Facebook owner Meta was slapped with a record €1.2 billion by EU regulators on Monday, which accused the Big Tech firm of “systematic, repetitive, and continuous” transfers of European data to the United States.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta received the largest “ever” fine for allegedly failing to comply with a court order from last October which demanded that the Silicon Valley giant cease sending European data to America. The fine of €1.2 billion (£1/$1.3 billion) tops the previous record of €746 million levied against Amazon in 2021 under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The Irish Data Protection Commission has been investigating Meta’s data transfers from the EU to America since 2020. The organisation, which acts on behalf of the European Union claimed that Meta had failed “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects” that were laid out in the October ruling by the bloc’s Court of Justice, German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports.
The chairwoman of the European Data Protection Board, Andrea Jelinek said that Meta’s violation of privacy regulations were “very serious since it concerns transfers that are systematic, repetitive and continuous.”
“Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data transferred is massive,” Jelinek added. “The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organizations that serious infringements have far-reaching consequences.”
Meta said on Monday that it would appeal the “unjustified and unnecessary fine” and seek a court ordered stay in the meantime.
The fine comes amid a longstanding dispute about where Facebook data is stored, with concerns heightening following the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which showed that American spy agencies could access data stored by U.S. companies.
The European Union is also preparing a crack down on Big Tech firms, which could also result in heavy fines, for failing to comply with the bloc’s regulations on so-called hate speech online.
In April, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton announced that starting on August 25th the bloc will impose “an unprecedented level of public oversight” on 19 of the world’s largest online platforms, including Facebook under its recently adopted Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA, which seeks to further police the internet to scrub it of supposedly offensive content, stipulates that websites or platforms with 45 million users within the EU will face a heavier level of regulatory scrutiny in order to allegedly provide “safety” for European consumers.
Should tech firms fail to implement the required censorship regime by February of next year, they face the potential of being fined by EU authorities for up to six per cent of their global revenue and even face being banned outright from the bloc.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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