Facebook Defends U.S. Mass Surveillance Of EU Citizens For "National Security" Reasonshttp://www.tomshardware.com/news/facebook-defends-us-mass-surveillance,36882.html<< The mass surveillance has only gotten worse since a few years ago, because after the reauthorization and six-year extension of the FISA bill, not just the NSA, but also the FBI and other civil law enforcement agencies in the U.S. can now gain access to raw mass surveillance data.
The Irish High Court has established as a fact that the U.S. government doesn't just "collect" data in bulk, but it also "searches" data in bulk, which is a violation of EU human rights laws but should also be a violation of the U.S. Fourth Amendment (searches and seizures being illegal without probable cause). The Court considers mass searching of citizens' data to be indiscriminate surveillance, and thus illegal under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of EU and other European human rights laws. The U.S. government mass surveillance is enabled by FISA section 702 and Executive Order 12,333 and is done through programs such as PRISM and Upstream.
Facebook signs up all non-American users through the Facebook Ireland subsidiary. It then transfers all data to the U.S. for processing, according to the lawsuit. Because the company is bound by U.S. laws, it also allows the NSA and other agencies to process much of this data through various national security programs. In the lawsuit,
Facebook defended U.S. mass surveillance, claiming that it's a "national security" issue that falls outside of the scope of EU laws, and that it's member state treaties that govern over national security issues. Facebook also argued that EU law doesn't apply to processing of EU citizens data for national security issues, whether it happens within the EU or within other countries such as the United States.
Facebook's argument is highly unlikely to stand, considering the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and European Convention of Human Rights are quite clear about governments not being allowed to do indiscriminate searches against their citizens. However, this matter will remain to be decided by the CJEU. >>