“Schrems II” reaches US Legislator: US Senate Hearing on EU-US data transfers today
Today at 10:00am EST / 16:00 CET the Committee for Commerce, Science and Transportation of the United States Senate will have a hearing on the EU-US data transfers after the Schrems II decision.
Max Schrems, honorary chairman of noyb and plaintiff in the underlying case before the CJEU C‑311/18 - Schrems II: “I very much welcome that the US Senate is now considering the problems we face, given the excessive US surveillance of its international customers. The problems we face can only be overcome if there are legislative changes on the US side.”
Unfortunately, the hearing will only feature US lawyers, but no European expert. Next to representatives of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the US Department of Commerce (DoC) the Senate will hear from Facebook’s main witness in the Irish procedure (Peter Swire), a representative of the Software Industry (Victoria Espinel) and the main witness of the Irish Data Protection Commission (Neil Richards). Facebook and the Irish Data Protection Commission have lost the case before the European Court of Justice.
Schrems: “It is unfortunate that there was neither a representative of civil society, nor from the European side heard. Transatlantic data flows are very complex and require experts from both sides to work on a solution. It is especially surprising to see that the experts of the parties that have lost the case, like Facebook’s Peter Swire, is heard. His positions were shattered in the European Courts before and not even Facebook relied on his witness statements anymore in the Irish Courts. I wonder to what extent his testimony will be of use for a stable solution.”
We will try to make some comments at @maxschrems
