back to article Facebook CTO: Clear legal grounds needed for EU-US data exports

A European Court last month threw data-sharing with the US into a thicket by tearing up the so-called safe harbor agreement. The catalyst for that was Facebook – or, rather Austrian Max Schrems, who’d accused Facebook of illegally analyzing user data, tracking users on third-party pages and participating in the US National …

  1. Kraggy

    "Because even if you have have a data centre in Europe, most Europeans are sharing their data with people outside Europe, so we need to have clear legal grounds to make sure that your feed isn’t limited to only the people who are also in the EU, which destroys a lot of the value you want out of the product.”

    The last part of the last sentence clearly is wrong, it should be:

    "which destroys a lot of the value FACEBOOK wants out of the product."

  2. Zippy's Sausage Factory

    Laws? Courts?

    "Yeah, right. Local laws. Who cares about local laws? We don't! Look at some cat pictures and stop thinking, sheeple"

    - a quote from the imaginary Facebook person in my head*.

    Who is clearly a hyperbolic parody, in case any of FB's lawyers are reading.

  3. Warm Braw

    "Most Europeans are sharing their data with people outside Europe"

    That's disingenuous, at best.

    The information that people voluntarily choose to make public (or share with a closed group) is not the issue, it's the stuff they chose not to make public like their contact details, and all the information harvested about their online activity for marketing purposes. Shipping that around the world is the problem.

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Re: "Most Europeans are sharing their data with people outside Europe"

      Where it gets trickier for Facebook and indeed Google is data they collect on people who are not users of their services.

      I'm referring to Facebook's habbit of tagging people in photos even if they're not Facebook users. Thus they can build up a social network for such people even if they themselves never have any direct contact with Facebook.

      I'm also referring to Google using caller ID on Android phones to build up data on who you are and which Android users you call, even if you yourself do not have an Android phone or use Google in any way. Google get to know who you are if you're in the callee's contacts list and can of course Google your phone number.

      In collecting data this way Facebook and Google are really skirting on the edges of legality. They have no terms and conditions to point to to say you've signed up, and they're currently exporting such data abroad. Should anyone in Europe choose to sue over being surveilled in this manner, they'd lose almost instantly, especially in the current climate.

      Good job for them that there isn't really an equivalent of the American class action system in UK. There is a Information Commissioner who, should they get angry enough, can bare some pretty sharp teeth.

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    As far as I can make out the situation was that Schrems was accusing Facebook of playing fast and loose with data beyond what it was provided for, i.e. beyond Schroepfe's "clear legal grounds to make sure that your feed isn’t limited to only the people who are also in the EU". His Austrian legal system had punted him to the Irish authorities who tried a "nothing to do with us, squire" on the basis that it was an EU Commission matter because of Safe Harbour, which was their baby. The ECJ kicked it back to them taking out Safe Harbour as collateral damage.

    It's up to the Irish to investigate Shrems' complaint to see if it has merit. That could limit FB's use of the data beyond its nominal intended purpose but assuming that intended purpose was to enable FB's customers to blurt out whatever they choose to whoever they choose wherever they may be it's difficult to see that Safe Harbour could ever have been involved with that.

    OTOH if a company based in the EU is shovelling customers' or, worse still, employees'* personal data to the US they have a real problem.

    *They might stand a chance of defending a model clause as part of a customer contract but I can't see anybody getting away with making it condition of employment; "constructive dismissal" is the phrase that comes to mind.

  5. streaky

    Schengen

    Facebook appears to be banking on a return to the days of data Schengen

    Talk about clutching at straws, it will take fairly major open heart surgery to the US constitution to get back to that place - including limits to the power of POTUS to just secretly instruct the US security services to do whatever they like in the face of other law.

    It isn't going to happen, and on the off-chance it did it isn't going to happen any time soon (US constitutional change famously takes decades even when everybody wants it; and centuries potentially when they don't) so..

    They are at best being very badly advised.

    1. Ogi

      Re: Schengen

      I don't think the US would change at the behest of anyone external, including the EU. I would suspect more threats/arm-twisting/etc... until the EU concedes or waters down their demands.

      Perhaps Facebook knows something we don't, or they are just eternally hopeful that things will somehow go back to how they were.

      The cynic in me says they know something, multimillion dollar businesses don't sit and wait on a hope. They sit and wait for the tide to turn in their favour because they have information saying that it will happen.

      Whether it actually does happen though, we shall see.

      1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Schengen

        Actually they do. Look at all the big US corps that have large foreign reserves that are counted as company assets, but haven't been repatriated to the USA. They are sitting and waiting on the hope that there is a suitably favourable amnesty/tax holiday on foreign cash reserves allowing them to be repatriatriated at low or no cost.

      2. streaky

        Re: Schengen

        I don't think the US would change at the behest of anyone external, including the EU. I would suspect more threats/arm-twisting/etc... until the EU concedes or waters down their demands.

        I don't disagree on the first point, US legislative branch thinks it's *hilarious* that EU citizens think they have any right to privacy. Second point would take a fundamental rebuild of the charter and that isn't happening either.

        Any "solution" either side comes up with without a fundamental rebuild is doomed to be illegal in the EU because the charter rights are more set in stone than any of the US constitution. Outcome in the end is gridlock, and it shall forever be thus.

        Private data doesn't move to the USA is all, not sure how much the US values that data but it's going to end and lawsuits will start.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Massive case of misrepresentation

    Allowing someone to be subscribed to your feed from outside the Eu has nothing to do with exporting your data outside the Eu.

    1. It is the user determining who sees it.

    2. It is the user creating the feed and publishing data.

    What this disallows is for entities _OTHER_ than the intended recipient to leach off that feed _IF_ they are outside the Eu. So he should stop openly lying and formulate it correctly: most Europeans are sharing their data with people outside Europe, so we need to have clear legal grounds to make them bend over and align their orifices correctly for servicing of the Marketeers from _OUTSIDE_ Europe.

  7. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "I don't think the US would change at the behest of anyone external"

    That leaves internal..There's an election pending (there usually is). Campaign contributions anyone?

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