If you're not caught up, Safe Harbor was (essentially) a deal that made life easy for tech companies that operated in the US and Europe. It meant that outfits like Facebook could treat data about its users as movable, bouncing it between servers when it had to. So, for instance, it could take information about a German user, stored in a data center in Ireland, and push it to California for long-term storage. Except, when that data crossed the Atlantic, it became fair game for pushy surveillance agencies like the NSA.

Privacy campaigner Max Schrems was so annoyed at the idea that he launched a lawsuit in Ireland to force a decision. Unfortunately, the courts batted away his claim, so he took the case to the European Court which examined both the decision and Schrems' claim. Shortly afterward, courts ruled that the Safe Harbor provisions did not protect local citizens, and declared them to be invalid. These new rules are expected to be formalized across the next few months, ending the potential headaches for almost every social network in the country.