Irish High court freezes probe into Facebook's EU-U.S. data flows

Ireland's High Court on Monday temporarily froze a probe by Facebook's lead European Union regulator into the legality of the U.S. social media giant's transatlantic data flows, a court spokesman said.

Facebook last week launched legal action against Ireland's Data Protection Commission in an attempt to halt a proposed order that could stop the company from transferring data from the European Union to the United States.

"Facebook had an ex-parte hearing and leave to take the Judicial review was granted," the court spokesman said. "A stay was put on the section 11 order," he added, referring to the order that threatened to block the data flows.