Tag: Umbrella Agreement

When data travels, protection should travel with it. Easier said than done; in reality legal protections don’t travel with us, let alone our personal data.

This “umbrella” is full of holes, and it fails to protect Europeans’ right to privacy.

Earlier this month, negotiators from the United States and the European Union reached a preliminary deal on the so-called Umbrella Agreement. The Umbrella agreement is a transatlantic deal that sets standards for protecting personal data when it is transferred for law enforcement purposes. Notably, these rules do not apply to the transfer of commercial or employee data by companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, or Verizon. These companies must abide by a separate set of rules, the data sharing agreement called the Safe Harbour principles (see our recent press release on the Safe Harbour).

Negotiators from the United States and the European Union recently reached a preliminary deal on the so-called Umbrella Agreement, a transatlantic deal that sets standards for protecting personal data when it is transferred for law enforcement purposes. However, one key hurdle remains before the agreement will get sign off: the U.S. must grant a right to remedy for E.U. citizens who suffer privacy violations. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will follow through on providing that protection, and whether it will be meaningful enough to meet E.U. standards.