Safe Harbour should be suspended due to US mass surveillance: EU official
A senior law officer with the European Court of Justice has slammed the United States’ “mass, indiscriminate surveillance” on Europe, calling for an end to a 15-year-old agreement to ease data transfer across the Atlantic.
Yves Bot, the ECJ's advocate-general, said Wednesday that the Safe Harbour agreement should be suspended as it fails to protect the private information of EU citizens, RT reported.
The Safe Harbour paves the way for Google, Facebook, and more than 4,000 other companies to collect data on European customers.
It also enables the notorious US National Security Agency to use the Prism surveillance system, initially revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“Such mass, indiscriminate surveillance is inherently disproportionate and constitutes an unwarranted interference with the rights guaranteed by articles seven and eight of the charter [of fundamental rights of the EU],” the official noted.
On Facebook, Bot said, the users “are not informed that their personal data will be generally accessible to the United States security agencies.”
He added that any EU country can choose to suspend such transfers “irrespective of the general assessment made by the [EU] Commission in its decision.”
Meanwhile, Facebook rejected allegations that it provides the users’ personal data to the intelligence community.
The social media giant “operates in compliance with EU Data Protection law,” said Sally Aldous, a spokeswoman for Facebook, adding, “Like the thousands of other companies who operate data transfers across the Atlantic we await the full judgment.”
"We have repeatedly said that we do not provide ‘backdoor’ access to Facebook servers and data to intelligence agencies or governments,” she said.
The EU court is reportedly expected to make a decision on the matter in the next four to six months.
The NSA’s surveillance scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about its espionage activities targeting friendly countries and their leaders.
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