Meta Plans to Challenge Irish Data Regulator’s Massive €1.2 Billion Fine Over Cross Border Data Flows

We missed this earlier: After a year of mass layoffs and a tough pivot to the "Metaverse", Meta's latest woe is a massive €1.2 billion fine recently slapped on it by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. The issue: personal data transfers from the European Union (EU) to the United States. The regulator found that the transfers didn't adequately safeguard EU data subjects from privacy risks, despite the EU’s top court ruling on the issue a few years earlier.  Meta won’t be taking the verdict lying down. “There is no immediate disruption to Facebook because the decision includes implementation periods that run until later this year,” clarified Meta’s Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs & Jennifer Newstead, Chief Legal Officer, in a blog post earlier this week. “We intend to appeal both the decision’s substance and its orders including the fine, and will seek a stay through the courts to pause the implementation deadlines.” The May 12th decision, which comes after nearly three years of investigation and deliberation, directed the tech major to suspend future personal data transfers to the United States within five months of the decision's notification. Meta Ireland has also been given six months to comply with the EU’s privacy law, by ceasing unlawful data processing and storage of personal data of EU users transferred to the US.  Notably, the Irish regulator initially didn’t want to fine Meta as it believed this would be disproportionate. The question was then deferred to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) during the investigation, which…