New EU laws to target Facebook - by Leigh Phillips

Two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old billionaire founder of social networking site Facebook, told the world to just get over it - no one cares about privacy anymore, provoking a storm of protest across cyberspace.

On Thursday (28 January), the European Commission responded to Zuckerberg and announced plans for comprehensive new laws that have in their sights the massively popular website.

The commission is concerned that its existing rules on data protection date back to 1995, the very early days of what was at the time called the "information superhighway" and are extraordinarily out of date. Brussels is not just worried that the internet has sped ahead of its regulatory grasp, but also that many technologies, in particular Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), behavioural advertising and even airport security devices have proceeded apace, leaving EU legislation in the lurch.

Mentioning Facebook, Myspace and Twitter by name, Commissioner Ms Reding said she will start this year with a revision of the 1995 Data Protection Directive, in a speech that outlined the main principles and goals of her upcoming work as Europe's top fundamental rights watchdog. It is clear that privacy issues are at the forefront of her ambitions. "Innovation is important in today's society but should not go at the expense of people's fundamental right to privacy," she said.

For more: EUobserver / New EU laws to target Facebook