Irish DP could throw Meta out of Europe

The Irish Data Protection Commission are preparing a decree, banning Meta from transferring EU citizens data to the USA. Meta has 28 days to react, but a spokesperson for the IDPC said that they think the full decree will be signed off in April - it has to go before the DPOs of the other member countries.

A Facebook spokesperson said that this will affect millions of EU users, businesses and clubs that rely on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram and they pleaded for a long-term solution.

The EU has always been willing to go in for a long term solution and has offered 2 already, Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield, which were ratified with the USA, but on both occasions, the US Government failed to fulfil its side of the agreement - neither exempting EU data from the Patriot Act, CLOUD Act, NSLs or FISA Courts etc. nor appointing a permanent ombudsman to handle issues with the data transfer and storage in the USA.

The dates back a long way and is a non-partisan failing of the US Government - Safe Harbor started under Clinton, but Shrub (a small Bush) also failed to do anything, and Privacy Shield started under Obama and Trump also failed to implement their side of the agreements. Now it is the Biden administration’s turn to see if they can actually agree to (the easy part) and implement (the bit that 4 different administrations have utterly failed to do) a new agreement between the EU and the USA for storing EU data to EU standards in the USA…

So you’re saying that Ireland has prepared to unfriend Facebook? :wink:

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