Germany: Facebook must destroy facial recognition database
Found on Ars Technica on Wednesday, 15 August 2012
German data protection officials today accused Facebook of “illegally compiling a vast photo database of users without their consent” and demanded that the social network destroy its archive of files based on facial recognition technology, the New York Times reported.
Facebook claims it doesn’t have to do that, in part because the data collection is legal in Ireland, where Facebook’s European operations are based. “We believe that the Photo Tag Suggest feature on Facebook is fully compliant with EU data protection laws,” Facebook said in a statement issued to the Times.
So what if it is legal in Ireland? Ireland does not represent the EU and we have learned before that, when the sides are exchanged, the local law suddenly is very important. Remember AllOfMp3? It was perfectly legal under russian law. Or Rojadirecta. Legal under spanish law. What about Megaupload? The company has been killed, probably without ever being in front of a court.