The European Court of Justice (ECJ) today ruled that the self-certified protections promised by Safe Harbor weren’t worthy of Europe’s ideal of privacy “as a human right”. The court declared the data-transfer agreement immediately invalid.

The rules hugely affects Cloud services, where the majority of US firms rely on safe harbor to move information.

Personal data should no longer be transferred to US bodies solely on the basis they are Safe Harbour-certified. Instead to authorise the “export” of the data, the two bodies involved must draw up and sign what’s referred to as “model contract clauses”, which set out the US organisation’s privacy obligations.

For more information see the NY Times, or a good summary at the BBC.

Projectfusion is a UK company, and our UK data centres are owned by a private UK company.