German Data Protection Authority Forbids Certain Facebook Features

The data protection commissioner's office of the German federal state of Schleswig Holstein (Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz, "ULD") called on all institutions located in Schleswig Holstein ("Website Operators") to shut down their fan pages on Facebook and remove social plug-ins such as the "I-like" button from their websites. In its press release dated 19 August 2011, the ULD said that the transfer of traffic and content data of users to the US and sending qualified feedback to the Website Operators infringes German and European data protection law. It criticized that neither sufficient information of users is given nor is there a real choice or legally valid consent by the wording provided by Facebook for the respective procedures. It is important to note that in Germany data protection oversight over private entities is split between the 16 German federal states. So far, no other authority joined the ULD in its statement. Hence, this opinion is only