Student wins landmark Facebook case
Print Edition
An Austrian law student鈥檚 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 鈥渂ombshell鈥 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.
鈥淢ax Schrems and Edward Snowden. What a combination. Two young men who have made indelible impacts on the world of data protection,鈥 wrote Stewart Room, a partner at PwC.
In 2013, ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about the US government鈥檚 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鈥 privacy rights are enforced against 鈥渢ech giants like Facebook.鈥
He then lodged a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, asking it to stop Facebook鈥檚 transfers of European users鈥 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鈥檚 victory would have been impossible, congratulated him via Twitter.
鈥淵ou鈥檝e changed the world for the better,鈥 Snowden tweeted.
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