Brexit isn’t done: what’s next for data?

A compromise between privacy and national security allows data to flow across borders. So does the Snoopers’ Charter undermine the UK's ability to do a deal with the EU?

By Oscar Williams

LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 02: A staff member stands in a projection of live data feeds from (L-R) Twitter, Instagram and Transport for London by data visualisation studio Tekja at the Big Bang Data exhibition at Somerset House on December 2, 2015 in London, England. The show highlights the data explosion that's radically transforming our lives. It opens on December 3, 2015 and runs until February 28, 2016 at Somerset House. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for Somerset House)

In October 2015, two years after Edward Snowden blew the whistle on US mass surveillance, the European Court of Justice overturned a 15-year-old agreement allowing data to flow freely from Europe to America.

The ruling marked the conclusion of a two-year legal battle instigated by Max Schrems, an Austrian graduate student who had taken issue with the US National Security Agency’s PRISM programme. Snowden’s revelations, Schrems argued, proved that US firms such as Facebook couldn’t be trusted to protect European data from the prying eyes of the US government.