"When they are caught out in public doing nasty stuff, as happened after my revelations about AT&T, and later after [Edward] Snowden's revelations, they paper it over with new ‘reform’ laws which simply legalize what had been illegal previously," Klein said, adding that he does not hold much confidence in the privacy laws, "no matter how nice they may sound on paper."
In 2006, Klein exposed a secret agreement between his former employer, US telecommunications corporation AT&T, and the NSA. While working as a line technician in San Francisco, he found that the telecom giant was allowing the NSA to record all internet traffic by tapping into AT&T’s infrastructure.
The Privacy Shield is the successor to the Safe Harbor agreement, which was struck down by the European Union in October 2015 for failing to prevent the US government from gaining routine access to European citizens’ data.
The Safe Harbor agreement was nixed against the backdrop of the Snowden leaks, which revealed extensive US spying on European allies, and widespread collaboration between US tech companies and the NSA.
