Austrian student sues Facebook again

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

http://www.thelocal.at/20140801/austrian-student-sues-facebook-again

Max Schrems, an Austrian law student announced on Friday a
class-action law suit based in Austria, against Facebook.

As a class-action suit, anyone outside of the USA and Canada can
participate.  Previously, Schrems had invoked European data protection
laws in 2011, by writing to Facebook in Ireland - the legal entity for
all Facebook users outside of the USA and Canada - demanding a copy of
all of his Facebook data held by the company.

In accordance with European data protection legislation, every EU
citizen has the right to receive a copy of all the personal
information that a company has collected on them. The result was a
1,200 page PDF, containing complete transcriptions of all his chats,
as well as records of rejected friend requests.

Another law suit helped to restrict the amount of facial recognition
functionality, as a potential privacy breach.

Schrem's new law suit is now based in Austria, and will look at its
alleged participation in the NSA PRISM program, as well as its privacy
policy, and the fact that it tracks anyone who visits a web page -
outside Facebook - if there's a 'Like' button on the page.  It will
focus special scrutiny on "the absence of effective consent to many
types of data use",  as well as its general non-compliance with
data-access requests submitted by customers.

According to GigaOm, the suit also covers the “unlawful introduction”
of the arguably creepy Graph Search feature, the passing of user
information to third-party applications, and the “monitoring of users
by means of Big Data analytics.”

Schrems also states that the Irish data protection commissioner has
been too lenient with Facebook's lack of compliance - possibly due to
political pressure that all of Facebook's international operations are
run out of Ireland.

In a statement, Schrems said:

“In the beginning we made great progress in Ireland. As a result of
our complaints, Facebook had to delete data and deactivate its facial
recognition all over the world. However, over time it became clear
that the Irish authorities had no interest in enforcing substantial
changes. The proceedings will soon reach the end of their third year
and we are still being promised a decision ‘in the near future’. Many
voices in Ireland are saying that this is due to political pressure
not to drive away the IT industry, which is very important in Ireland.
We shouldn’t have that problem in Austria. We are therefore
transferring the focus of our activities here.”

Under EU law, a verdict by the Commercial Court in Vienna will apply
to Facebook’s Irish headquarters as well.

Joining the suit is free – it’s being bankrolled by German litigation
funder Roland ProzessFinanz, which will get a fifth of the payout if
it’s successful. According to the FAQs, Austria doesn’t allow
U.S.-style class actions as such, but there is precedent for getting a
group of people to assign their claims to one person who then sues on
their behalf. In this case, that person is Schrems.

“We are suing Facebook for €500 [$669] in damages and unjust
enrichment,” the FAQs read, referring to the amount sought per
individual claim. “This is intentionally low because our main aim is
to enforce our fundamental rights. In similar cases courts have always
awarded higher amounts (at least €750 for minor violations, up to a
couple of €1,000 in other cases).”

Ironically but necessarily, of course, those wishing to sign up for
the suit need to use the Facebook login button to do so. Those who
have already deactivated their Facebook accounts in disgust at the
trampling of their rights et cetera will need to fill out a separate
form or temporarily reactivate their accounts.

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