Facebook is appealing a preliminary order from the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) that the social media company says would require it to stop data transfers between the US and the European Union.
The IDPC sent a preliminary order to Facebook last month directing the company to suspend data transfers to the US about EU user. The order is the first attempt by an EU regulator to enforce a ruling in July by the EU’s Court of Justice, which invalidated Privacy Shield, a data-sharing protocol that allowed American companies to transfer personal information about EU citizens to the US for processing. The EU court said that Privacy Shield doesn’t protect EU citizens from US intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance programs. However, the court upheld data transfer under standard contractual clauses, or SCCs.
The goal of the preliminary order is to make sure EU residents’ data isn’t stored or processed on American soil, where it could be subject to American surveillance programs. Facebook argues it could have unpredictable results and would create practical problems for their operations in the EU. It could also signal broader privacy actions that would have wider-ranging effects for American social media companies operating in Europe. Failure to comply with the Irish preliminary order could mean fines of up to 4 percent of Facebook’s annual revenue, which is roughly $2.8 billion.
Source: https://www.medianama.com/2020/09/223-eu-facebook-data-sharing-scc/