The fine of 1.2 billion for tech company for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the largest fine ever. The storage of European data in the United States is prohibited, and Meta had a problem with that for quite some time. ‘Bizarre’, says tech investor Eva de Mol in BNR Nexus.
And by that she means not only the amount of the fine, but also the attitude of Meta herself. ‘So that actually means that they are not interested,’ she says in the podcast BNR Nexus.
“I don’t believe they will get it fixed before the summer”
Meta strongly disagrees with the fine and is therefore appealing. In addition, Meta CEO Nick Clegg showed himself combative with the promise that a “secure way of data transfer” would be established and “it will all be fixed this summer”. ‘But I don’t believe that,’ says De Mol. “How are they going to succeed?”
Privacy
She is supported by tech columnist Ilyaz Nasrullah, who says it is about the discussion around the EU-US Privacy Shield. “That is a kind of framework agreement, which fell apart a few years ago because it did not comply with the GDPR,” says Nasrullah. ‘At that time, a number of those big tech companies pushed to improve that, but it’s still not enough.’ According to Nasrullah, the core of the problem is that data stored in Europe is protected under the GDPR, while data stored elsewhere is not.
But what exactly does Meta do with that unprotected data? This could be used for advertisements, among other things, but the fear lies mainly in the fact that data will end up in the hands of the American government. Insofar as that is not yet the case, Nasrullah indicates. “All anti-terrorism legislation in the United States already gives them access to that data,” he continues. ‘But that is also one of the reasons for setting up the GDPR. It was a solution to the problem, so to say now that there needs to be a solution for the AVG is a bit of how Meta approached it. But that makes no sense.’
