In 2013, Austrian student Maximilian Schrems filed a lawsuit again Facebook, alleging the social media giant violated the EU Data Protection Directive when it shared EU citizen data with the U.S. National Security Agency. Over 25,000 European Facebook users signed up to join the class action, with another 60,000 on a waiting list, making it one of the largest privacy suits in history.
To date, Schrem’s lawsuit has yet to make it to court, receiving pushback predicated on a number of EU privacy policies and being bounced in and out of EU jurisdictions over the course of the last few years. But the case has been the catalyst for a seismic shift in EU policy over the last month, and its looking more certain that it will go forward.
Earlier this month, an appeal of the decision to toss the Schrem’s suit was reviewed by the European Union Court of Justice (EUCJ). In its decision the court ruled that the Safe Harbor agreement that precluded the case from being heard by the Irish Data Protection Commission violated EU citizen rights, and ruled it invalid. In doing so, the EUCJ gave individual member states the ability to apply their interpretation of “reasonable” security measures in governing how data moves in and out of their borders.
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