Meta has been hit with by €1.2bn fine by the EU and ordered to suspend transfers of user data to the US, in the largest penalty to be imposed against a Big Tech company in the bloc over privacy violations.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which oversees the General Data Protection Regulation, on Monday handed down the fine for Meta, saying that Facebook had violated its rules requiring platforms to ensure data transfers from Europe to the US have appropriate safeguards in place.
Instead, the DPC found that the platform’s EU-US data flows had relied on contractual clauses that “did not address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of users, despite an earlier judgment from the EU’s Court of Justice mandating that it better protect individual’s information from invasive US surveillance programmes.