On the recordOctober 20, 2015
Strong international relationships abroad are critical to the safety and advancement of the United States. That is why I was pleased to introduce the Judicial Redress Act of 2015 with Ranking Member John Conyers and to speak in favor of it today. For many years, the United States and the European Union have worked together to secure data protection for their citizens under agreements known as safe harbor. Earlier this month, however, the European Court of Justice issued a landmark ruling invalidating the agreement because of privacy concerns. The European court's ruling illustrates how fragile trust between nations can be. It is easily lost and hard to rebuild. Moreover, this lack of trust has had huge economic and security consequences for the United States. Our businesses have struggled against public backlash and protectionist policies, and our government has faced increasingly difficult negotiations to share law enforcement and intelligence data. The Judicial Redress Act of 2015 is central to our efforts to rebuild strained relationships with our allies and to ensure privacy and security for both American and European Union citizens. The sudden termination of the safe harbor framework strikes a blow to U.S. businesses by complicating commercial data flows. If we fail to pass the Judicial Redress Act, we risk similar disruption to the sharing of law enforcement information. In many ways, the Judicial Redress Act is a privacy bill.…
