The Irish High Court in Dublin is hearing a case about US privacy protections and surveillance policies. The case is a part of the saga in European courts over whether Europeans’ personal information is adequately protected when moved to the US by companies like Facebook and Google.
Here is how it all began. In 2015, EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated a EU-US pact ("Safe Harbor")that allowed for easy data transfers from the EU into the US. That's because EU law requires that companies exporting European citizens' personal data can only do that to countries providing a similar level of legal protection for that data. CJEU has ruled that US data protection procedures were on lower lever, particularly when it became known that Facebook was compelled to turn over large amounts of personal data under the NSA's mass surveillance program, PRISM. That mass surveillance program operated under Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the government uses to put foreigners under surveillance. Tech giants like FB have made contributions to dozens of Congressmen who support revival of mass surveillance programs, restrictions on privacy, backdoors in encrypted programs.
