The Executive Order on Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities (E.O.) outlines the steps the U.S. is taking under the new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The framework is essentially a data protection safe harbor for companies that agree to comply with it.

Those steps include providing companies with greater legal certainty by creating an independent and binding process for individuals who believe their personal data was collected in violation of U.S. law. It also mandates handling requirements for personal information and requires U.S. intelligence agencies to update their policies and procedures in line with those new protections.

Allowing digital goods to flow freely across borders is worth $7.1 trillion in commerce between the EU and the U.S., the White House said, and is key to American companies participating in a world economy.

A new agreement was needed after the EU’s Court of Justice ruled the U.S. couldn't live up to its part of agreement to protect data privacy. Concluding that it did not sufficiently protect data transferred from the EU to the U.S. — particularly involving U.S. government intelligence agency access — the Court of Justice in July 2020 invalidated the so-called privacy shield, prompting the EU and U.S. to get to work on a successor agreement that would pass court muster.

Among those welcoming some of that greater certainty when it comes to how data is protected comes from the computer companies vital to those flows.

“Since that EU court ruling, the two economies have been without clear guidelines for data transfers on the most trafficked route on the globe — impacting transactions such as travel reservations, social media communications, and insurance claims that implicate trillions of dollars of annual economic activity," the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) said.

“We appreciate President Biden’s action to keep data flowing between the U.S. and EU, underpinning one of our deepest and most mutually beneficial trading relationships," CCIA president Matt Schruers said. “Data transfers are at the heart of the transatlantic relationship, fueling the trade that keeps both of our economies running and brings benefits to consumers and businesses of all sizes who need legal clarity on mechanisms to transfer data.”

Online advertisers, who rely on free flows of information in which to place their messages, were also pleased with the order.

“Today, the Biden administration has taken a big step forward, announcing stronger protections for data transferred to the U.S. and setting the stage for a final agreement with our allies,” Interactive Advertising Bureau executive VP of public policy Lartease Tiffith said. “Data flows are crucial for the mutual development of medical, cybersecurity and other technologies, as well as media, advertising and consumer goods. With so many disruptions to commerce during the last few years, IAB is excited about this new development to ensure secure cross-border data flows. IAB looks forward to working with the EU and U.S. to fully implement the new agreement.”

BBB National Programs certainly saw a better digital business climate on the horizon.

“At BBB National Programs, we commend the White House, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and their counterparts in the European Commission for lifting the cloud of uncertainty that has been hanging over Privacy Shield for more than two years,” the organization said in a statement. “As the longest-running Independent Recourse Mechanism (IRM) provider, the first recognized under Privacy Shield, trusted for more than 20 years by businesses of all sizes, we view this formal commitment to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework as a huge milestone for the $7 trillion trans-Atlantic economy.”

Jason Oxman, president and CEO of tech trade group the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), said: “Today’s actions will help restore business certainty and safeguard continuity of key business operations as data moves across the Atlantic, while also upholding European citizens’ fundamental rights, and the security and public safety interests of the U.S., EU, and other qualified states. We appreciate the Biden Administration’s attention to this critical issue and look forward to working with the European Union to implement the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework over the coming months.” ■

According to a new report, US vs EU Broadband Trends (2012-2020), the U.S. continues to top Europe in broadband adoption, deployment, investment and competition.

The report was prepared for USTelecom by business analytics firm BPI-Telcodata.

Acording to the report, U.S. consumers can now choose among twice as many facilities-based competitors as their EU counterparts.In rural areas, it‘s more than seven times that of Europe.

The report also said the U.S. leads in both deployment and adoption of high-speed broadband, defined as speeds of at least 30 Megabits per second to 100 Mbps downstream.

The U.S. lead in adoption is likely driven in part by the fact that prices are stable and even declining despite rising costs for most essential goods, the report said.

That was a theme among Republicans at an FCC oversight hearing, where numerous legislators said the price had been going down, countering the Biden administration‘s argument that broadband prices are too high and that that is the reason that price needs to be part of the definition of broadband availability.

