ECJ ruling on Meta browsing records: Breakthrough for online privacy

Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, who has sued in court for more than 10 years against the clickstream logging, celebrates today’s ECJ ruling against the U.S. Internet company Meta as a breakthrough for online privacy:

“Following the business model of surveillance capitalism, Internet corporations, like stalkers, pervasively record our browsing behavior in order to be able to analyze our personality, our likes and weaknesses. Based on these personality profiles, they keep us online and manipulate us into buying products or voting for certain parties.

„Today’s landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice likely means the end of the common practice of clickstream logging, which I’ve been fighting for over a decade. Meta’s pretexts to justify this practice have largely been dismissed. Even for security purposes, indiscriminate and pervasive logging of all our clicks in an identifiable way is not necessary.

„Big Tech will need to be honest and give us the choice of paying for their services with money, or with our privacy. Today’s landmark ruling will change the Internet landscape and give non-commercial, decentralized and free services a much needed boost.

„No one has the right to record everything we say and do online. As generation Internet, we have the right to be able to inform ourselves online just as privately and uninhibited as our parents were able to do read newspapers, listen to radio or watch TV. The Court of Justice today rejected the NSA-style method of a total recording of our digital lives and helped the fundamental rights to privacy, freedom of information and freedom of expression on the Internet to prevail!”