union to US-based companies, handing a victory to firms like Facebook and Google despite protests from privacy advocates who worry about US government surveillance.
I guess it depends on how this "Data Protection Review Court" actually functions in practice. What is written on paper doesn't seem to really matter much to US agencies so we'll see how strong these safeguards actually are.
Nevertheless, it's good to see that the new agreement is finally in place at least. We've had this legal vacuum for years now and it was completely unsustainable in the long run. Sans a complete legal overhaul of the nonexistent privacy laws in the US (hah good luck with that), this is probably the best we could hope for now.