US and Europe Forge Data-Protection Deal for Terrorism Cases

US and European of­fi­cials fi­nal­ized a long-awaited data-pro­tec­tion deal that would provide a road map for how per­son­al in­form­a­tion is pro­tec­ted when shared across the At­lantic by law-en­force­ment au­thor­it­ies. The so-called “um­brella agree­ment” is the cul­min­a­tion of four years of ne­go­ti­ations over how po­lice and judges should be able to share data dur­ing the course of crim­in­al or ter­ror­ism in­vest­ig­a­tions that cross bor­ders, and it marks a sig­ni­fic­ant step for­ward to re­build trust between the United States and its European al­lies after the Ed­ward Snowden spy­ing rev­el­a­tions that began more than two years ago.

For the deal to take ef­fect, however, Con­gress will first have to pass a meas­ure grant­ing European cit­izens the right to sue in US courts if they be­lieve Amer­ic­an au­thor­it­ies have mis­used their per­son­al data. A bill to that ef­fect in­tro­duced in re­cent months has earned some bi­par­tis­an sup­port, but law­makers re­main grid­locked and dis­trac­ted head­ing in­to an elec­tion year.