This is not the first time that Meta, the business conglomerate that encompasses Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among others, is in the eye of the hurricane for the privacy of our data. However, now it has just received the highest ever sanction in terms of privacy.
Specifically, Meta has been penalized with €1.2 billion, the highest European sanction for privacy infringement. We are going to tell you what exactly Mark Zuckerberg and his family have done to receive such a fine.
1,200 million fine to Mark Zuckerberg and Meta
The Irish data protection office, where Meta has its European headquarters, has been the one who has executed this sentence that condemns Meta to pay 1,200 million euros. This case becomes higher European sanction for privacy infringement, practically doubling the 746 million with which Amazon was sanctioned in 2021 for similar reasons. In addition to the financial penalty, Meta is ordered “to suspend the transfer of personal data of users from the EU to the United States, for which the technology company has a period of five months to comply.”
It has been five years since the European data regulation was established and Meta has systematically failed to comply with it when carrying out continuous transfers of data from the social network to the United States. These facts did not address “the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of the people whose data was being transferred across the Atlantic, according to the decision of the Irish Data Protection Commission.
The company led by Mark Zuckerberg as CEO has confirmed that will appeal this decision and that it is an “unjustified and unnecessary fine” considering that what really exists is “a fundamental conflict between United States regulations on data access and European privacy rights.”
The company has had other prior encounters with the Irish Data Protection Commission (CPD). In January of this year, it fined Meta 390 million euros for having broken the data protection regulations in Ireland on those platforms. Now execute the sanction at the continental level.
In trouble with the European Union
Meta’s relationship with the European Union is really complicated, especially since the implementation of the new community regulations on data protection five years ago, so the data transfer ban for Meta it was widely expected.
A year ago, in February 2022, in a document sent by Mark Zuckerberg’s company to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company assured that “if a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we cannot continue to use SCCs [cláusulas contractuales estándares] or to alternative means of data transfer from Europe to the US, we may not be able to offer many of our most important products and services, such as Facebook and Instagram, in Europe, which would negatively affect our business, financial condition and results of operations».
This threat to withdraw completely from our continent was not carried out, mainly because a new agreement between the European Union and the United States on the flow of data which could be operational in the middle of this year.
