They not only set it up for the Irish High Court, but also set it up for two separate avenues of appeals on human rights grounds if the Irish High Court still decides it&#x27;s ok:<p>The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union covers privacy in article 7 and data protection in article 8 [1]. The European Convention on Human Rights [2] covers privacy (in article 8).<p>It&#x27;s noteworthy that the ECJ made the statement it did, because the ECHR has national security exceptions that would make it easy for them find differently, whereas the Charter does not say a single word about whether or not there are legitimate exceptions and it&#x27;d be easy enough for the ECJ to infer exceptions without any uproar (on the contrary, in Europe both the ECJ and ECHR tends to cause more uproar when they expand peoples rights than when the curtail them).<p>But instead they explicitly referred to &quot;access on a <i>generalised</i> basis&quot; (my emphasis) which makes it fairly clear that they accept the exceptions of the ECHR but believe the exceptions can not be stretched this far, and at the same time they it might be seen as drawing a line with respect to the Charter as well.<p>So they&#x27;ve basically put everyone on notice that it&#x27;s not only the EU Data Protection directive and associated national laws that are in play, and that surveillance must be considered, but that there may be legitimate claims under both the Charter of Fundamental Rights and under the European Convention on Human Rights as well.<p>This is going to make it extra fascinating to watch, as while the ECJ is the final arbiter of EU law, including the Charter, the final arbiter of the ECHR is the European Court of Human Rights.<p>If this goes to the ECHR, and ECHR agrees with the above statement from the ECJ, then that has effects far outside the borders of the EU, as the ECHR is binding on members of the Council of Europe, and the CoE includes most European states outside the EU as well. Including Russia.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;charter&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;text_en.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.europarl.europa.eu&#x2F;charter&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;text_en.pdf</a>
[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.echr.coe.int&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Convention_ENG.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.echr.coe.int&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Convention_ENG.pdf</a>