Europe signs off on a new privacy pact that allows people’s data to keep flowing to US

By KELVIN CHAN
AP Business Writer

LONDON (AP) — The European Union has signed off on a new agreement over the privacy of people’s personal information that gets pinged across the Atlantic, aiming to ease concerns about electronic spying by American intelligence agencies. The EU’s executive commission on Monday deemed the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework to have an adequate level of protection for personal data. That means it’s comparable to the 27-nation’s own stringent data protection standards, so companies can use it to move information from Europe to the United States without adding extra security. The agreement comes after two earlier data transfer agreements were tossed. The European privacy campaigner who triggered the legal challenges, however, vowed to challenge it to the EU’s top court.