Personal data treaty has been ruled invalid

A treaty allowing technology giants to send personal data about millions of EU citizens to the US has been ruled invalid.

The international agreement between the superpowers gives US companies access to the online information. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said it should not prevent Europe’s national privacy watchdogs from checking that US firms were taking adequate data protection measures.

It concluded that Ireland’s regulator needed to decide whether Dublin-based Facebook’s EU-to-US transfers should be suspended.