A Facebook logo on a computer screen is seen through a magnifying glass. (Photo : Reuters/Thomas Hodel)
A privacy lawsuit filed by lawyer and data privacy activist Max Schrems against Facebook has moved up to Austria's Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will rule whether the suit against the social networking giant will be treated as class action.
The suit was instigated by Schrems in July 2014. When he was starting the lawsuit, he invited adult non-commercial users of Facebook located outside of the United States and Canada to join the suit for free in order to merit a class action suit. Schrems invitation was meet with overwhelming response and thousands of Facebook users quickly joined his side.
The plaintiffs argue that Facebook is violating several European Union laws regarding data protection, the tracking of Internet users through external websites as well as Facebook's participation in the PRISM surveillance program of the NSA. The latter was brought to the public attention through the leaks provided by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Schrems suit suffered a major setback in July when an Austrian regional court ruled it as inadmissible citing that the court had "no jurisdiction" over the matter, according to Tech Crunch. On the other hand, an appeals court ruled that Schrems can still file personal claims at his local court in Vienna.
Despite this, Schrems is still pushing the suit to be considered as a class action. The Viennese lawyer argue that if a class action suit is not allowed, the plaintiffs can still file individual lawsuits. He added that it would be reasonable for the court to treat the case as a class action since the plaintiffs are pointing into "identical privacy violations by Facebook."
The Austrian Supreme Court can refer the case to Europe's highest court, the European Court of Justice, according to Digital Trends.
