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الأربعاء، 25 مارس 2015

Facebook data row reaches top Euro court

Lawyer and activist Max Schrems said revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden showed agreed privacy practices were being ignored by Facebook and others.
He called for the current Safe Harbour deal, which allows the transfer of data to US firms, to be scrapped.
Facebook has not commented on the case.
At a hearing in Luxembourg on Tuesday the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) Advocate General said he would give his final opinion on 24 June - the ECJ will make its final decision thereafter.

Privacy principles

The result of the proceedings could have wide implications for all US firms dealing with Europeans' data, including the likes of Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
It centres around the Safe Harbour agreement, in place since 2000, which allows US firms to collect data on their European users as long as certain principles around storage and security are upheld.
It means user data gathered in Europe can easily be stored legally in data centres within the US.
Those principles include giving adequate notice to users that their data is being collected, and suitable transparency over how it can be accessed and by whom.
Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook said it only complies with requests for data when forced to by law
The ECJ is considering whether the Safe Harbour agreement is effective in the wake of the Snowden leaks.
Mr Snowden alleged that Facebook and others were complicit in Prism, a surveillance system launched in 2007 by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Euro data

A complaint against Facebook - which bases its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland - was filed by Mr Schrems last year.
He said the network should be investigated over the alleged co-operation with US intelligence agencies in handing over user data from Europeans.
Mr Schrems said Facebook had acted against the Safe Harbour rules, and that local regulators should step in to protect Europeans' data.
The ECJ's decision could mean US firms are forced to open more data centres in Europe
The Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) said it would not investigate the claims, a decision that was challenged by Mr Schrems in the Irish High Court.
Judge Duncan Hogan then referred the wider matter of whether Safe Harbour was effective to the ECJ.

'Serious effects'

The ECJ's eventual decision could have a dramatic impact on the business practices of Facebook and other US firms.
Scrapping the Safe Harbour agreement would make it much more difficult to transfer data from Europe to the US to be stored in data centres.
While Facebook has not made a formal statement on the case, the BBC understands that the firm would be likely to welcome updating the Safe Harbour rules in light of the Snowden revelations.
Some companies, such as Twitter, have said they would need to build new data centres in Europe to handle information, needlessly duplicating resources they already have in the US.
According to the Wall Street Journal

All the news that’s fit to share? Facebook to host content


The social network is getting chummy with several big publishers — apparently an effort to grab a cut of the profits from markets and services beyond its bread-and-butter social content. The company has launched its own Groups, Home, and Messenger apps in recent months, and we reported that it wants to make your phone calls as well. Now it seems Facebook is interested in hosting other sites’ content as well.
The goal isn’t to keep users from leaving Facebook to read content on other sites, but rather to speed up load times, particularly on mobile devices. Facebook says that the average load time for a news article on an outside site is eight seconds. Hosting that same content on Facebook would remove or at least shorten load times. The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic are among the expected initial partners, as reported by the New York Times (a timely report by The Times on The Times — weird, right?).
This could be a boon for Facebook users, but many publishers are concerned. Facebook says that in hosting content that comes from other sources, those publishers’ ads would have to be removed and possibly replaced with Facebook’s own ads. Giving up control in the hopes of reaching a wider user base isn’t an easy decision. Speaking to The New York Times, chief executive of analytics and distribution company SimpleReach Edward Kim said “it really comes down to how Facebook structures this, and how they can ensure this is a win on both sides.”
Related: Pay your friends to Like you using Facebook Messenger
While it may or may not benefit publishers financially — Facebook hasn’t explained much of how the deal would work in this regard — there is something in the deal for them: exposure on Facebook’s curated news feed. As part of the deal, it seems likely that those publishers would gain favor compared to other publishers.
The Times and Facebook are apparently getting closer to reaching a deal, but other companies are less than thrilled, with some individual employees suggesting that publications band together and negotiate for the industry as a whole.
If this deal does move forward, it remains to be seen how or if publishers will benefit. But there is one clear beneficiary here: Facebook.

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