The deadline set by the data protection authority in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein for the
of social plug-ins such as the Facebook “like” button from external websites expired on 30 September, and the commissioner has already taken the first enforcement steps. In particular, formal proceedings have been initiated against the department of state in Schleswig-Holstein. These proceedings are backed up by a resolution of the Conference of the Data Protection Commissioners of the Federal State and the Laender in Munich, by virtue of which it was confirmed nationwide by the supervisory authorities, that for public institutions, the use of fan pages and “like” buttons is out of the question. In addition to that, enforcement actions against private bodies have also been initiated. According to the commissioner’s own statement, exemplary proceedings have started against 10 private bodies.
It remains questionable however, whether the enforcement actions are in fact justified. Even if the collection and handling of personal data by Facebook was incompatible with German privacy laws, it is anything but settled whether the website operators would actually be liable for this. In particular, the website owners arguably do not collect or use personal information on their own, but, by integrating the respective text into the source code of their website, just allow the social network to collect the data on their part. In a further press release dated 7 October 2011, the data privacy commissioner in Schleswig-Holstein announced that they would be willing to strive for a court decision in order to finally resolve this issue.
