<https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/03/challenge-to-data-transfer-tool-used-by-fa...> Facebook has bought itself a little more time over a major legal challenge in Europe after the Irish High Court decided not to strike down a b2b mechanism it uses to transfer user data between its EU and U.S. businesses for processing. Rather the court said today that it will refer legal questions over so-called Standard Contractual Contracts (SCCs) to Europe’s top court, the ECJ, for a preliminary ruling. This means it could take around 1.5 years before there is a judgement, and Facebook can continue to use SCCs in the meanwhile instead of being forced to suspend these data transfers. The challenge to Facebook’s use of SCCs was brought by European privacy campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems. He had originally complained to the Irish data protection commissioner (DPC), asking it to suspend data flows in Facebook’s case. But while the DPC agreed there are legal questions over the mechanism it decided to refer the issue to the High Court to consider the legality of SCCs as a whole. The five-week court hearing in what is a complex case delving into detail on US surveillance operations took place in February. The court issued its ruling today. The 153-page ruling starts by noting “this is an unusual case”, before going into a detailed discussion of the arguments and concluding that the DPC’s concerns about the validity of SCCs should be referred to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling. [...]