Because user data was transferred to the USA, Meta is now being asked to pay by the Irish data protection authority.
Meta is said to have violated the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and has to pay a record fine of 1.2 billion euros. The European Data Protection Board has now come to this decision. It is the result of a year-long process.
Ten years ago, US whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that Facebook was involved in mass surveillance and forwarded user data to the United States. The Austrian data protection activist Max Schrems then lodged a complaint, even going as far as the European Court of Justice. The latter agreed with him and ruled that the transmission of personal data constituted an unlawful encroachment on fundamental rights.
It is the largest penalty ever imposed for a GDPR breach. In addition, Meta must ensure that the handling of personal data is adapted to the General Data Protection Regulation in the future. The company has six months to do this. Unsurprisingly, Meta has already announced that it intends to appeal.
Since the introduction of GDPR, six of the top ten fines have been imposed on Meta. The group had to pay a total of 2.5 billion euros.
“This is not about a company’s privacy practices – there is a fundamental legal conflict between US government data access rules and European data protection laws that policymakers are expected to resolve over the summer,” Meta said in a statement , which is available to the mirror. For this reason, the judgment is erroneous and unjustified. We can be curious to see how the matter develops.