Irish Supreme Court Dismisses Facebook’s Complaint on NSA Surveillance [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Irish Supreme Court Dismisses Facebook’s Complaint on NSA Surveillance [pdf]

noyb.eu

135 pointsdonohoe27 comments

At the time of Max Schrems' first complaints, our Data Protection Commission was located in a small office in Portarlington above a convenience store. It is only due to the international embarrassment caused by Schrems' successful cases (which showed the DPC to be incompetent and unwilling to investigate complaints) that they have recently received more funding to expand operations.

There is a tendency in Irish state bodies to always err on the side of the establishment - Ombudsmen and oversight bodies such as the DPC will rarely rock the boat by making findings against the State. This leaves citizens with little option but to take a court case against the State to vindicate their rights (as Schrems was forced to do when the previous DPC decided his complaints were "frivolous and vexatious" [1]). The current DPC has yet to fine a single company under GDPR, something which truly beggars belief.

People like Schrems take a great personal risk in taking court cases in Ireland. If you lose, you end up paying yours and your opponent's legal fees, which are huge and essentially bankrupting for the non-wealthy [2] (there are some exceptions where the judge thinks your case was in the public interest, but that's decided afterwards). Often cases have to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and the ECJ to find justice. One case against the DPC regarding access to exam scripts has been in the Irish courts since 2009 and finally won in the ECJ in 2017 [3].

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/court-t...

[2] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-co...

[3] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/failed-exam-ca...

Schrems is a citizen of Austria, in Austria you would have to pay the legal fees of your opponent, too, if you lose.

The main parts of this judgement were very unsurprising. It is very well established in EU law that a higher national court can not order a lower court to withdraw a reference for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union.

EU law normally override EU member state national law. The EU court is the final interpreter on EU law.

The thinking about lower courts unappealable ability to ask the EU court for what the EU law is, that a higher or highest national courts should never be able to suppress a question from reaching the EU court.

Hence, if the Supreme Court in a member state would give a final ruling on a topic, any lower court that thinks the Supreme Court were wrong on points of EU law, may always in a following case ask the EU court for final guidance on what EU law actually means (instead of just following the Supreme Court ruling). The Supreme Court would in that instance have no means of preventing that from happening.

Indeed. This is completely unrelated to the details of the case - it is simply unacceptable that a higher court can effectively gag a lower court from referring to the EU court.

The brazen contempt for the spirit of the law that Facebook (among many other companies) display never ceases to amaze me.

It is unsurprising, given the spirit of capitalism, that companies behave in a cut-throat manner - it's a race to the bottom. Whoever doesn't 'go there' will be surpassed by whatever narcissistic corp is willing to go there. This is simply the way everything is wired up to work.

Corporations, and the people that run them, will test the limits of acceptability all the time just to get the edge on the competition - it's how they survive.

Unsurprising given not the nature of Capitalism, but of humankind. Capitalism was conceptualized as the most effective method of containing these impulses. But don’t assume this “race to the bottom” doesn’t exist outside of capitalism, especially considering the rich history showing the opposite. Is there a socialist government where the powerful aren’t rich in a much more inequitable distribution of wealth (for what little they create)?

Very succinctly put. Reminded me of this brief clip:

Milton Friedman - Your Greed or Their Greed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

> Is there a socialist government where the powerful aren’t rich in a much more inequitable distribution of wealth

Perhaps:

In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say...

Cuba?

>Capitalism was conceptualized as the most effective method of containing these impulses.

This is terribly incorrect. It only increases these impulses, competition is at its heart. Everything becomes gamified, a competition, a race to the top while simultaneously pushing everyone else to the bottom.

I'm really interested to watch some of the markets pop up in Cuba because I think there needs to be a healthy balance between Capitalism and Socialism for innovation, and care for the workers who produce literally everything.

Ironic that you picked Cuba when just a few weeks ago Castro’s grandson made the news for displaying his inordinate amount of wealth. In a country so our hospitals outside of the capital are indistinguishable from abandoned buildings, how does someone like that become filthy rich? It’s not like socialist countries don’t have greed and theft of national wealth, it’s just the people doing it are literally the government and hide it better - also note their greed and theft goes mostly unchecked.

I don't see what other social structures have to do with my point. You can't just say 'hey other stuff is shit too' as an argument against me saying 'this thing here is broken sometimes'.

My point was we should look deeply at the society we are invested in and understand that the things we endorse and benefit from daily have intrinsic side-effects.

Nothing is perfect, of course object to what you don't like, but be grown up enough to understand your part in it and humble enough to understand no system is perfect.

Additional information if anyone is interested:

In general, I believe for example the US court system hierarchy (where you appeal instance by instance in serial order) is very different from the EU court system (when it comes to interpretation on EU law).

Lower courts MAY ask the EU court for guidance on what EU law means while the court of last instance for a type of case (the highest court) MUST ask the EU court on what the EU law means if it is not clear.

Here is the relevant text in the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU):

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...

If anyone is interested in more information of exceptions from referring to the EU court you can read up on the doctrine of acte clair and acte eclairé. This doctrine is now always followed (nd may sometimes be difficult to follow) by court of last instance so it is important that lower courts can ask if they think the higher court has made an error in relation to this.

Actually it is not _that_ different.

It is similar how you can move constitutional questions from state to federal court in the USA, with the main difference being that EU does not have federal circuits of courts like USA does, but effectively only a supreme court.

>Instead of deciding over the complaint, the DPC has filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Mr Schrems at the Irish High Court in 2016, aimed at sending further questions to the CJEU.

Wait what? Why would they also sue Max Schrems over this?

So that they can refer the matters to the CJEU; although not in it's entirety, it is a procedural move to get all the parties (including Schrems) and their complaints / evidence in front of the CJEU to resolve matters that the Irish DPC feels they aren't in a position to or aren't willing to rule on.

From what I understand, that was some kind of mechanism to get their case in front of the court. They can't ask the ECJ directly, so they bring a case to a court that can. With Facebook and Schrems both being part of the case, they get to present their arguments to the court.

Question: If Facebook denies involvement in or knowledge of PRISM, why did they want to annul a case against them being in it?

From what I understand, the case by now is about "Is what companies use to justify processing of data in the US as safe acceptable?". The ECJ might very well find that the current agreements are not sufficient, that data transfer to the US likely means access by US agencies that is not acceptable, so Facebook has an interest in there not being a decision by the highest court about it.

Isn't this slightly related to GDPR?

GDPR, in a way, might also slow down the US from listening to EU members, for example when related to industrial espionage...

I wonder if we're heading to a world where any company who wants to run internationally needs to keep all US-citizen data on US servers, and EU-citizen data on EU servers?

Currently it doesn't look like holding US-citizen data on EU servers will be a problem anytime soon. But if the EU decides that the protections for their citizens provided by the "privacy-shield" agreement are not good enough then it would mean US companies could not hold or control EU-resident's data.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/privacy-and-...

That's awesome. Go Ireland. They benefited somewhat from the tech investment yet they are not scared to stand up to the same. I like it. They're historically neutral so perhaps that sort of fits.

Ireland benefited from Tech investment, Tech firms benefited from extremely low tax rates.

Why is NSA surveillance awesome? Even if you don't like tech companies.

I think you misunderstood the article. The case/result is not in favor of NSA surveillance.

I definitely didn't understand the article either. I wasn't sure what this ruling actually meant. :)

next up. irish supreme court dismisses NSA's complaint on facebook surveillance

There is definitely a joke waiting to be written about Facebook not wanting their user's data to be accessed (without payment, at least).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com