[amelius]

> MrSchrems, an Austrian national residing in Austria, ...

It's a bit sad that people have to fight this war on personal title.

[the_duke]

Schrems has a history of doing this. [1]

It's mainly odd to me that there aren't more privacy / consumer protection groups doing the same things he does.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems

[moksly]

I think there is a multitude of reasons, most consumer protection NGOs aren’t very tech savvy and it’s hard to raise funding for privacy because the general population doesn’t care enough to donate money to it. It’s also a rather hard battle to enter because EU law is so ridiculous complex, and most privacy advocates aren’t very law savvy.

There are a lot of smaller groups fighting, but it takes years and years to see results. Hopefully the EU itself will get more into it now that our relationship with the US is deteriorating and China is getting more and more aggressive.

Not that it’ll matter too much with Microsoft being the only real option in non-tech enterprise.

[corty]

European privacy and consumer support groups are mainly after lawyers' fees. They mostly make money by notifying misbehaving companies of their misbehaviour, collecting fees for the (usually unwanted, but enforcedly payable) notification ("Abmahnung" in German).

Dieselgate was started by such a group.

The system is not all bad, but incentives are against stuff like this being litigated by the usual privacy or consumer support groups, because you just can't collect fees from the legislative branch...

[esperent]

Which groups are you talking about?

[icebraining]

He created an NGO for this purpose, after having successfully sued Facebook: https://noyb.eu/en

But the national data protection commissions of each country also do plenty of work. I think they're still swamped, though.

[smartbit]

nyob is in need of financial support https://noyb.eu/en/support-us. No need to leave you address unless you want to receive the goodies. No Credit Card required either, an EU bank account for SEPA transfers is sufficient.

If you donate EUR 100, you get Consultation on private data protection cases (2h/year)

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

The Irish DPA seems to focus on not doing their work, and actively fighting back against having to do their work.

The German DPAs love going after random individual cases they find, often in ways incompatible with reality (e.g. a small company not using GPG when e-mailing employees about HR issues), while ignoring major abuses that happen at scale. The biggest fine they issued was to a real estate management company for not deleting old documents (e.g. proof of income) that tenants had provided.

Not a single fine against adtech companies.