Student wins landmark Facebook case
Print Edition
An Austrian law student’s two-year battle against Facebook and mass US surveillance has culminated in a landmark ruling that has rippled across the business world.
Max Schrems, a 28-year-old Facebook user finishing his PhD in law at Vienna University, took an interest in the subject of privacy while studying for a semester at Santa Clara University in California.
The legal battle against mass US surveillance he subsequently pursued has resulted in what lawyers called a “bombshell” ruling knocking down a data transfer framework between the European Union and the United States used by over 4,000 companies including Google, Facebook and IBM.
“Max Schrems and Edward Snowden. What a combination. Two young men who have made indelible impacts on the world of data protection,” wrote Stewart Room, a partner at PwC.
In 2013, ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about the US government’s Prism programme that allowed it to harvest private information directly from big tech companies such as Facebook.
Schrems took up the privacy battle and filed 22 complaints against Facebook in Ireland, where the company has its European headquarters. He set up a website, europe-v-facebook.org, with the aim of ensuring that Europeans’ privacy rights are enforced against “tech giants like Facebook.”
He then lodged a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, asking it to stop Facebook’s transfers of European users’ data to its US servers because of the risk of US government snooping.
The complaint was thrown out, but Schrems appealed and his case eventually wound its way to the European Court of Justice, which struck down the framework underpinning the data transfers of thousands of companies.
Snowden, without whom Schrems said Tuesday’s victory would have been impossible, congratulated him via Twitter.
“You’ve changed the world for the better,” Snowden tweeted.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
