LONDON:
The EU has slapped Meta On Monday, the company imposed a record US$1.3 billion (₹1.2 billion) in data protection fines and ordered it to stop transferring users’ personal information across the Atlantic by October. This is the latest salvo in a decade-long case sparked by US cyber-snooping fears.
The fine is ₹1.2 billion (US$1.3 billion), the highest since the EU’s tough data protection rules came into force five years ago Amazon‘s ₹746 million ($865 million) fine in 2021 for privacy violations. Meta, which previously warned that services could be shut down for its users in Europe, vowed to appeal and ask the courts to put the decision on hold. The company said, “There is no disruption at Facebook in Europe.” The decision applies to user data such as names, email and IP addresses, messages, viewing history, geolocation data and other information that Meta – and other tech giants like Google – use for targeted online advertising.
“This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the myriad other companies that transfer data between the EU and the US,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer Jennifer Newstead called. It’s another twist in a legal battle that began in 2013 when Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems filed a complaint about Facebook’s handling of his data after following a former National Security Agency employee Edward SnowdenElectronic surveillance disclosures by US security agencies. This included the disclosure that Facebook gave authorities access to Europeans’ personal data.
The saga has highlighted the conflict between Washington and Brussels over the differences between Europe’s strict view on data protection and the comparatively lax regime in the US, which has no federal data protection law. The EU has led the world in curbing the power of big tech, forcing them to monitor their platforms more closely through a series of regulations.
