US social networking giant Meta was fined about $1.3 billion on Monday for breaching European data protection regulations, making it the largest European fine for such a breach.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said Meta plans to appeal the decision but has been found guilty of “continuing to transfer” Facebook users’ personal data from the European Economic Area to the United States. .
As the US Group’s European headquarters are in Ireland, it acts on behalf of the European Union and monitors the application of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The decision also requires Meta to “stop all transfers of personal data to the United States within five months” of being notified of the decision and to comply with the GDPR within six months, the DPC said. added.
The fine is the highest ever imposed by European data protection regulators and is the result of an investigation launched in 2020.
But Meta called it “unjustified and unnecessary” and will go to court to stop it, the social media giant responded in a statement sent to AFP on Monday.
“Thousands of businesses and organizations rely on being able to transfer data between the EU and the United States,” and that “there is a fundamental legal gap between US government rules on data access and European privacy rights. There are contradictions,” the giant continued.
Mehta expects the United States and the European Union to adopt a new legal framework for personal data transfers in the coming months, following last year’s agreement in principle.
“American Surveillance”
This is “a huge blow for Meta,” the European Privacy Association Nove (“It’s none of your business,” reacted in a statement).
He has filed numerous lawsuits in Europe against American technology giants.
“Facebook (now Meta) has been the subject of a lawsuit in Ireland since Edward Snowden’s revelations of the US tech giant’s assistance to the NSA’s Mass Surveillance Organization,” it said. he emphasized.
Snowden, 39, is a Russian-born former U.S. intelligence computer consultant who leaked classified information about the use of information by the NSA for which he worked in 2013.
In the opinion of Noyb’s founder, Austrian Max Schrems, “Considering that the maximum fine is over $4 billion and that Meta deliberately broke the law in order to make a profit for 10 years, Meta cannot sanctions could have been higher.”
“If US surveillance laws aren’t corrected, Meta will have to completely rebuild its systems,” he warned.
This is the third sanction against Meta in the EU since early 2023 and the fourth in six months.
In January, the DPC imposed fines of around €400 million for violations of using personal data for advertising purposes on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp applications.
And in March, it was fined $5.95 million for violating GDPR with its WhatsApp messaging service.
Since then, Meta has committed to amending its terms of use in Europe to continue collecting and processing personal data of European users.
These sanctions are imposed not only in the European Union, but also in the United States, against the backdrop of tightening controls and judicial proceedings against the technology giants known as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple), and recently taken against China. It is done. Huge TikTok.
In 2021, Amazon was fined €746 million for GDPR violations in Luxembourg.
Source: Diario.Elmundo
