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Max Schrems sits with files about his activities on his Facebook account that Facebook handed over to him last year. Ronald Zak/AP/Press Association Images
Europe-v-Facebook
Student plans Irish legal action over Facebook's privacy policy
Max Schrems and his group, ‘Europe v Facebook’, is preparing legal action against the Irish Data Protection Commissioner over its recent audit of Facebook and its privacy policy.
THE AUSTRIAN STUDENT who is the public face of an ongoing dispute with Facebook over its compliance with privacy laws says that an audit by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is welcome, but doesn’t go far enough.
Max Schrems, of the ‘Europe v Facebook’ group, is in Dublin this week where he is stepping up efforts to take legal action against the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC).
Schrems says that the DPC’s recent audit of Facebook was not sufficient to deal with complaints his group has levelled against the social network’s compliance with European data protection principles and Irish law.
Facebook insists that it complies with the law and points out that two reports published by the Irish DPC show this. The DPC declined to answer specific queries, citing Europe v Facebook’s intention to challenge it in the courts.
Schrems, 25, is one of about 10 students involved with the Austrian-based group which has been questioning Facebook’s privacy policy for the past two years, leading to the recent audit by the DPC.
He told TheJournal.ie this week:
I think the audit was a good step in the right direction. There are things like the photo retention period, giving people more access to data than they had before, or the whole facial recognition thing which was for sure good.
But it’s still very short of the European law. I see that the DPC was trying [but] they are just overwhelmed by the situation. It’s a teeny, tiny, small authority… I think that was just too much for them to take in the end.
No contact
The DPC did not respond to specific queries from TheJournal.ie about its staff and resources. It referred to a statement it issued last week in which it said that it had not received contact from ‘Europe v Facebook’ about its grievances with the audit.
“We have consistently and repeatedly outlined to it (‘Europe v Facebook’) our happiness to take forward formal decisions of the Commissioner in relation to the complaints submitted in whatever time-scale is acceptable to it,” a spokesperson said last week.
“We have not received any contact from it in this respect but would assume based on the press release that we will shortly receive such contact which will allow us to commence the process.”
Schrems says he has tried to contact the DPC to arrange meetings while he is in Dublin this week but they have not responded to these requests.
Following the audit, Facebook Ireland, which is the official service provider for all Facebook users outside of the United States and Canada, agreed to a number of changes, including shortening the amount of time it retains deleted data and its automatic facial recognition software.
But ‘Europe v Facebook’ is not happy that Facebook has complied with a request to make data it holds about users available to those users. Facebook insists it “complies with European data protection principles and Irish law”.
Schrems described his own protracted battle with the company to get his personal data in 2010. He said that it took 22 emails for him to get 1,300 pages of data that Facebook held about him and even then he was concerned by what was in this information.
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Information requests
“In these 1,300 pages you find like all deleted data they gathered from other people about you, data they generated themselves about you, like GPS locations of where you have likely been,” he said.
“I never used any GPS tracking, I never checked into Facebook or anything like that so there was a lot of stuff like that.”
Schrems said that after his case started to get public attention, Facebook received personal information access requests from some 40,000 users and that by law the company should have complied with these requests within 40 days.
But, he says, the Irish DPC gave the social networking giant a year.
He said: “Under the law they would have to deliver these requests in 40 days and now the DPC gave them one year to put in some kind of self-service downloads tool which is totally contrary to law because they have to give it up in 40 days.”
Schrems said that Facebook’s tool allowing users to download their data is not sufficient and claims that when he downloaded his own personal data set it did not contain information from his activity log from before 2010.
Facebook insists that it is not making it difficult for people to access their data and points out that anyone can use the ‘download your information’ tool within their account settings to get a copy of their data.
A spokesperson for Facebook said:
The way Facebook Ireland handles European personal data has been subject to thorough review by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner over the past year.The two detailed reports that the DPC has produced by the DPC demonstrate that Facebook Ireland complies with European data protection principles and Irish law. Nonetheless we have some vocal critics who will never be happy whatever we do and whatever the DPC concludes.
Legal action
Dissatisfied with the quality of the DPC audit, ‘Europe v Facebook’ is looking into taking legal action against the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, and by extension, Facebook, in relation to its compliance with data protection laws.
He says that the legal advice he has received in Ireland has been positive towards the case. Already a crowd-funding model on their ‘Europe v Facebook’ website has raised over €25,000 with the group estimating it will need hundreds of thousands of euro to take a case.
He said: “It’s not good enough to say ‘We did something and we moved it somewhere in the right direction’ if we have like fundamental human rights in the European Union that, to my understanding, they [the DPC] have to enforce fully and not halfway.”
The DPC told TheJournal.ie: “We have no further comment to make on the matters you have outlined as Europe v Facebook has chosen to engage in a legal process with our Office with a publicly stated intention to challenge our Office through the courts.”
Despite his ongoing battle with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner and Facebook, Schrems said that he is not concerned about Facebook’s security.
He said he just wants to be sure that the company is compliant with European data protection law and for this to be enforced by the DPC.
“I am still on Facebook because to me data protection is not about being against new technology, it’s about having trust in new technology,” he said.
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Say what you like about the government, but my opinion is that they have done a great job of keeping what is probably an anadequate ICU system from coming under too much pressure.
@michal heba: oh yeah? So why did they have to close car parks and walkways after a few weeks?
