The findings of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in the two cases arising from complaints against Facebook by Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems highlight the fundamentally opposed approaches towards data and personal privacy in the EU and the US, writes Dick Roche. Dick Roche is a former Fianna Fáil politician. He was the minister of state for European affairs when Ireland conducted the two referendums on the Treaty of Lisbon of the European Union, in 2008 and 2009. The cases also shine a light on the extraordinary double standards of US policymakers who invoke concerns about data security in their efforts to push European countries in a direction that supports wider US geopolitical interests while applying lax standards domestically.