The Irish privacy watchdog said it would refer Facebook to the EU Court of Justice for possible violations of EU data protection law with the social network's transfer of data on EU users to the US, Reuters reports. The Irish Data Protection Commissioner earlier started an investigation into Facebook's transfers to ensure that personal privacy is properly protected from US government surveillance. The IDPC said it would ask the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to determine the validity of Facebook's "model contracts", which are used by many firms to comply with data protection law since the EU court struck down the previous 'safe harbour' agreement on on the transfer of personal data to the US.
The Irish regulator's case is seen as a test of whether such contracts hold up to EU law. The IDPC said it also informed Max Schrems, the Austrian student who originally brought the safe harbour case, of its plans to address the EU court. One of the reasons the ECJ struck down safe harbour is because the agreement did not offer EU citizens sufficient channels to complain about US surveillance. Schrems and other privacy campaigners contend that alternative arrangements such as model clauses don't offer Europeans any means of redress either.
