Irish Data Protection Commissioner Ordered To Investigate Facebook Data (www.rte.ie)

New submitter bigtomrodney writes: Following last week's ruling by the European Court of Justice ruling on Safe Harbor, the Irish High Court has quashed the former decision of the Data Protection Commissioner not to investigate Facebook. In the current vacuum of legislation and given that this challenge is directly focused on U.S. intelligence agency's gathering of European citizen's data, this makes for interesting times ahead. See this story from earlier this month for a bit more background; all this fuss comes down mostly to efforts by one determined gadfly (Max Schrems) and the attention he's brought to the issue of privacy when data crosses national (or at least notional) borders.

Comments

Re:Explains why FB is hosted in Ireland...

[bigtomrodney]

I don't think you've been keeping up with the case. There is no new legislation, but a very simple point in contention. Did the Safe Harbour provision, intended to ensure corporations met European levels of data control, cover state intelligence gathering. The ruling is at this point, no. The Irish Data Protection Commissioner had stated in relation to the European Data Protection Directive that they had no power to look at the scope of Safe Harbour and that in of itself Facebook met the requirements of Safe Harbour.

It is not news that the NSA etc. did not see themselves as constrained by Safe Harbour. In light of the ECJ's rulings an investigation into Facebook's protection of European data seems appropriate.