Major privacy case to open before High Court in Dublin
Facebook and privacy campaigner party to action by Data Protection Commissioner
Helen Dixon: Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner wants the High Court to refer issues concerning the validity of data transfer channels to Europe for determination. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons
A court case with potentially enormous implications for EU-US trade as well as the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of EU citizens, will open before the commercial division of the High Court on Tuesday.
Facebook is a party to the case, in which the Data Protection Commissioner has asked the court to refer to the EU’s top court the question of whether certain contracts protect the privacy rights of EU citizens when their personal data is transferred outside Europe.