Common Contracts
1 similar Harbor Agreement contracts
US/EU Safe Harbor Agreement: What It Is and What It Says About the Future of Cross Border Data ProtectionHarbor Agreement • June 26th, 2003
In February 1999, the staffs of the United States Department of Com- merce (“Commerce”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”) huddled together in an FTC conference room to discuss the European Union’s (“EU”) soon-to-be-implemented directive govern- ing the collection and dissemination of personal data gathered from the citizens of its 15 member states.2 At the time, America was in the middle of the “dot-com bubble” as consumers began to engage in e-commerce and companies found newer and more sophisticated ways to collect infor- mation about their cyber visitors. Both agencies were heavily involved with issues raised by the newly emerging global electronic marketplace: Commerce, with such issues as encryption, digital signatures and domain name registration; and the FTC with online marketing and consumer protection. It took little more than a cursory glance at the EU’s new “Privacy Directive” to recognize that it could potentially block trans-At- lantic data flows. Th
