[thenewkid]

The lawsuit targets the Irish subsidiary because that's where the money is. If they move they will probably pay higher taxes. Quite clever!

> The group’s complaint draws on the precedent set in 2006, which found that a mass transfer of data to the US authorities was illegal under EU law... The Swift case was closed when the company moved its data centre from Belgium to Switzerland.

[rmc]

(a) It's not a lawsuit, but a complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, which is like a type of court. The DPC can force companies to reveal what they hold on people, and can require them to do (or not do) a thing if it breaks Irish data protection law.

(b) Facebook Ireland Ltd (an Irish company) was targetted, not because it's "where the money is", but because if you sign up to Facebook and you're not in the USA or Canada, then you have a legal relationship with Facebook Ireland Ltd, and fall under Irish data protection law.

(cf. section 19 of https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms )

[pessimizer]

>The DPC can force [Irish] companies to reveal what they hold on people, and can require them to do (or not do) a thing if it breaks Irish data protection law.

>if you sign up to Facebook and you're not in the USA or Canada, then you have a legal relationship with Facebook Ireland Ltd, and fall under Irish data protection law.

Facebook can choose to change this, but they won't because they benefit from the double Irish; because that's "where the money is."