Data protection action ‘of utmost importance to US’
An unprecedented application by the US to join the High Court action will be heard on July 7, alongside similar applications by major Irish, European and US business and civil liberties organisations.
Commissioner Helen Dixon initiated the case after her draft finding last month that Austrian student Max Schrems had raised “well-founded objections” to the validity of EU-US data transfer channels, or ‘standard contractual clauses’.
Mr Schrems complained that Facebook Ireland was transferring his data via such clauses to servers in the US, where it was being processed, without ensuring sufficient protection for it as required under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.
Use of standard contractual clauses has been approved under various European Commission decisions but concerns whether the clauses accord with data- protection rights of EU citizens have mounted since the Court of Justice of the EU last year struck down the previous EU-US Safe Harbour data transfer arrangement.
The Court of Justice of the EU ruling was based on the indiscriminate and mass nature of US surveillance and a finding EU citizens had no effective remedy under US law for breaches of their privacy rights.
After a seven-month investigation, commissioner Dixon has made a draft finding that standard contractual clauses also breach privacy and data-protection rights of EU citizens.
The case was briefly mentioned yesterday before Mr Justice Brian McGovern in the commercial court.
He fixed July 7 to hear various applications to be joined to it as ‘amicus curiae’, assistant to the court on legal issues. Some joinder applications are being contested, the court was told.
The judge will hear joinder applications by the US government; Business Software Alliance; risk Business and Employers Confederation and Digital Europe, representing the European digital technology industry.
