The Irish Data Protection Commission on Monday fined Meta (formerly Facebook) a record $1.3 billion for breaching data transfer rules in the European Union (EU).
The Irish watchdog said that Meta violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into force on May 25, 2018.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the landmark penalty on Meta.
This decision applies only to Facebook and not Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta said it would appeal against the decision to the Irish watchdog.
“Without the ability to move data across borders, the internet risks being carved up into national and regional silos, restricting the global economy and leaving citizens in different countries unable to access so many shared services, who we’ve come to rely on,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement.
As Politico reports, the Irish privacy watchdog said Meta’s use of a legal tool known as standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer data to the US “doesn’t address the risks to fundamental rights and freedoms”. Is”.
Regulators said Meta had failed to comply with a 2020 ruling by the EU’s highest court that data sent across the Atlantic was not adequately protected from US spying agencies.
The European Court of Justice struck down the EU-US Data Flow Agreement in 2020, known as the Privacy Shield. The EU and the US are now working on a new data flow deal that could come later this year.
Amazon was previously fined 746 million euros by Luxembourg and the Irish regulator also imposed fines of between 405 million and 225 million euros over the past two years against Meta’s platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
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