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In the middle of a US Presidential election that will certainly become more contrast-focused (as politically correct Americans like to call mud-slinging), the Clinton data leaks are interesting and also worth investigation for their longer-term impact on the US economy,

Shaky ethics versus data protection

But the Hilary Clinton private mail server, her flagrant disregard for protecting sensitive government communications and her dubious personal ethics on US State Department data security policies is much much more than a peculiarly American political issue that is news today and gone tomorrow.

The Safe Harbor executive decision allows companies to self certify to provide “adequate protection” for the data of European users to comply with the European data protection directive, and with fundamental European rights such as the right to privacy (under Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights).

The Americans are just slow or maybe they don’t care about privacy

The Commission issued in November 2013 (that is 2 years before the EUJ ruling ) but negotiations to rework the framework are still ongoing.

The  is the culmination of a 2013 legal challenge by European privacy campaigner Max Schrems who  — including Facebook — in the Irish courts for alleged collaboration with the . The Irish courts dismissed the complaint.

With Snowden, Prism, the contrasted  US Presidential elections, the Hilary Clinton data leaks and the attempts by the FBI to establish a dangerous anti-privacy precedent under the guise that they cannot hack an Apple iPhone – I would not expect resolution of Safe Harbor anytime soon.

The long term impact will be innovative technology / cloud / SaaS companies like our Biotech customer with Boston offices, taking their business out of the US to safer harbor places like Tel Aviv.

Which has better weather than Boston anyhow.