“No country has done more than the US to align with European rules via their latest reforms, while transfers continue largely unchallenged to countries such as China,” Clegg and Newstead contended.ĮU regulators have already hit Meta with fines of hundreds of millions of euros over data breaches by its Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook services. Meta, owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, has been fined 1.2 billion for mishandling peoples data. In Meta’s blog post, the company said the EDPB decision to overrule the DPC “raises serious questions”. With no hope of consensus, the DPC referred its objections to the EDPB, which ordered that Meta Ireland suspend future transfers of personal data to the US and pay a fine. “All four CSAs took the view that Meta Ireland should be subject to an administrative fine,” the DPC said. Initially, Ireland’s DPC had wanted to force Meta to suspend the offending data transfers, saying a fine “would exceed the extent of powers that could be described as being ‘appropriate, proportionate and necessary'”.īut its peer regulators in the EU, known as Concerned Supervisory Authorities (CSAs), disagreed. In 2021, Amazon was fined 746m euros ($807m) in Luxembourg for breaching the bloc’s data protection laws.

This is the largest fine imposed under the General Data Protection Regulation. “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,” they said. “… 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.” “The ability for data to be transferred across borders is fundamental to how the global open internet works,” Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said in a blog post. In a statement, a company spokesperson claimed the finding is based on. In response, Meta said it was “disappointed to have been singled out”, and the ruling was “flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies”. For its part, Meta has responded to the news by seeking to play down the significance of the Austrian DPA’s decision. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the European Union, said on Monday that the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) ordered it to collect “an administrative fine”. This won't be the last time Meta or one of its rivals will be called out on data protection and privacy.Facebook owner Meta has been fined a record 1.2 billion euros ($1.3bn) for transferring EU user data to the United States, Ireland’s regulator says. However, Big Tech has consistently shown that it is adept at keeping one step ahead of regulators in terms of innovative ways to make money out of their users' data. While Meta is appealing this decision, it will likely have to come up with a new way to manage user data from Facebook and its other platforms - a process its competitors will be watching closely. The Biden administration is already working on an EU-US data privacy framework, designed to satisfy GDPR rules if data is moved from Europe to the US. It's only 1% of its annual advertising revenues from Facebook alone.īut it certainly shows that the EU is prepared to stand up to big tech companies over how they treat its citizens' data.Īnd Meta has been given five months to come up with a new plan for keeping EU data secure from the prying eyes of the US government or others. The largest ever from the EU relating to its GDPR regulations.įor the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp with a market capitalisation of $680bn (£546bn), the $1.3bn (£1bn) fine from the Irish regulator won't hurt Meta that much. Science and technology editor is a historic fine.

Meta breach