Angry Austrian could turn Europe against the US - thanks to data

Whatever the outcome...

"David" has paved the way for an outstanding legal career!

I hope he is successful with this case, but I've got the feeling that the big machinery will eventually wear him out and too many megacorps with lots of money to share have too much interest in keeping Safe Harbour alive.

"He added that Schrems was not required to prove that his own data had been spied upon in order to make a complaint."

Maybe not when the game started but I'm sure Schrems data will be spewing out of NSA printers at a great rate now.

Here's hoping.

“restore trust in data flows between the EU and the US.”

Good luck with that.

As sysconfig says above with most of the IT megacorps being American the privacy of citizens of the EU is probably not the first thing on the minds of the powers that be in Washington.

The US seems to have the idea that everything connected with the internet is their private property and it should be up to them to decide what happens to any data that gets onto the internet.

As Upton Sinclair's saying goes " It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding .."

For info

Mr. Schrems is the who brought the private lawsuit in Austria that ended up toppling the EU Data Retention Directive.

I know who I'm hiring next time I get arrested.

In case of a verdict that tips the US Safe Harbour thingie, it would be interesting to see if the same can be done with the UK. Because data stored in the UK is as unsafe

"He says the infringement came about thanks to Facebook transferring its users' data to the US National Security Agency (NSA)."

Presumably Facebook will argue that the data was entered onto a US server by the user. Therefore, the transfer from the EU to the US was performed by the data owner, not them, and any subsequent transfer from Facebook to the NSA comes purely under US law.

It's a little different from (say) European airlines transferring customer data to the US. In that situation, the initial transfer was from a European resident to a European company.

Certainly if I went onto a North Korean web-site and entered a load of stuff I wouldn't expect that data to enjoy the protection of EU law. Whenever you have transactions between two entities in different legal jurisdictions there is bound to be some dispute over whose legal system takes precedence.