12/5/12
Law Students in Austria Challenge Facebook Privacy Policy - NYTimes.com
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Law Students in Austria Challenge Facebook Privacy Policy
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By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN Published: December 4, 2012
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BERLIN — An Austrian student group said Tuesday that it planned to challenge Facebook’s privacy policies in Irish court, alleging that the social networking giant had failed, despite repeated requests and formal complaints made by its members, to adapt to the restrictions of European data protection law.
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Max Schrems, a student at the University of Vienna, said Facebook’s privacy policies were too broad and violated European law.
The group, which calls itself Europe vs. Facebook, said it would begin collecting donations to challenge the policy in Ireland, where the company’s European business is incorporated. Max Schrems, an Austrian law student at the University of Vienna who organized the effort, said Facebook had no interest in adapting its service to meet stricter European privacy requirements.
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“We have been pursing this for more than a year with Facebook, but the company has done only about 10 percent of what we had asked them to do,” said Mr. Schrems, 25. “Therefore, we are preparing to go to court.” Facebook, in a statement, said its European privacy policy had been vetted and approved by Irish regulators and was in compliance with European law. “The way Facebook Ireland handles personal data has been subject to thorough review by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner over the past year,” the company said. “Nonetheless, we have some vocal critics who will never be happy whatever we do and whatever the D.P.C. concludes.” Mr. Schrems’s group, which he said was made up of about 10 students at the University of Vienna, filed 22 complaints in 2010 with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland, which regulates Facebook’s European business because it is incorporated there.
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As a result of those complaints, the regulator conducted a public audit of Facebook’s privacy policies. In September it announced an agreement with the company that required, among other changes, that Facebook shorten the time it retained consumer data and refrain from building a photo archive on individuals without their prior consent. But Mr. Schrems said in an interview that Facebook was still violating European law in many areas, including a requirement that Facebook provide users who request it with a full copy of all the data the company has collected on them. Mr. Schrems, a Facebook user
nytimes.com/2012/12/05/…/austrian-group-plans-court-challenge-to-facebooks-privacy-policies.html?…
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