Irish High Court Rejects Facebook Bid to Block Data Flow Probe
An Irish Data Protection Commission probe of Facebook data flow can proceed, the country's High Court ruled Friday. The case is "about what happened after" the July European Court of Justice ruling in Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook Ireland Ltd.…
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and Maximilian Schrems (Shrems II), Justice David Barniville wrote. The DPC of its own volition issued a "preliminary draft decision" in August on whether Facebook data transfers involving Europeans are lawful and whether corrective action is needed. The company challenged the decision and procedures on grounds including that they breached the general data protection regulation by failing to carry out an investigation before the draft decision was issued, and that they were an abuse of process. The 197-page decision rejected all of Facebook's challenges. The ruling "was about the process" the DPC followed, a Facebook spokesperson said. She said the company follows EU rules and relies on standard contract clauses and appropriate data safeguards to move data, and the preliminary decision "could be damaging not only to Facebook but also to users and other businesses."