The people of ireland were doing a great job of ignoring social distancing guidelines until they were strictly policed.
@Peter McGlynn: agreed…. but in this instance I think the results have been as positive as we could have hoped for as a people. And that’s not to disrespect people who lost loved ones.. but it could have been a lot worse
@thomas patrick: there is always some element of no cooperation… But in general its people and front staff did all the work. Politicians are still free to travel in government fleet etc.
@Pád: yep . The medical profession provided the advice and the government acted. Not like Mr. Orange across the water.
I’m only trying to inject a little bit of positivity in a place where it’s easy to bash people. Do any of us think we’d do a better job? Or even put ourselves forward for the job in the first place? I dont think so.
And yes, absolute credit to the heroes on the front line more than anyone else
@thomas patrick: On what basis have they done a great job? Only by looking at the media spun faux comparisons of Italy and UK. When you compare with most similar European countries or the likes of New Zealand you see what could have been possible with an effective strategy and some leadership. We fell some way short. We’ve done ok but it’s been in the absence of adequate leadership.
@thomas patrick: What’s the relevance in comparing us to a continent of 330 million people and a totally different social set up? I don’t see it positive to constantly say we are doing somewhat better than the couple countries that have plundered globally and that have much larger denser populations. Why not look at what’s possible in the majority of Western European / Scandinavian countries or other similar island nations like New Zealand and believe we can do much better.
@thomas patrick: we are an island, we could have done way better. We could have achieved the same as NZ or Australia. The “Orange One” has a lower death per capita rate than us, and when this blows over you want someone like the “Orange One” to get your economy going full tilt and roaring again – he has a business head and those types will be nearly as important as the front line workers fighting this crisis in the certain recession ahead.
@Daniel Dunne: Comparing NZ or the Aussies to Ireland is apples and oranges. They have very different flight traffic to a country like Ireland. They could be doing better, but the metric you have there isnt a good one. If you compare us to countries who do have similar traffic were doing pretty well. Equal to Netherlands, better than the UK for example. We’re way behind Germany, but when aren’t they the best at stuff like that in fairness. Credit where credits due.
@Gerald OBrien: Also if you do the math America 328,000,000(population) / 67,000(deaths) = 4,800. So 1 death every 4,800. Ireland 4,900,000(population) / 1265(deaths) = 3873. Last time I checked 3873 is less than 4,800
@Gerald OBrien: Amsterdam and London are major global air travel hubs. How exactly does Ireland have similar flight traffic to the Netherlands and the UK?
And you can bet Australia and NZ have far more frequent flights from China.
You’re talking nonsense.
@Gerald OBrien: your correct in saying we can’t compare to Aus & NZ as it’s been summer over there whilst it’s been winter in this part of the world, also Dublin airport is a major hub with 33 million passing through last year, add to that the school tours to Northern Italy, Cheltenham has effected us and also the Liverpool matches tying us in with the UK more than the rest so we equally can’t be compared to Scandinavia
That’s really good news. Now they need to get the health service back up and running generally, and start treating people in some of the 100s of empty beds.
@Mairead Jenkins: no one is stopping any one from attending the hospital where needed. It would seem in the past that a lot of people attending A&E, don’t need to.
@Jim Buckley Barrett: I agree with you re A and E. What I meant was the horrendous waiting lists. Good chance to start tackling them with so much spare capacity plus very high availability of beds in all the private hospitals.
@Jim O Brien Tech: I think every country is having issues around testing and the availability of staff and resources to do so, but at over 34000 tests per million population, we have actually tested a lot more than most countries.
@Dell: Noted however harris has promised more than once he would get to a level of testing when he has not so why keep telling people different when it is not possible
That’s good. Hoping nurses get the pay rise they were promised last year.
A clap for frontline workers, but an instant pay rise for TDs.
Imagine if nurses held their ground on negotiations during this pandemic, because they’re in demand. That’s capitalism, right? But nurses are not as immoral as businesses or FG’s neoliberal policies.
@Dean: the unfortunate thing Dean is that this government is currently throwing billions of euros at the economy and health system to keep everything afloat. This will have to be paid back. I can’t see any pay rises for anyone in that industry unfortunately. And I’m not looking forward to our next budget.
This is interesting. Does anyone know how many people have died while in ICU? One would assume that if diagnosed with Covid-19 which then became serious resulting in hospitalisation and subsequent transfer to ICU, that most of our 1,200+ deaths should have occurred by that sequence/route. This does not appear to have been the case. It appears that the vast majority of our Covid deaths never made it to ICU and possibly never even made it to hospital. Or I am I missing something somewhere…..
@David Hughes: frail people aren’t put on ventilators in ICU because the outcomes aren’t good for them, i.e. it’s an intervention that doesn’t work. Nothing to do with capacity, it’s the same in normal times. So there’s lots of deaths outside of ICU.
@Hundredth Idiot: Thank you. So those that are deemed to be too frail are not given the chance of life as their possible outcomes are not good – in order to make room for the potential intake of Covid 19 cases? The ICU numbers that have died seem very low in comparison with the national figure
@David Hughes: No, you’re fundamentally misunderstanding. There is no capacity issue, there is no “not being given the chance of life”. ICU isn’t the most appropriate place for many frail patients. It’s a clinical decision. Google “clinical frailty scale” and COVID-19.
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