Facebook Just Lost Its Latest Battle in a Crucial Privacy Case Heading to Europe's Top Court

Facebook has failed in a last-ditch attempt to delay a major privacy case’s journey to Europe’s top court. The case in question was brought about by Facebook’s arch-nemesis, the Austrian law student Max Schrems, who has already succeeded in sinking the Safe Harbor agreement that gave U.S. firms a simple way to import the data of people from the European Union. As before, he is concerned that US intelligence programs break Europeans’ privacy rights. On April 30, Facebook tried to delay the referral of the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), so it could appeal the case to Ireland’s Supreme Court. But the High Court turned down Facebook’s request. It sided instead with the Irish privacy watchdog, the Data Protection Commissioner, which said any delay could create a “risk of injustice” by allowing the data of millions of Europeans to be processed unlawfully. “In my opinion very real prejudice is potentially suffered by Mr. Schrems and the millions of EU data subjects if the matter is further delayed by a stay as sought in this case,” said the judge. “Their potential loss in unquantifiable and incapable of being remedied.”