A 27-year-old Austrian law graduate Max Schrems has finally officially filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook in a Vienna court over alleged violations of privacy law of the European Union, as well as mass surveillance and involvement in the NSA’s spying program.
The case in question sees 25,000 users who sue Facebook over multiple rights violations – from the unauthorized tracking of their information under European law to the social network’s involvement with the NSA. Each of the plaintiffs claims a “token amount” of €500 in damages; another 55,000 users are going to join the suit later.
Max Schrems explains that people are actually asking the company to stop bulk surveillance, adopt a proper and comprehensible privacy policy, while also stopping collecting information of people who are not even Facebook users. The lawsuit has been filed against the company’s European headquarters in Dublin, which registers all accounts outside the United States and Canada. It is estimated to account for about 4/5 of Facebook’s 1.35 billion users.
Max Schrems was allowed to start his lawsuit against the Irish subsidiary in a civil court in Austria because he claims that the tech giant violates the European law on users’ private data.
According to media reports, the judges in Vienna will also have to rule on Facebook’s objection that the class action cannot be launched under Austrian law. However, Max Schrems dismissed this objection as lacking “any substance”. By the way, the privacy campaigner is also fighting to prevent the American security services from gaining access to his information retained by Facebook and other American tech giants. This Schrems’ case has been crowdfunded and is now being heard in the European Court of Justice in the EU highest court.
The case in question sees 25,000 users who sue Facebook over multiple rights violations – from the unauthorized tracking of their information under European law to the social network’s involvement with the NSA. Each of the plaintiffs claims a “token amount” of €500 in damages; another 55,000 users are going to join the suit later.
Max Schrems explains that people are actually asking the company to stop bulk surveillance, adopt a proper and comprehensible privacy policy, while also stopping collecting information of people who are not even Facebook users. The lawsuit has been filed against the company’s European headquarters in Dublin, which registers all accounts outside the United States and Canada. It is estimated to account for about 4/5 of Facebook’s 1.35 billion users.
Max Schrems was allowed to start his lawsuit against the Irish subsidiary in a civil court in Austria because he claims that the tech giant violates the European law on users’ private data.
According to media reports, the judges in Vienna will also have to rule on Facebook’s objection that the class action cannot be launched under Austrian law. However, Max Schrems dismissed this objection as lacking “any substance”. By the way, the privacy campaigner is also fighting to prevent the American security services from gaining access to his information retained by Facebook and other American tech giants. This Schrems’ case has been crowdfunded and is now being heard in the European Court of Justice in the EU highest court.
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