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Is Facebook’s Meta Compromising Your Data By Sending To US? EU Just Fined Firm $1.3bn
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Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has long been dogged by privacy questions.
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The questions spurred an EU investigation into the company.
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The investigation has ultimately led to a big financial cost for Meta, according to US media reports.
Eko Hot Blog reports that European Union (EU) privacy regulators have fined Facebook owner Meta Platforms $1.3 billion for sending user information to the United States (US).
The EU regulators, which accused Meta of failing to protect personal information from the prying eyes of American security services, gave the company a deadline to stop shipping users’ data to the US.
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The social network giant’s continued data transfers to the US didn’t address “the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of people whose data was being transfered across the Atlantic, according to a decision by the Irish Data Protection Commission announced on Monday.
On top of the fine, which eclipses a €746 million EU privacy penalty previously doled out to Amazon.com Inc., Meta was given five months to “suspend any future transfer of personal data to the US” and six months to stop “the unlawful processing, including storage, in the US” of transferred personal EU data.
A data-transfers ban for Meta was widely expected and once prompted the US firm to threaten a total withdrawal from the EU. But its impact has now been muted by the transition phase given in the decision and the prospect of a new EU-US data flows agreement that could already be operational by the middle of this year.
Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg
The Meta fine coincides with the fifth anniversary of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, widely seen as the world’s benchmark for privacy.
Since May 2018, regulators in the 27-nation EU have had the power to wield fines of as much as 4% of a company’s annual revenue for the most serious violations.
Meanwhile, Meta has responded to the development, saying it will appeal the ruling, “including the unjustified and unnecessary fine, and seek a stay of the orders through the courts.”
“Thousands of businesses and organisations rely on the ability to transfer data between the EU and the US to operate and provide everyday services,” the company said.
“This is not about one company’s privacy practices – there is a fundamental conflict of law between the US government’s rules on access to data and European privacy rights, which policymakers are expected to resolve in the summer.”
Meta added that there is no immediate disruption to Facebook in Europe.
The fine raises questions over how much data Meta collects from other regions, including Africa, and sends to the US without protection.
There is no indication that the African Union (AU) has taken a similar step as the EU to probe Meta’s data policies and determine whether the company has violated African laws.
In 2014, the AU Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection adopted a legal framework for addressing cybercrime and data protection in Africa. The Convention is also known as the Malabo Convention.
Only 14 countries in Africa have signed and ratified the legal framework. Nigeria has neither signed nor ratified it.
The Convention prohibits companies like Meta from transferring personal data to a non-member state except if certain conditions are met.
“Controllers may not transfer personal data to a non-member state of the AU. Controllers can only transfer personal data to a non-member state if the country has an adequate level of protection,” part of the framework reads.
While it is unclear how much data belonging to Nigerians and Africans in general Meta shares with the US government, there is no evidence that Meta has the mandated “adequate level of protection” for users.
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Therefore, it is safe for Africans to assume Meta is sharing their user information without inhibition.
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