But rather than needing to emulate Europe, USTelecom president and CEO Jonathan Spalter suggested the U.S. regulatory model — one that prizes “vigorous private investment” — “is a lesson for the world in spurring investment, advancing competition and accelerating broadband’s many benefits to people everywhere.” ■

The move was in response to Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine, a conflict that the country says has already cost over 2,000 civilian lives in less than a week of fighting — the U.N estimate is in the hundreds.

The European Council said Wednesday that given Russia’s “unprovoked and unjustified military aggression against Ukraine,” Sputnik and RT broadcasts were suspended in the EU (RT English, RT UK, RT Germany, RT France, and RT Spanish).

Also: DirecTV Drops Russia‘s State-Owned RT Channel

The EU said the suspension lasts “until the Russian Federation and its associated outlets cease to conduct disinformation and information manipulation actions against the EU and its member states,” which it calls an operational tool in Russia’s attack and a “direct threat to the Union's public order and security.” The EU says both outlets are under either direct of indirect control of the Russian Federation.

Also: NAB Urges Broadcasters to Drop Russian State-Sponsored Content

DirecTV has dropped RT America, though Dish Network still shows up on RT’s website as a distributor of the network, which has offices in Moscow and Washington, D.C.

Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are all blocking the Web version of RT, though the channel tweeted defiantly that it was still “alive and kicking.”

In 2017, the U.S. government required RT America to register as a foreign agent.  

The European Union had been planning a digital tax but held off until this month given the ongoing Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tax reform talks that resulted in Friday’s announcement.

Also Read: Potential EU Digital Tax Has Trump Administration, Tech Companies on Edge

The centerpiece of that historic digital age tax agreement was a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% on all multinational companies with revenues above 750 million euros (about $868 million), which the OECD said translates to an added $150 billion in new taxes worldwide.

The announcement was made at an OECD meeting in Brussels Friday (Oct. 8).

The agreement has been endorsed by 136 of the 140 member countries, including the U.S., who together represent more than 90% of global gross domestic products.

What is being billed as the “two-pillar solution” tax agreement will be delivered to the G20 Finance Ministers, who are meeting in Washington, D.C., Oct. 13, and to the G20 Summit in Rome at month's end.

The Computer & Communications Association, whose members are no fans of digital services taxes, were pleased with the "clear obligation on all parties" not to establish digital services taxes or eliminate them if they already have.

Another fan of the agreement was the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“Today’s agreement shows how American leadership and diplomacy is advancing the economic interests of American working families,” said President Joe Biden, suggesting it was diplomacy on the part of his administration, particularly Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “For decades, American workers and taxpayers have paid the price for a tax system that has rewarded multinational corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. … Establishing, for the first time in history, a strong global minimum tax will finally even the playing field for American workers and taxpayers, along with the rest of the world … to ensure that profitable corporations pay their fair share, and provide governments with the resources to invest in their workers and economies.”

The new rules were set out in the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.

Also Read: FTC Investigating Video Streamer, Social Media Data Practices

The Digital Service Act covers network infrastructure companies, access providers, domain name registrars, cloud hosting services, online marketplaces like Amazon, app stores, and social media platforms, with tougher rules for "very large" platforms, which the EC says pose "particular risks in the dissemination of illegal content and societal harms."

The reforms include transparency reporting, complaint and redress mechanisms, vetting third-party suppliers, user-facing transparency about online advertising, external audits, sharing data with authorities and researchers, codes of conduct, and more.

The goal of the act is to "improve the mechanisms for the removal of illegal content and for the effective protection of users’ fundamental rights online, including the freedom of speech," as well as to strengthen public oversight of online platforms, particularly those very large platforms that reach over 10% of the EU population--Facebook, Amazon, etc.

The Digital Markets Act is "a set of narrowly defined objective criteria for qualifying a large online platform as a so-called 'gatekeeper.'" If they meet the definition, they will have a list of "do's and don'ts" that apply to their daily operations.

A company will be considered a gatekeeper if it: (1) "has a strong economic position, significant impact on the internal market and is active in multiple EU countries"; (2) "has a strong intermediation position, meaning that it links a large user base to a large number of businesses"; and (3) "has (or is about to have) an entrenched and durable position in the market, meaning that it is stable over time."

