Meta Will Contest EU $1.3B Data Privacy Fine

Uploaded on 2023-05-22 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Social Media, NEWS-News Analysis, FREE TO VIEW

Meta, the owner of Facebook, has been fined a record $1.3 billion for transferring EU user data to the US in breach of a previous EU court ruling. The fine is the largest ever levied under Europe’s influential data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The previous record of $$850 million was levied against Amazon in 2021. Meta says that it will be appealing against the fine.

Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, said it would appeal the ruling, including the fine. There would be no immediate disruption to Facebook in Europe while the appeal goes ahead.

The battle over where Facebook stores its data began a decade ago after Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems brought a legal challenge over the risk of US surveillance, following disclosures by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The EU regulator insists that the processing and storage of personal data in the US contravened the GDPR. Now, the Irish Data Protection Commission’s (DPC) decision against Meta was published on 22nd May. The DPC aims to make Facebook suspend data transfers between the EU and US due to issues about EU citizens’ data privacy.

The DPC said that current data transfer practices at Facebook “did not address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects” and were in breach of the GDPR.

The legal action comes after a long-running question about citizens’ data privacy and how Facebook has conducted data transfers between the EU and US. Data transfers have been protected by the transatlantic Privacy Shield agreement, which was originally created to allow secure data transfers between the EU and US, which operate in different data protection jurisdictions.

This was later invalidated after a lawsuit between Meta (then called Facebook) and Max Schrems concluded that the standard offered too much leniency to US surveillance laws.

Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post "We intend to appeal both the decision's substance and its orders including the fine and will seek a stay through the courts to pause the implementation deadlines... The ability for data to be transferred across borders is fundamental to how the global open internet works. From finance and telecommunications to critical public services like healthcare or education, the free flow of data supports many of the services that we have come to rely on... Thousands of businesses and other organisations rely on the ability to transfer data between the EU and the US in order to operate and provide services that people use every day,”

Meta maintains that there is a “fundamental conflict of law between the US government’s rules on access to data and European privacy rights".

Clegg also wrote, “Our priority is to ensure that our users, advertisers, customers and partners can continue to enjoy Facebook while keeping their data safe and secure. There is no immediate disruption to Facebook because the decision includes implementation periods that run until later this year. We intend to appeal both the decision’s substance and its orders including the fine, and will seek a stay through the courts to pause the implementation deadlines.”

In 2020 Apple won its appeal against a European Commission ruling that it owed Ireland €13 billion ($14.9 billion) in taxes. In March this year, Meta was made to pay €5.5 million for breaching the GDPR with its WhatsApp messaging service.

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