Facebook faces legal failure: Data transfer to US

Much of Facebook’s business model is the data of its users. Among other things, Facebook sends data from European users to the United States: a court ruling in Ireland could end it.

Facebook Hat Ireland Suffered a legal failure, resulting in premature cessation of data exchanges ME To the United States. The Irish Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a request from a technology company to block an Irish Data Protection Commission (DBC) inquiry into data transfer.

Judge David Barney said Facebook would reject any of Ireland’s claims. In September, the court initially agreed to suspend the trial.

The authority welcomes the decision

The Data Protection Commission welcomed the court ruling. The DBC may now ban the transfer of personal data from Facebook users from the EU to the United States – thus having a decisive impact on Facebook’s business model. Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland. It is therefore up to the Irish Data Protection Commission to prosecute the company for violating EU regulations.

The Irish Authority responded to a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last July that Facebook is legally competing with the trial. Five years after the EU data protection agreement with the United States expired “safe port”, the latter declared the “privacy shield” heir agreement invalid. In principle, it was possible for companies to transfer data to the United States on the basis of so-called standard contract terms because the ECJ has adequate security mechanisms in place.

Will the data transfer end soon?

However, the Irish Data Protection Agency began an investigation on August 28, believing that these clauses were not legal.

Max Shrems, an Austrian who has been fighting a legal dispute with Facebook for years, explained TwitterThe DBC can now block the sending of Facebook data from the EU to the United States “within two months”. Despite the request from the AFP news agency, there was initially no comment from Facebook spokespersons.

Passed against WhatsApp

On Tuesday, the Hamburg Data Protection Authority banned Facebook from processing user data from its ambassador service WhatsApp for its own purposes. The Hamburg Data Protection Commission announced the ban for three months as part of an emergency procedure. The background to this is a controversial update on WhatsApp, which users must agree to by May 15th. Recently, international criticism arose, and the update fell into the hands of WhatsApp user data technology company Facebook.

The new terms of use will allow companies to chat or make phone calls with customers on WhatsApp. However, users’ contacts and profile data should also be sent to Facebook.