Facebook fined record €1.2 trillion for violating data rules in Europe

The American giant of social media goal was fined on Monday with 1,200 million euros (nearly $1.3 billion) for failing data protection provisions with Facebookin the highest fine imposed in Europe for this type of infringement.

Meta, who intends to appeal the decision, was convicted of “continuing to transfer personal data” of Facebook users from the European Economic Area to the United States, explained the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).

The DPC acts on behalf of the European Union by monitoring the application of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), because the European headquarters of the US group is in Ireland.

The decision also imposes on Meta “stop all transfers of personal data to the United States within five months” from notification of the decision, and comply with the GDPR within six months, added the DPC.

This fine, the highest ever imposed by a data protection regulator in Europe, is the result of an investigation launched in 2020.

But Meta describes it as “unjustified and useless”and will take action before the courts to try to suspend him, the social media giant responded in a statement.

“Thousands of companies and organizations depend on the ability to transfer data between the EU and the United States” and “there is a fundamental legal conflict between the US government’s rules on data access and European privacy rights”, continued the Californian giant .

Meta expects the United States and the European Union to adopt a new legal framework for the transfer of personal data in the coming months, following an agreement in principle reached last year.

It’s a “hard blow for Meta”reacted in a press release the European association for the defense of privacy Noyb – acronym of “Non sono your business”, (“It’s none of your business”)-, which has filed numerous legal actions against the American technological giants in Europe.

“Following Edward Snowden’s revelations that big US tech companies were aiding the NSA’s (US National Security Agency) mass surveillance apparatus, Facebook – now Meta – has been the subject of litigation in Ireland,” he said. underlined.

Snowden, 39, is a Russian-born former US intelligence IT consultant who leaked highly classified information in 2013 about the use of information by the NSA, for which he worked.

According to the Austrian Max Schrems, founder of Noyb, the penalty in Meta “could have been much highergiven that the maximum fine is more than 4,000 million and that Meta knowingly broke the law to generate profits for ten years”.

“If US surveillance laws are not corrected, Meta will have to radically restructure its systems”he warned.

This is the third sanction against Meta in the EU since the beginning of 2023 and the fourth in six months.

In January, the DPC imposed a fine of nearly 400 million euros for violations in the use of personal data for advertising purposes in their applications Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

And in March they fined her 5.5 million euros for violating the GDPR with her messaging service Whatsapp.

Meta has since committed to amending its terms of use in Europe so that it can continue to collect and process the personal data of its European users.

These sanctions come against a backdrop of increased scrutiny and judicial process in the European Union, but also in the United States, against the tech giants known as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), and the measures recently taken against the Chinese Giant TikTok.

In 2021, Amazon was fined €746 million in Luxembourg for violating the GDPR.

db