Safe Harbor is the quaintly named policy agreement between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Union (E.U.) in November 2000. The agreement was designed to regulate the way that U.S. companies export and handle the personal data of European citizens. It is a compromise that was set up in response to a European directive that differed from traditional business procedures for U.S. companies dealing with the EU. In 1998, the EU established the European Commission Directive on Data Protection, which prohibited data transfer to non-European countries that did not adhere to stringent criteria. In effect, because the guidelines were very strict, they made it illegal to transfer most citizens’ personal data outside of Europe.
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