On May 22, Reuters quoted an announcement from the European Union (EU) Privacy Authority saying that the agency had just imposed a fine of 1.2 billion euros (1.3 billion USD) on technology group Meta - the parent company of social network Facebook.
Explaining the fine, the EU privacy regulator said Facebook had illegally stored data about European users for years on servers in the US. This made the data accessible to US intelligence agencies and violated the privacy of European users.
In addition to the fine, Meta was also ordered to stop sending EU user data to the US and delete previous data within six months of the ruling.
Meta's $1.3 billion fine is the highest ever imposed by Europe on a company for violating the General Data Protection Regulation. (Photo: Reuters)
Immediately after the above penalty was announced, Meta representative said that they would appeal, and at the same time said that the EU's fine was unreasonable and unnecessary. Meta said that this is a dangerous precedent for technology companies.
Also according to Reuters , Meta's fine surpasses the EU's previous record fine of 746 million euros imposed by Luxembourg on Amazon for tax fraud in 2021.
Meta and many other US tech companies often transfer data to the US, where they operate major data centers to provide services. Europe has been implementing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) since 2018.
To move user information out of the region, Meta used a mechanism called “standard contractual clauses,” which include a transatlantic data transfer agreement between the European Union and the United States.
In 2020, a European court struck down the scheme over concerns about surveillance and data protection. But Facebook has reportedly failed to comply since then. Last year, the company warned that the ban could force it to stop offering Facebook in Europe, a market with 255 million users and accounting for nearly a quarter of Meta’s revenue.
Tra Khanh (Source: Reuters)
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