Switzerland Agrees To Its Own New Data Sharing Pact With the US (silicon.co.uk) 15
Mickeycaskill quotes a report from Silicon.co.uk: Switzerland has agreed its own new data transfer agreement with the United States, basing the framework on the deal struck by the European Union (EU) following the invalidation of Safe Harbour. The previous arrangement was invalidated because of concerns about U.S. mass surveillance but Switzerland says the new Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield will allow Swiss companies to transfer customer data without the need for additional contractual guarantees. The Swiss Federal Council, a seven member executive council that is effectively the head of government in Switzerland, claim citizens will benefit from additional protections and the ability to contact an ombudsman about data issues. Although not part of the EU, Switzerland is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and has several bilateral agreements with the EU that sees it adopt many of the bigger bloc's policies. The Federal Council says the alignment between the EU and the Swiss transatlantic data sharing partnerships is good news for multinational organizations.
Switzerland is not in the European Economic Area (Score:2, Informative)
You got that wrong. I made that mistake once before when I shipped something from the UK an a customer had to pay tax on the goods. It's actually easier to ship from the US at that point so now we do. See wikipedia for who is and isn't part of the European Economic Area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area
At long last (Score:2)
Data Sharing? (Score:1)
How does this affect stuff like Protonmail? The Swiss now share tax information on US clients, does this cover data too?
Re: (Score:2)
It has nothing to do with that: all this does is allow companies to outsource sensitive data to certified US-based infrastructures. Before if you had e.g. an application handling sensitive data you could not legally outsource its data storage to an US server, but after this you can as long as it's certified.
It changes nothing for Protonmail since I doubt they are interesting this kind of outsourcing as it would defeat their whole purpose.
welp there goes protonmail (Score:1)
Well there is no doubt the powers to be at the IMF/USA corps are gunnimg it for protonmail and it's users. First europe now america. Next is austrailia and the pact against them is complete.
Protonmail? (Score:1)
I wonder what this means for them.