The Irish Data Protection Commission fined Meta a record $1.3 billion on Monday for breaching EU data transfer rules
Post Date – 11:40 PM, Mon – 22 May 23
London: Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Meta (formerly Facebook) a record $1.3 billion on Monday for breaching European Union (EU) data transfer rules.
The Irish regulator said Meta breached the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect on May 25, 2018.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on Meta’s landmark penalty.
The ruling only applies to Facebook, not Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta said it would appeal the Irish regulator’s decision.
“Without the ability to transfer data across borders, the internet risks fragmenting into national and regional silos, constraining the global economy and denying citizens of different countries access to many of the shared services we depend on,” Nick Clegg, Global Affairs at Meta the president said in a statement.
The Irish privacy watchdog said Meta’s use of a legal tool known as a standard contractual clause (SCC) to transfer data to the US “does not address the risks to fundamental rights and freedoms of European users,” Politico reported.
The regulator said Meta failed to comply with a 2020 ruling by the European Union’s top court that data transported across the Atlantic was not adequately protected by U.S. spy agencies.
The European Court of Justice struck down an EU-US dataflow agreement called Privacy Shield in 2020. The European Union and the United States are currently working on a new data flow agreement that could be reached later this year.
Amazon was previously fined 746 million euros by Luxembourg, and Irish regulators have imposed fines ranging from 405 million to 225 million euros on Meta’s platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp over the past two years.
