To level the playing field against the enormous warrior Goliath, biblical hero David had a sling and five stones. To level the playing field against global internet powerhouse Facebook, a persistent group of Austrian law students have a crowdfunding website.
The site, crowd4privacy.org, is where the group hopes to raise €100,000 (£81,380) to €300,000 (£244,294) to wage legal war against Facebook in Ireland, where the social network keeps its international headquarters. The group, Europe vs. Facebook, has been hounding Facebook to comply with European privacy laws for more than two years, with some success: earlier this year, Facebook agreed to yield to some of the 22 complaints Europe vs. Facebook filed in 2010 with the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, including retaining user data for a shorter period of time. But Europe vs. Facebook says the changes do not go far enough. Group leader and University of Vienna law student Max Schrems told the New York Times that Facebook “has done only about 10 percent of what we had asked them to do.” For example, Facebook’s privacy policy is still too vague to comply with European law, Schrems said.