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What is the privacy shield?

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Published on Mar 31, 2023 and edited on May 4, 2023 by Iron Brands

The Privacy Shield was a framework for transferring personal data from the European Union (EU) to the United States (US) and was designed to provide adequate protection for the privacy rights of individuals in the EU.

The Privacy Shield was created in response to the invalidation of the previous framework for data transfers between the EU and the US, known as the Safe Harbor framework, and it was adopted in 2016. However, the Privacy Shield itself was invalidated by the EU Court of Justice in the 2020 Schrems II case.

The EU and the US recently envisioned a successor to the Privacy Shield (the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy framework). US President Joe Biden signed an executive order on data surveillance in 2022, and the European Commission will likely acknowledge it with an adequacy decision in the upcoming months- essentially “greenlighting” the US as a safe country for data transfers. The new framework is likely to face legal scrutiny in the EU Court of justice.

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