Facebook wants to voice opinion in legal challenge by Austrian student

Facebook Inc yesterday requested the chance to voice its opinion in a legal challenge mounted by an Austrian law student against the Irish privacy regulator for refusing to investigate the US company's transfers of data to the US.

Major US tech companies including Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc and Facebook came in for severe criticism after revelations in 2013 of the US government's Prism programme, under which US authorities could harvest private information directly from these companies.

Austrian law student Max Schrems challenged Facebook's transfers of European users' data to its US servers, due to the risk of US snooping in light of disclosures by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden (See: Austrian student sues Facebook over privacy violations).

Schrems filed his complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) as Facebook operates European headquarters in Ireland.

"We will request an opportunity to join the proceedings in the Irish High Court where the Irish DPC's investigation is to be discussed," said a spokeswoman for Facebook.

An Irish High Court judge referred Schrems' complaint to the highest court in the EU, asking whether national authorities could suspend data transfers if privacy safeguards in the destination country were insufficient.

In a landmark ruling in response to the complaint, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared invalid a system used by thousands of US and European companies to transfer personal data to the US due to insufficient privacy protection there.

US tech companies hit hard by the decision, who are now open to investigation by European regulators for their privacy practices might need to restructure how they handled their European operations.

However, for Schrems, a 28-year-old activist and student pursuing a law doctorate from the University of Vienna, the decision came as a victory.

"I very much welcome the judgment of the Court, which will hopefully be a milestone when it comes to online privacy," Schrems, the primary plaintiff in the case that resulted in the ruling, said in a statement at the time.

Schrems' challenge stems from a semester of study at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley in the spring of 2011. It was at that time that he decided to write a paper about what he thought was Facebook's misunderstanding of Europe's strong privacy laws after hearing a lawyer from the company speak at one of his classes, he told The Washington Post in 2012.

Schrems has then said his class-action suit against Facebook for alleged privacy violations had received support from 60,000 users and passed its first legal review, Reuters reported. (See: Facebook lawsuit gets support from 60,000 users).