Any company to which those apply (1) must allow for interoperability by third parties in certain situations; (2) must allow businesses to access the data they generate when they use a gatekeeper platform: (3) must provide advertisers tools and info to verify the their ads on the gatekeeper platform, and 4) allow business users to contract with customers outside the platform.

Those are the do's--or, more accurately, "musts." The don'ts include (1) favoring their own services or products in rankings; (2) preventing consumers from linking to businesses outside the platform; and (3) preventing the de-installation of pre-installed software or apps.

Failure to do or not do what they are supposed to could result in fines up to 10% of a company's total annual worldwide sales and periodic payments of up to 5% of average daily sales.

“As representatives of the world’s leading companies across all the segments of industry, we recognise our shared responsibility to maintain a safe, competitive, and innovative online environment,” said Guido Lobrano, of tech association ITI. “All relevant stakeholders need to work together towards these goals. While ITI and its members will develop detailed views on the legislative proposals in the coming weeks, we support the Commission’s effort to safeguard citizens from illegal content online and will continue to advocate for rules that maintain a well-functioning, competitive online ecosystem. We look forward to discussing these and further aspects of today’s proposals with the European institutions in the coming weeks. We are committed to serving as a useful resource to all stakeholders involved in the process.”

But ITI did not like the designation of "gatekeeper," which it found pejorative. "There should be no negative implication attached by default to companies designated as gatekeeper under the DMA criteria," it said, adding that it was not appropriate for the legislation "to label the designated companies with an inherently negative definition. This designation is only a prerequisite to attach more stringent obligations to platforms that play a systemic role in a market. Talking about a 'provider of core platform services' would be, for example, more appropriate."

In a tweet posted Wednesday, EU commissioner Thierry Breton said he had a phone conversation with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “Teleworking & streaming help a lot but infrastructures might be in strain,” Breton posted, hash-tagging his tweet with, “To beat #COVID19, we #StayAtHome."

"Commissioner Breton is right to highlight the importance of ensuring that the internet continues to run smoothly during this critical time," the Netflix spokesperson told CNN "We've been focused on network efficiency for many years, including providing our open connect service for free to telecommunications companies."

UPDATE: Netflix later announced that it would adjust its bitrate in Europe for the next 30 days. “We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25% while also ensuring a good quality service for our members,” Netflix said in a statement. 

Also read: Residential Internet Usage Surges 98% Amid COVID-19-related Social Distancing

Monday’s average downstream internet usage was 98% higher than the most recent baseline Monday, March 9, a day when the stock market endured a record plunge and seemed to accelerate concern about the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. This is according to OpenVault, which offers data, insights and consulting to broadband service providers.

Also read: Streaming Video Usage to Spike 61% Amid Social Distancing: Nielsen

Nielsen, meanwhile, has predicted a 61% spike in streaming video usage in the U.S. amid coronavirus social distancing.

But just as in the U.S., the lobbying component of the Euro telecom sector said the increased traffic shouldn’t be a problem.

”At this stage, new traffic patterns are being effectively handled by engineers as per standard network operations," Lise Fuhr, director general of the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association, said in a statement. "We support the European Commission's effort to ensure that national governments and national regulators have all the tools they need to keep networks strong across the continent."

In a tweet posted Wednesday, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said he had a phone conversation with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “Teleworking & streaming help a lot but infrastructures might be in strain,” Breton posted, hash-tagging his tweet with, “To beat #COVID19, we #StayAtHome."

"Commissioner Breton is right to highlight the importance of ensuring that the internet continues to run smoothly during this critical time," a Netflix spokesperson told CNN "We've been focused on network efficiency for many years, including providing our open connect service for free to telecommunications companies."

UPDATE: Netflix later announced that it would adjust its bitrate in Europe for the next 30 days. “We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25% while also ensuring a good quality service for our members,” Netflix said in a statement. 

Also read: Residential Internet Usage Surges 98% Amid COVID-19-related Social Distancing

Monday’s average downstream internet usage was 98% higher than the most recent baseline Monday, March 9, a day when the stock market endured a record plunge and seemed to accelerate concern about the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. This is according to OpenVault, which offers data, insights and consulting to broadband service providers.

