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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

The continuation of safe harbour required substantial legal reform, by one side or the other. The legislative deadlines for that passed long ago.

We have to question whether the US could have done anything. The real issue seems to be pervasive unlawfulness in the US. What assurance is any new law when various agencies have demonstrated histories of breaking them so casually? I think it will take a generation or more before Europeans have any trust in US privacy laws.

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The real problem is the image the EU has of itself.

The EuGH decided that personal data in the US is not safe but it is safe in the EU.

When in reality at least the UK, French and German secret agencies have spied and are spying on internet communications and data.

Yes, but Europeans are free to deal with those issues through local channels. If the germans are acting illegally against a French citizen then there is a place for that to be resolved. An EU citizen cannot go after NSA. That;s one of the big sticking points. It's not about how the countries act so much as it is about the rights of citizens to challenge that action through legal process.

Where is the place for a French citizen to 'resolve' the issue when being spied upon by the GCHQ? Where is the place for a UK citizen to 'resolve' the issue with the BND?

My french isn't great, but in the UK you can file with the ICO. You might not be happy with the outcome, but it is the start of the legal process. The reason safe harbour is falling apart today is precisely because a determined EU citizen filed such a complaint against a US corp.

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/make-a-complaint

From my understanding the reason safe harbor is falling apart is because a citizen went to court because the Irish data protection agency didn't want to investigate the data transfer of Facebook in detail. Not because a determined citizen files a complaint against an US corp.

The Court of Justice of the European Union also recently struck down the Data Retention Directive so they're not exactly slouching when it comes to protecting EU citizens but they can only rule on the cases that are referred to them from national courts.

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