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Facebook’s parent company Meta has been fined 1.2 billion euros ($1.75 billion Cdn) by the European Union’s main privacy regulator over its handling of user information and given five months to stop transferring user data to the United States.
The fine, imposed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), comes after Meta continued to transfer data beyond a 2020 EU court ruling that invalidated the EU-US data transfer pact. It topped the previous record EU privacy fine of 746 million euros ($1.09 billion Cdn) imposed by Luxembourg on Amazon.com Inc in 2021.
The battle over where Facebook Meta stores its data began a decade ago after Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems brought a legal challenge over the risk of US snooping in light of the disclosures by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
‘Wrong, unfair’
“This decision is flawed, unfair and sets a dangerous precedent for countless other companies that transfer data between the EU and the US,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead said in a statement.
The social media giant reiterated that it expects the new pact that facilitates the transfer of personal data of EU citizens to the United States to be fully implemented before it has to suspend the transfer.
That means previous warnings that the stoppage could force a suspension of Facebook services in Europe will not happen.
“Without the ability to transfer data across borders, the internet risks being carved up into national and regional silos,” Meta said.
The DPC said in March that EU and US officials hoped that the new data protection framework – agreed by Brussels and Washington in March 2022 – could be ready by July.
Thrown out
Europe’s highest court, the European Court of Justice, threw out two previous agreements over concerns about US surveillance.
Schrems, the Austrian privacy campaigner, said Meta’s plan would rely on a new deal for transfers that would be unlikely to be a permanent fix.
“In my opinion, the new deal probably has a 10 percent chance of not being struck down by the CJEU (EU Court of Justice). Unless the US surveillance laws are fixed, Meta will probably have to keep EU data in the EU,” he said. said in a statement.
Ireland’s watchdog, which is the main EU regulator for many of the world’s top technology companies because of the location of its European headquarters in Ireland, said the suspension order could set a precedent for other companies.
It has now fined Meta a total of 2.5 billion euros ($3.65 billion Cdn) for violating the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was introduced in 2018.
The DPC said it initially did not propose increasing the fines for the suspension order, but four other EU supervisory authorities disagreed and the fines were included following a decision by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
Irish regulators have fined Meta more than any other tech company and have 10 other inquiries open to the social media group’s platform.
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