There has been a major development in the closely watched Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner case now in front of the European Court of Justice (ECJ): The ECJ’s Advocate General, charged with providing reasoned and impartial opinions to the court for its consideration, has delivered an opinion saying not only that the Irish Data Protection Commissioner has the right to investigate Facebook’s data transfers regardless of the Safe Harbor agreement, but also that the Safe Harbor agreement itself is “invalid,” due to the law-enforcement access to EU citizen data revealed by Edward Snowden. Denis Kelleher, author of Privacy and Data Protection Law in Ireland, writes for Privacy Tracker about why this makes the Schrems case very interesting, indeed.
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