Wyden blasts European Union ‘safe harbor’ ruling

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., condemned a European Union Court of Justice ruling Tuesday that struck down a key agreement allowing the free flow of information between Europe and the United States.

Wyden said he has long warned of the economic dangers of over-broad surveillance, including at a roundtable in Silicon Valley last year.

“By striking down the Safe Harbor Agreement, the European Union Court of Justice today called for open season against American businesses,” the senator said.

“This misguided decision amounts to nothing less than protectionismagainst America’s global data processingservicesand digital goods,” Wyden added. “It is a mistake that willwreakhavoc on businesses on both sides of the Atlantic, and cost good-paying American jobs.”

“Yet U.S. politicians who allowedthe National Security Agency to secretly enact a digital dragnet of millions of phone and email recordsalso bear responsibility,” he said. “These ineffective mass surveillance programs didnothingto make our country safer, but they did grave damage to the reputationsof the American tech sector.

“Recklessly broad surveillance policies giveEuropean regulatorsan excuse to chop the Internet into country-sized pieces,” Wyden said..

“It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Safe Harbor agreement in international digital trade, and by helping the European Courts to strike it down, short-sighted politicians have seriously damaged American businesses,” the senator said. “Congress needs tostart taking the next steps on surveillance reform now,and not waitfor theexpiration ofsection 702 of the FISA statute inDecember 2017 to get started.”