European regulators raised concerns that the transfer of data of its Facebook users to the United States does not protect the information from the surveillance of the US government – Facebook is now facing the prospect of this.
On Wednesday, the social networking giant said that an inquiry was started by the Irish Data Protection Commission to check the movement of data on European users to the United States. Facebook’s data practices in Europe are overseen by the Irish regulator. It can find the networking giant up to 4% of the company’s global revenue for breaking the data protection laws of Europe.
Now, the company may need to restructure its operations to not let the data on Europeans get out of the European Union – a difficult task as Facebook moves user data among various data centers across the globe.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the inquiry is the EU high court’s first major fallout decision in July that led to the invalidation of a key trans-Atlantic agreement called Privacy Shield – it allowed seamless data transfer between the businesses of the United States and European Union. But, citing the inadequate protections from the US spy agencies, the EU high court struck down the agreement.
This decision certainly affects thousands of businesses; however, the data-sharing practices of Facebook have always been under the scrutiny of the European authorities. It was argued by Facebook that the court had permitted the transfer of some data related to legal contracts. But, the Irish regulators didn’t agree to it and termed those invalid.
Facebook has to respond to this complaint by the end of this month – the Irish regulators will then move forward to make the final decision before the end of this year. Facebook can challenge this decision in court.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs said, ‘A lack of safe, secure and legal international data transfers would damage the economy and hamper the growth of data-driven businesses in the EU, just as we seek a recovery from COVID-19. The impact would be felt by businesses large and small, across multiple sectors.’
The Data Protection Commission of Ireland avoided making any comments.
The experience of Facebook will be closely monitored by other tech companies like Google that also transfer data between Europe and the United States.
European and American official has mentioned that they are looking to make a new data-sharing agreement. But, as per legal experts, to abide by the decision of the European court, many significant changes need to be brought in to the US surveillance laws, providing extra protection to European data.