On Monday I summarized the reasons that the European Court of Justice struck down the European Commission decision that permitted the transfer of personal data from the European Union to the United States. And yesterday I heard the plaintiff in that case, Maximilian Schrems, speak at NYU’s journalism school. He and Professor Ira Rubinstein (NYU Law) highlighted a critical portion of the ECJ’s judgment, but came to conflicting conclusions. The court decided that the protection of EU citizens’ privacy rights, as laid out in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, could not be compromised. Merely “adequate” protection of personal data, as required by the Data Protection Directive, is not enough; the level of protection must be “essentially equivalent” to that provided by EU law.