Also read: Streaming Video Usage to Spike 61% Amid Social Distancing: Nielsen

Nielsen, meanwhile, has predicted a 61% spike in streaming video usage in the U.S. amid coronavirus social distancing. 

But just as in the U.S., the lobbying component of the Euro telecom sector said the increased traffic shouldn’t be a problem.

”At this stage, new traffic patterns are being effectively handled by engineers as per standard network operations," Lise Fuhr, director general of the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association, said in a statement. "We support the European Commission's effort to ensure that national governments and national regulators have all the tools they need to keep networks strong across the continent."

The Commercial Broadcasters Association (COBA) wants some answers on how the British government's exit from the European Union (Brexit) will be handled and whether there will be a buffer period after that exit.

"Like many sectors, international broadcasting cannot wait until the March 2019 'cliff edge' to undertake any restructuring that may be necessary as a result of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU," COBA said. "Businesses need several months to put contingency plans into place, as this may involve significant changes to their operations."

COBA comprises a host of U.S. players doing business abroad, including 21st Century Fox, NBCU, A+E Networks, Turner, Discovery Inc. and The Walt Disney Co., as well as Sky, for which both NBCU parent Comcast and 21st Century Fox are bidding.

Related: Comcast Ups the Ante for Sky

Without more certainty over whether the transition period will take place, we are certainly concerned that broadcasters will have to reluctantly start restructuring within the next few months, and possibly within weeks for some companies," said COBA executive director Adam Minns. "The UK has a leadership position as Europe’s international broadcasting hub for good reason – no one wants to have to restructure their businesses. But if these changes have to be made, companies will be forced to start the process well in advance of the cliff edge so they have sufficient time to manage the process."

The broadcasters want a "status quo" transition period, pointing out that international broadcasters invest more than $1 billion annually in the UK and support one in 10 UK TV jobs.

The Center for Digital Democracy has told the European Union it should pull the plug on its Privacy Shield agreement with the U.S. because the U.S. is unable to shield that privacy.

That came in a letter to the EU, which had asked for CDD's input for its first-year review of the shield agreement, which was struck last year.

CDD cited a lack of privacy enforcement or oversight by the FCC and Federal Trade Commission.

It laid out a stark picture: "There is no effective legal framework to protect consumer privacy in the U.S., with inadequate enforcement of the weak policies in place and an overall failure to address the dramatic growth of data practices," CDD said.

The group cited the March 2017 Congressional Review Act nullification of FCC broadband privacy rules as one of the reasons the U.S. can't protect data privacy.

As for the FTC, CDD said that even before the Trump Administration, that commission has been "incapable of effectively addressing how to empower and protect consumer digital privacy."

CDD also says the "notice and choice" framework of the Privacy Shield is ineffective. It said it had studied some of the U.S. companies enrolled in the shield, comparing their statements to their actual data collection and concluded that the self-certification process is "inadequate and dangerous."

The Privacy Shield replaced the safe harbor agreement that a European Union court invalidated in October 2015 over concerns about the U.S. being able to hold up its end of the agreement given the government surveillance revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks.

The framework requires companies to provide notice of what personal information is being collected and stored, the purposes it is used for, and an "opt out" mechanism for not sharing it.

(Photo via Rock Cohen’s Flickr. Image taken on March 18, 2016 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit the 4x3 aspect ratio.)

Washington was reacting Tuesday to the news that Google has been hammered by the European Commission with a record fine for using its dominant position in search to anti-competitively favor its comparison shopping service over others.

Google had not returned a request for comment at press time.

Related: European Commission Fines Google $2.7 Billion

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a tech policy think tank, jumped to Google's aid.

"Today’s ruling is bad for consumers and bad for innovation," said ITIF president Robert Atkinson. "The EU has effectively decided that some companies have become too big to innovate. The EU’s actions have created a cloud of uncertainty that will make large tech companies overly cautious about making changes to the user experience and service offerings that would benefit consumers."

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, of which Google is a member, took aim at the EC decision.

