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Thread/Global data flows face massive uncertainty. Thank US weaponization of the Internet. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/16/eu-court-us-surveillance-data-privacy-365796
2/In a sweeping decision, the European Court of Justice just struck down the Privacy Shield, which allows companies like Facebook to transfer data between the US and Europe. See the reasoning here. https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-07/cp200091en.pdf
3/Some kind of agreement is necessary because of differences in EU and US privacy law. In short, the EU has stronger provisions than the US. For more on this backstory see https://www.amazon.com/Protectors-Privacy-Regulating-Personal-Economy/dp/0801445493/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=protectors+of+privacy&qid=1594900449&s=books&sr=1-4
4/Privacy Shield was the agreement that served as a work around. https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome
5/The Court struck it down because of a lack of safe guards in US surveillance practices i.e. when Facebook EU sends data to Facebook US there is too great a risk that the NSA will get access to it. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/16/europes-top-court-strikes-down-flagship-eu-us-data-transfer-mechanism/
6/In other words, the @Snowden revelations have come home to roost.
7/How did this happen. In short, civil liberties entrepreneurs (an Austrian laywer named Max Schrems) took advantage of transnational legal opportunity structures to bring down the agreement. https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu
8/ @henryfarrell and I go into a more general argument on how this works in our recent book. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691183640/of-privacy-and-power
9/The case from today also underscores how US efforts to weaponize the internet and conduct global surveillance can backlash. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec_a_00351?journalCode=isec
10/US firms from Google to Facebook will now need to figure out how to navigate an increasingly uncertain business environment brought on by US surveillance practices. https://hbr.org/2020/01/choke-points
11/The case also underscores the importance of transnational politics and policy entrepreneurs in the ongoing struggle over core issues like freedom and security.
