http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.htmland from arstechnica
"If we get €300,000 ($384,000), we can shoot from all cannons," the 25-year-old told Ars from his parents’ home in Salzburg, Austria.
What began as an academic assignment in spring 2011 quickly morphed into an advocacy organization called "Europe vs. Facebook." Over the last year, Schrems has encouraged tens of thousands of Facebook users worldwide to request copies of whatever data Facebook holds on each of them, as he has done. Under European Union law, Facebook is required to comply with these requests within 40 days, since its international (e.g., non-American) headquarters are in Ireland (largely for tax reasons). This means that all Facebook users outside the United States and Canada (which have their own, less-stringent privacy rules) are effectively governed by Irish and EU data protection authorities.
As a way to compel Facebook Ireland to comply with existing EU law, Schrems filed 22 formal complaints with the Irish Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) on August 18, 2011.
Those complaints included charges that Facebook Ireland violated EU law by keeping records of "pokes" even after a user has deleted them, collecting data on non-Facebook users as a way to create "shadow profiles," performing automatic tagging, gathering personal data via "Friend Find," retaining records of deleted posts, retaining copies of deleted chat messages, retaining copies of deleted friends, and many others.
Schrems argues that Irish data protection authorities aren’t properly enforcing the law when it comes to Facebook, and he hopes that a judicial review will vindicate his position. If necessary, he plans to take his case all the way to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
arstechnica===================================
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