“The Commission’s Decision marks a worrying step away from the key objectives of competition law enforcement," said CCIA Europe director Jakob Kucharczyk. "Companies should not be punished for introducing innovative products that consumers and advertisers value. Providing direct answers to users’ search queries is unquestionably a product improvement. All major search engines do it. Courts and competition authorities around the globe have found that there are procompetitive justifications for such product improvements.

“It seems the Commission’s case is mainly focused on competitors who disagree with Google competing on the merits," Kucharczyk continued. "We fail to see the evidence for consumer harm and for quality-related product degradation. If the result of this investigation is to force Google to undo more than 10 years of search engine evolution, EU competition enforcement would clearly not live up to its promise of spurring innovation.

“Leaving aside the commission’s very narrow market definitions, Europe’s e-commerce sector is thriving," he added. "The success of companies like Zalando, Asos or Trivago show consumers have increasing choices to find, compare and buy products online. Investments into e-commerce ventures have steadily increased. All of that is not indicative of a market suppressed by a dominant player.”

Thomas Lenard, senior fellow and president emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute, suggested the EC had gotten off track.

"The focus of the European Commission’s action against Google today appears to be harm to competitors rather than harm to consumers, which should be the focus of antitrust enforcement," Lenard said. "The EC should demonstrate in concrete terms how consumers have been harmed."

Google has maintained that it is simply helping consumers find products they are looking for more quickly and easily.

Scott Cleland, president of Precursor LLC and chair of the ISP-backed NetCompetition, saw it quite differently.

"The EU is right," said Cleland, long a strong critic of the search giant. "Google is a monopoly. It abuses its search monopoly by self dealing and predatorily foreclosing competition. This seven-year EU process has been fair, competent and patient to get it right."

Cleland suggested U.S. regulators should take a page from the EU, and said he expects that they will.

"Sadly the EU is cleaning up the mess created by U.S. non-enforcement of antitrust law caused by obvious political interference and protection orchestrated by Google's outsized political clout," Cleland said. "This decision will trigger a domino effect of additional enforcement against Alphabet-Google in the EU, the U.S. and around the world in search, advertising, Android and Google Play.

"This is the first inning of Google's new official monopoly abuse reality," he added.

“All competition authorities should take questions of platform dominance seriously," said Public Knowledge President Gene Kimmelman. "Although we are not in a position to assess the merits of this particular case, we appreciate the European Commission focusing on these important issues. In these types of cases, antitrust officials must ensure that no company use its market power to foreclose competition, or to leverage its success in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another.

“This case is likely to have much wider implications than the comparison shopping dispute highlighted in the Commission’s statement. We believe effective antitrust enforcement must offer marketplace solutions that benefit consumers and enable competition and innovation to flourish. However this case is ultimately resolved, we believe it is critical that any online platform with excessive market power should not be allowed to discriminate unfairly against competitors while being allowed to develop product and service innovations that benefit consumers."

"Google's market power is one of the most critical challenges for competition policymakers in the world today," said
Barry C. Lynn, director of the Open Markets program at New America. "By requiring that Google give equal treatment to rival services instead of privileging its own, [European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe] Vestager is protecting the free flow of information and commerce upon which all democracies depend. We call upon U.S. enforcers, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and states attorneys general, to build upon this important precedent, both in respect to Google and to other dominant platform monopolists including Amazon. U.S. enforcers should apply the traditional American approach to network monopoly, which is to cleanly separate ownership of the network from ownership of the products and services sold on that network, as they did in the original Microsoft case of the late 1990s."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competiton Policy and Consumer Rights, said she would be keeping an eye on dominant players.

“Dominant internet platforms increasingly affect not just the products we buy and the information we seek, but innovation and economic opportunities for small businesses," she said following the decision. "I am committed to pursuing these issues to ensure that the internet is an engine to increase economic opportunity and protect consumers in the 21st century economy.”

“We appreciate the skilled work of the European Commission’s team for their timely effort to analyze and clear the AT&T-Time Warner merger,” said AT&T senior EVP Bob Quinn.

On this side of the pond, Time Warner shareholders approved the deal last month.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department continues to vet the deal, while the FCC is not doing so after the companies structured it so that no FCC licenses changed hands.

The vanguard of that effort is a new report released Wednesday (July 13) and commissioned by the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, European Digital Rights and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD).

