EU court likely to slam Facebook on data privacy

[unhappycamper]

http://www.dw.com/en/eu-court-likely-to-slam-facebook-on-data-privacy/a-18757996

This Tuesday, the European Court of Justice will release a much-anticipated judgment on whether private European data stored on servers in the US are secure. Difficult times could await Facebook and other companies.

EU court likely to slam Facebook on data privacy
Jörg Brunsmann
05.10.2015

Do you know where your Facebook, Google or Twitter data are stored? Do you care? Or is it a stupid question?

From a technical point of view, it's probably the latter, if one considers the way the Internet works. Because of global technical standards for data exchange and fast Internet connections, in practice it doesn't matter whether a German user's data are stored on servers in Germany, Scandinavia, Ireland, or the US. In the blink of an eye, data can move tens of thousands of kilometers along optical fibers. That's the nature of the beautiful new Internet world.

But is it really so beautiful? Data privacy activists say 'no.' They've long been concerned about the fact that technology makes it so easy to get around data privacy regulations. The deciding factor is where the data are stored and processed - and in that regard, big players like Facebook, Google and others prefer the cheapest solution: Data from all countries are stored on servers located in the homeland of most such companies - the US (picture at top of page: a Google server farm in Oregon).

As a result, the data are governed by American data privacy regulations - and those regulations are significantly less stringent than those in the European Union. Moreover, US intelligence agencies like the NSA (National Security Agency) have very easy access to data on US servers.