Doubts about US-EU data deal arise

Experts and lawmakers are questioning the effectiveness of a new agreement between the European Union and the United States over the privacy of people's personal information that gets pinged across the Atlantic, saying the pact is like "old wine in new bottles".

It was the EU's third attempt to get a definite agreement on data transfers with the US, following two previous failed agreements, namely the EU-US Safe Harbor Framework and the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

Xie Maosong, a senior research fellow at Tsinghua University's National Strategy Institute, said the new deal is not effective in responding to European countries' concerns over privacy leakage, as it fails to address the broader issue of the US government's access to personal data in the name of national security.