In the wake of the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s mass digital surveillance program, a group of Austrian students have filed a series of formal complaints with a number of European data protection agencies. The case could become the first legal proceeding challenging disclosure of non-American data to the American government on the basis of alleged violations of European Union data protection law.
The students filing the complaints are all members of an advocacy organization called “Europe vs. Facebook,” which for over two years has been encouraging Facebook users worldwide to request copies of whatever data Facebook holds on each of them. Ars profiled this effort, and its leader, Max Schrems, in December 2012.
“[The goal of this effort] is to see if it is legal for a European Union company to forward data to the National Security Agency in bulk,” Schrems told Ars. “[and] to get more information, because they will have to disclose stuff in a preceding here. The US gag orders are not valid here. Both might be another puzzle piece for the good of mankind.”