Facebook Wins Belgian Court Appeal Over Storing Non-User Data (bloomberg.com)

Stephanie Bodoni, and Aoife White reporting for Bloomberg Technology (condensed):Facebook won an appeal against a Belgian privacy ruling that prompted the social network to prevent people without an account from accessing its site within the country. The Brussels Court of Appeal said the nation's data protection authority couldn't prevent Facebook from storing data from non-users in a fight over measures the technology giant says help it combat hacking attacks. "Belgian courts don't have international jurisdiction over Facebook Ireland, where the data concerning Europe is processed," the Brussels court of appeal said in a ruling Wednesday, referring to the company's European headquarters. The court also said there was no urgency to rule on the case since Belgian court proceedings only started in mid-2015 over behavior that started in 2012. Facebook is appealing a ruling that ordered it to stop storing data from people who don't have an account with the social network, or face a 250,000 euro ($277,800) daily fine. Willem Debeuckelaere, president of the Belgian data protection commission, said last year that Facebook's "disrespectful" treatment of users' personal data, without their knowledge, "needs tackling." Facebook said it can now start showing its pages to Belgians who aren't signed up to its service.

Comments

We can thank Neelie Kroes for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing companies to pick and choose which country's laws to obey then make it stick for all of EU. I wish I could, but I'm only a citizen, not a corporation.

"People without an account"

[Calydor]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if people without an account aren't allowed to access the site by law, how are they supposed to sign up for an account in the first place?

Re:"People without an account"

[vrt3]

It's all a bit muddy, but as far as I understand it, the law does not disallow non-users to access Facebook.

I think it's like this: the privacy commission thinks (and I agree) that Facebook should not be allowed to track non-users: they have never agreed to it. Instead of stopping the tracking, Facebook denies access to non-users.

Also, that is not about all of the site, and certainly not about registration pages. IIRC it's about Facebook pages of companies, organisations, events and stuff. These days, it seems, there are quite a lot of organisations that don't have a proper website of their own, just a Facebook page (which is mostly pretty uninformative, but that's besides the point).

Re:"People without an account"

[Anonymous Coward]

Access the site means access the user generated and service specific content. Although I have not followed recent developments on the privacy front in the EU, the last time I checked Facebook or any other company can store personally identifiable information just about anybody if they follow the rules concerning the use, storage, maintenance and processes around the information register. It should be nothing to do with jurisdiction, but if it is with the current rules, then the next step for the Belgians is the EU Court of Justice.

Re: "People without an account"

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with not entering the barn is that you cannot know in advance where the barn is.

You don't need to visit their site to be tracked by Facebook: every site which has a "like" button will do.

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Belgian courts don't have international jurisdiction over Facebook Ireland"

Then what is the purpose of the EU? I thought the whole idea was to have one big happy family.

No jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

"Belgian courts don't have international jurisdiction over Facebook Ireland, where the data concerning Europe is processed"

They may not have jurisdiction over other countries, but why can't they say if Facebook wants to do business IN Belgium, their data centers outside of Belgium must follow their rules?

Re:No jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the Belgian courts can say Facebook Belgium has to follow the rules, but the main problem is they filed an urgent matter ("summary proceedings" if Google learned how to translate by now). The court decided it's not an urgent matter, since Facebook is doing it since 2012, and the complaint is filed in 2015.

The Belgian privacy will continue to fight it, first through a higher court, and probably also using a regular procedure. But knowing the justice system in Belgium that last option will probably take many years.

To shorten it up: the court didn't say: "Facebook is right", but they said "you'll have to complain using a different (more lengthy) procedure".

Re:No jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

... centers outside of Belgium must follow their rules?

Because then you get the French government demanding the truth be deleted from every Google server on the planet.

Because then you get the US government demanding emails from Irish servers, passengers' lists from non-US aviation companies, depositors' lists from non-US banking companies. Or you get the US government claiming they own the internet so they can prosecute anyone, anywhere for a cyber-crime.

Key sentence is about jurisdiction.

[BarbaraHudson]

"Belgian courts don't have international jurisdiction over Facebook Ireland, where the data concerning Europe is processed,

So to all the idiots who were saying I was wrong and that EU member state laws regarding data protection can span data stored on servers anywhere in the world, bite me.

Re:DEATH TO ZUCKERBERG

[Dusthead Jr.]

I don't consider myself the paranoid type, but you're talking about a company that goes out of its way to create a profile of people who haven't signed up. What make you think that if you do sign up and put as little information on it as possible, that they will stop collecting information about you that you haven't put on it.