EU Lawyer Suggests Facebook Fans Close Accounts

A lawyer for the European Commission has told European citizens to close their Facebook accounts if they want to protect their private information from being accessed by the US intelligence services.

EC legal advisor Bernhard Schima made these comments in a legal case in the European court of justice in Luxembourg brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems. The case examines whether EU citizens' data is safe if sent to the US, following disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden of mass data surveillance by the National Security Administration.

The commission was not able to confirm if the Safe Harbour agreement - a pact between the US and EU which regulates the transmission, storage and use of EU citizens' data to the US - currently provides sufficient protection of that data.

Safe Harbour rules that US data protection rules are satisfactory if information is passed by companies on a 'self-certify' basis, but Schrems says that the US no longer qualifies for this as a result of its data surveillance programs. Because of this issue, he is advising that companies operating inside the EU should not be allowed to transfer data to the US.