EU watchdog: Companies need immediate rethink on U.S. data transfers

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Companies seeking to transfer data to the United States must revert to new arrangements with immediate effect after the Privacy Shield transatlantic pact was declared invalid last week, a European Union watchdog said on Friday.

It said other mechanisms and exemptions allowed under the bloc's landmark privacy rules known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require a strong level of protection for individuals' data.

The EDPB, together with the European Commission, is now looking into ways to beef up standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules that could be legal, technical or organisational.

The CJEU judgment followed a long-running dispute between Facebook and Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, who has campaigned about the risk of U.S. intelligence agencies accessing data on Europeans.

Source(s): Reuters