Friday May 14th 2021
Defeat in Irish court
Data blockage on Facebook possible
This decision could have far-reaching consequences for Facebook: The group, which has its European headquarters in Ireland, suffers a legal defeat against the local data protection authority. This could prohibit the transmission of personal user data from the EU to the USA.
Facebook has suffered a legal defeat in Ireland that could soon stop data transfers from the EU to the USA. The Irish Supreme Court dismissed the tech giant’s request to block an Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) investigation into the data transfer. Judge David Barniville said he was rejecting any claim from Facebook Ireland. In September, the court initially approved a temporary blockade of the investigation.
The data protection commission welcomed the court decision. The DPC could now prohibit the transmission of personal data from Facebook users from the EU to the USA – and thus have a decisive impact on Facebook’s business model. Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland. It is therefore up to the Irish Data Protection Authority to prosecute any breach of EU regulations by the company.
The Irish authority responded to a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last July with the investigation, which Facebook is legally contested. Five years after the end of the EU data protection agreement “Safe Harbor” with the USA, the latter had also declared the successor agreement “Privacy Shield” to be invalid. In principle, it was still possible for companies to pass on data to the USA on the basis of so-called standard contractual clauses because, in the opinion of the ECJ, sufficient protective mechanisms exist. However, the Irish Data Protection Agency believed that these clauses might not be legal either and opened an investigation on August 28th.
Urgency procedure for update
The Austrian Max Schrems, who has been fighting a legal dispute with Facebook for years, said on Twitter that the DPC could now block the transmission of Facebook data from the EU to the USA “within two months”. Despite the request, there was initially no comment from Facebook speakers.
It was only on Tuesday that the Hamburg data protection authority Facebook banned the processing of user data from its messenger service Whatsapp for its own purposes. The Hamburg data protection authority announced that the ban would be issued for three months as part of an urgency procedure. The background is a controversial update on Whatsapp, which users should agree to by May 15th.
Recently, international criticism had risen that the update meant that Whatsapp user data fell into the hands of tech giant Facebook. The new terms of use should enable companies to chat or make phone calls with customers on Whatsapp. However, users’ contacts and profile data should also be transmitted to Facebook.
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