Austrian student fights Facebook over privacy

Formal investigation has been launched against Facebook

Max Schrems, a 22-year-old Austrian student from Vienna, got more than he asked for when he requested Facebook to turn over all of his data.  Schrems claims on his website, called "Europe vs. Facebook," that he received a CD-ROM containing an overwhelming 800 pages of sheer data, covering most of his activities on the network, since the moment he joined in 2008. Digging through the content, despite how extensive the information received was, he realised it was not complete. Key data elements were missing. And he asked for it.

Now here's the twist.

Facebook claimed in an email response to Schrems that it is not required to give a user a '"complete" copy of his data if, in doing so, the company would be compromising its "trade secrets" or "intellectual property." In other words, Facebook feels that some of your data does not belong to you, but to the company, and falls under the category of trade secrets.  An example of the undisclosed data, according to the Europe v. Facebook’s site, includes biometrical information or "likes," which Facebook claims to be “proprietary.” It was obtained using their “Like’ technology, therefore it belongs to Facebook. 

One of Schrems' main complaints with Facebook is that the company retains information far longer than allowed under European law and does not disclose its full content to the users. In most European countries, a company is only allowed to retain information for 40 days. Clearly not what Facebook is doing, Schrems told me.  

To fight back what Schrems consider to be a "blatant disrespect of privacy laws," he launched in August the Europe vs. Facebook’s “Annoy Facebook” campaign, encouraging others to demand their data.

"We are strongly opposing Facebook’s plans to store every song you listen, every message you send and every step you take for an unlimited archive. German news seems to be rather critical as well. In many of your complaints we raised the question of deleting content and “digital forgetting” on Facebook (see e.g. complaint 15). We do not think that these systems are benefiting users and we also think that they are against European data protection laws. The only once that are sure happy about Facebook’s new plans: Advertisers and police forces that get a limitless pool of data about everyone of us," Schrems wrote on his site.

So far, 22 individual complaints have been filed in Ireland with the “Data Protection Commissioner" against Facebook.  The Commissioner’s mission is to apply and monitor regulations and protection of personal data in Ireland, and to some degrees, in the European Union.

And what does the Commissioner thinks of all of that?

Ciara O'Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the Irish commissioner, said in a released statement, "a formal investigation has been launched into Schrems' complaints. In addition, a routine audit of Facebook's operation will be conducted sooner than planned, to give authorities a complete picture in weighing the requests."

Facebook recognizes that it has not done enough to protect data.

"Have we done enough in the past to deal with you? No," Facebook's director of European public policy, Richard Allan, testified Tuesday before a German parliamentary committee on new media. "Will we do more now? Yes."

And if Facebook is found not complying with the law, what will be the penalty?

A written warming is sent to the company by the Commissioner requesting it to comply with the law. If  the company fails to change its ways, it can face a fine of around euro 100,000 ($140,000).

As Schrems points out, there is little incentive for companies to follow the privacy laws, when the consequences for breaking them are so insignificant.

Screms wants Facebook to “do the right thing and be transparent.”

 “A company that constantly asks its users to be as transparent as possible should be equally transparent when it comes to the use of its personal data. Transparency is not only a question of fairness but it is also a principle of European data protection law. It is time that the biggest social network worldwide sticks to these legal principles,” Max Schrems said.

Facebook were not available for comments.

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