The EU and the United States just launched a new cross-border data flow privacy shield regime, which the groups have issues with. The report said the EU undermines personal data and privacy rights in trade agreements, citing the EU/U.S. TTIP trade deal, for one.

CDD executive director Jeff Chester argued that without a consistent framework for balancing the interests of free flows of data and information across borders with data collection and surveillance, privacy rights will be weakened through trade agreements.

"NGOs [non-governmental organizations] on both sides of the Atlantic realized we needed a blueprint to help address this," Chester said, "to move beyond the debate where one either believes that 'all data flows are good' versus potentially restrictive measures."

The study said the EU should:

• "Keep rules on privacy and data protection out of trade agreements, by means of a legally-binding exclusion clause. This is also recommended by the European Parliament;

• "Include an exception that allows any signatories to regulate cross-border data transfers. This should apply to any sector that deals with the processing and transfer of personal data, such as financial services, within a trade agreement;

• "Insert a clause into trade agreements that prevents an EU measure from becoming automatically invalid or inapplicable;

• "Prevent clauses in trade agreements which would oblige the EU to submit forthcoming rules on privacy and data protection to trade ‘tests’ in order to see if they are more burdensome than necessary;

• "Treat all trade partners the same way when granting ‘adequacy status’ for data transfer purposes to prevent the EU from being vulnerable to potential challenge under trade rules; [and]

• "Require the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) to issue an opinion on the texts of free trade agreements."

An advisory group to the European Union has said it can't endorse the "privacy shield" proposal agreed to by the EU and U.S. to succeed a data protection agreement invalidated last year, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The ITIF said it was disappointed that the group -- the Article 29 Working Party,  made up of EU's data protection regulators --  could not support the negotiated framework.

"The new agreement offers a host of new protections, obligations and opportunities for redress that affirm the commitment of the U.S. government to safeguard European data and respect the rights of European citizens," the ITIF, a technology policy think tank, said. "Moreover, the agreement has achieved widespread support on both sides of the Atlantic from many policymakers, businesses and advocacy groups for offering an opportunity to move forward after the European Court of Justice invalidated the Safe Harbor agreement in the Schrems decision."

If the privacy shield proposal is approved, it would replace the Safe Harbor agreement that an EU court invalidated over concerns about the U.S. being able to hold up its end of the agreement given the government surveillance revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks. The framework requires companies to provide notice of what personal information is being collected and stored, the purposes it is used for and an "opt out" mechanism.

The ITIF said the fact that the advisory group thinks the agreement needs work isn't a reason not to approve it.

"While members of the Article 29 Working Party should continue to offer suggestions on how to strengthen this agreement — and there are opportunities for improvement — the opportunity for improvement should not preclude official approval of the agreement," the ITIF said.

The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, civil society groups that also had issues with the shield, said the signal from the advisory committee was clear and should be heeded.

"We hope that the European Commission will take the opinion of the Data Protection Authorities very seriously. It is clear that the Privacy Shield does not adequately protect EU consumers’ fundamental rights," said Jeff Chester, U.S> co-chair of TACD's Information Society Committee. "The Commission must reconsider its adoption. The EU cannot afford to set a precedent like this and allow fundamental rights and values to be high jacked by political and commercial interests.”

Commerce is working on a successor agreement that would presumably address the court's issues, though it is unclear what assurances the new deal could give on NSA surveillance of data, one of the reasons the court ruled that the safe harbor was not necessarily safe.

In a statement, bipartisan leaders of the committee said they were concerned by the impact of the decision.

“The ripple of uncertainty caused by today’s decision is cause for concern as digital data flows have become a bedrock of commerce," they said. "We must be mindful of any decision that threatens U.S. jobs and the strong commercial ties between our country and the European Union,” they said.

The "they" was basically all the committee leaders on both sides of the aisle: Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.); Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), ranking member Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) and ranking member Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

“In this ever-evolving area there have been good conversations across the Atlantic to address privacy," they continued. "Our hope is that European regulators move quickly, working with the Department of Commerce and others here in the U.S., to provide a quick resolution to this unnecessary uncertainty.”