The US continues to believe that if it just shouts louder then the Europeans will magically abandon their long standing commitment to fundamental rights. https://twitter.com/faheye/status/1318848126573289472

The claim that the “public interest” provision in Article 49 GDPR permits firms to transfer data to the US in any general way (p.3 onwards) is simply nonsensical.

Meanwhile, the whining that EU member states can access data without restriction for national security purposes is (a) irrelevant for the question of transfers to third countries and (b) in any event simply wrong in light of e.g. the LQDN judgment and the German BND Act case.

As an aside, it’s entertaining to see the US relying on the FRA report into EU state surveillance (fn.45). The message of that report is that EU practices require improvement, not that third countries can pick and choose the lowest standards to support their position.

Overall, the whole document smacks of whataboutery and wishful thinking. Its significance isn’t in the content but the timing and stridency - US intelligence agencies and firms alike are worried about the data pipeline being turned off.

Incidentally, I contributed the Irish update for that Fundamental Rights Agency report on surveillance. It’s quite technical, but the bottom line is that Ireland lacks any adequate oversight. Full text: https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/ireland-study-data-surveillance-ii-legal-update-ie.pdf

One last thought - The tone-deafness of “We can spy on you, but we couldn’t be bothered” is really quite something. It reminds me of the DPC’s astonishing submission to the CJEU that the NSA wouldn’t be interested in an Austrian law student. That didn’t turn out so well either.