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Facebook has bought itself a little more time over a major legal challenge in Europe after the Irish High Court decided not to strike down a b2b mechanism it uses to transfer user data between its EU and U.S. businesses for processing. Rather the court said today that it will refer legal questions over so-called Standard Contractual Contracts (SCCs) to Europe\u2019s top court, the ECJ, for a preliminary ruling.<\/p>\n
This means it could take around 1.5 years before there is a judgement, and Facebook can continue to use SCCs in the meanwhile instead of being forced to suspend these data transfers.<\/p>\n
The challenge to Facebook\u2019s use of SCCs was brought by European privacy campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems. He had originally complained to the Irish data protection commissioner (DPC), asking it to suspend data flows in Facebook\u2019s case. But while the DPC agreed there are legal questions over the mechanism it decided to refer the issue to the High Court<\/a> to consider the legality of SCCs as a whole.<\/p>\n The five-week court hearing in what is a complex case delving into detail on US surveillance operations<\/a> took place in February<\/a>. The court issued its ruling today.<\/p>\n The 153-page ruling<\/a>\u00a0starts by noting \u201cthis is an unusual case\u201d, before going into a detailed discussion of the arguments and concluding that the DPC\u2019s concerns about the validity of SCCs should be referred to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling.<\/p>\n Schrems is also the man responsible for bringing, in 2013, a legal challenge that ultimately struck down Safe Harbor \u2014 the legal mechanism that had oiled the pipe for EU-US personal data flows for fifteen years before the ECJ ruled it to be invalid in October 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n Schrems\u2019 argument had centered on U.S. government mass surveillance programs, as disclosed via the Snowden leaks, being incompatible with fundamental European privacy rights. After the ECJ struck down Safe Harbor he then sought to apply the same arguments against Facebook\u2019s use of SCCs \u2014 returning to Ireland to make the complaint as that\u2019s where the company has its European HQ.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that the European Commission has since replaced Safe Harbor with a new (and it claims more robust) data transfer mechanism, called the EU-US Privacy Shield<\/a> \u2014 which is now, as Safe Harbor was, used by thousands of businesses. Although that too is facing legal challenges as critics continue to argue there is a core problem of incompatibility between two distinct legal regimes where EU privacy rights collide with US mass surveillance.<\/p>\n Schrems\u2019 Safe Harbor challenge also started in the Irish Court before being ultimately referred to the ECJ. So there\u2019s more than a little legal deja vu here, especially given the latest development in the case.<\/p>\n In its ruling on the SCC issue, the Irish Court noted that a US ombudsperson position created under Privacy Shield to handle EU citizens complaints about companies\u2019 handling of their data is not enough to overcome what it described as \u201cwell founded concerns\u201d raised by the DPC regarding the adequacy of the protections for EU citizens data.<\/p>\n (Although, in a further irony, a permanent ombudsperson has yet to be appointed by the Trump administration.)<\/p>\n The exact questions that will to be referred by the court to the CJEU will be decided at a later date this month.<\/p>\n Making a video statement outside court in Dublin today,\u00a0Schrems said the Irish court had dismissed Facebook\u2019s argument that the US government does not undertake any surveillance.<\/p>\n In a written statement on the ruling Schrems added: \u201cI welcome the judgement by the Irish High Court. It is important that a neutral Court outside of the US has summarized the facts on US surveillance in a judgement, after diving through more than 45,000 pages of documents in a five week hearing.<\/p>\n \u201cI am of the view the Standard Contractual Clauses are perfectly valid, as they would allow the DPC to do its job and suspend individual problematic data flows, such as Facebook\u2019s. It is still unclear to me why the DPC is taking the extreme position that the SCCs should be invalidated Facebook across the board, when a targeted solution is available. The only explanation that I have is that they want to shift the responsibility back to Luxembourg instead of deciding themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n On Facebook, he also said:\u00a0\u201cIn simple terms, US law requires Facebook to help the NSA with mass surveillance and EU law prohibits just that. As Facebook is subject to both jurisdictions, they got themselves in a legal dilemma that they cannot possibly solve in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will include the company\u2019s response when we have it.<\/p>\n While Schrems\u2019 original complaint pertained to Facebook, the Irish DPC\u2019s position means many more companies that use the mechanism could face disruption if SCCs are ultimately invalidated as a result of the legal challenge to their validity.<\/p>\n Responding to today\u2019s ruling, the BSA<\/a> \u2014\u00a0one of the amicus curiae in the case speaking up for the importance of SCCs as \u201ca basis for data transfers that are essential to the economy and job creation on both sides of the Atlantic\u201d \u2014 said in a statement: \u201cWe have argued that this case should not be about standard contractual clauses in their entirety, but instead about how the clauses were formulated and used for the specific transfers involved here. We also explained that the SCCs include important safeguards to protect users \u2014 among them, they grant national data protection authorities the power to review specific implementation of these clauses on a case by case basis. We will continue to advocate these perspectives before the Court of Justice of the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s influential Article 29 Working Party, which is made up of representatives from all the data protection authorities of the Member States, has previously voiced concerns about SCCs<\/a>. It also has ongoing\u00a0concerns about Privacy Shield<\/a>.<\/p>\n The latter mechanism underwent its first annual review by EU officials in the US last month \u2014 and a report is due this month. Although the EC, which drove the process to replace the defunct Safe Harbor, was quick to profess itself publicly satisfied with what it has seen.<\/p>\n \u26a1\ufe0f \u201cOfficial Visit to Washington D.C and San Francisco\u201dhttps:\/\/t.co\/82LqHEYUbw<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 V\u011bra Jourov\u00e1 (@VeraJourova) September 22, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/p>\n Featured Image: Twin Design<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/6OCCG7Ek-Us\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Facebook has bought itself a little more time over a major legal challenge in Europe after the Irish High Court decided not to strike down a b2b mechanism it uses <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-9459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n