[LINK] Max Schrems, EU v. Facebook

Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Sat May 10 01:44:36 AEST 2014


Max Schrems, of EU v. Facebook fame, is speaking at an event on 'The
Politics of Surveillance' at the Uni of Ottawa:
http://www.digitallymediatedsurveillance.ca/

A massive amount of information has emerged from the efforts of Max and
five friends who met in his living-room, amplified by 40,000 people who've
exercised the right to request from Facebook copies of their personal
data.

His original motivation was blunt statements in public by Facebook in the
US, to the effect that European Data Protection law could be safely
ignored.

Coverage in Europe was never hard to achieve.  US media took no notice of
the actions until Schrems forced Facebook to stop applying facial
recognition.

The complaint process was begun, of necessity through the Irish Data
Protection Commissioner, in August 2011.  Many complaints require pursuit
through the courts, because the Irish Commissioner has himself frequently
breached Irish data protection law, which itself is probably in breach of
EU law.  It may cost EUR 300,000 to force key issues to a senior Irish
court, and then it might need to be appealled to a European court.

European law to which Facebook is arguably subject requires accessibility
to data by the data subject.  It also creates fairly specific requirements
in relation to Terms or Privacy Policy and consent.  Facebook has been in
breach of many of them, and continues to be so in many respects.

After 40,000 access requests, including action to force the hand of the
Irish Data Protection Commissioner, it's apparent that Facebook holds
c.100 data-sets held about each individual.  (Examples:  Pokes, Removed
Friends, Emails, cookies, shadow profiles extracted from third parties -
which extends to 3-5  removed).  So far, Facebook has been forced to
provide (heavily redacted) access to 22 of them.

It's not a pretty sight, but there's progress.


Hill K. (2012)  'Max Schrems: The Austrian Thorn In Facebook's Side' 
Forbes Magazine, 7 February 2014, at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/07/the-austrian-thorn-in-facebooks-side/

O'Brien K.J. (2012)  'Austrian Law Student Faces Down Facebook'  The New
York Times, 5 February 2012, at

http://europe-v-facebook.org/FAQ_ENG.pdf

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Schrems


Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd
78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University




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