Security News
Facebook on Monday said it is asking EU courts to review "Exceptionally broad" requests by antitrust regulators there that would scoop up employees' personal information. The US-based internet colossus maintained it has been cooperating with a European Commission antitrust investigation and will continue to do so, but that the wording of commission requests casts a net so wide it will haul in Facebook employees' private messages and more.
The EU Court of Justice has struck down the so-called Privacy Shield data protection arrangements between the political bloc and the US, triggering a fresh wave of legal confusion over the transfer of EU subjects' data to America. Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems brought the latest edition of the long-running case in 2015, complaining that Ireland's data protection agency wasn't preventing Facebook Ireland Ltd from beaming his data to the US. Once his data was in the US, Schrems argued, no EU-style data privacy controls were legally enforceable by him or anyone else in that situation.
A crucial online data arrangement between Europe and the US was invalidated on Thursday, as a top EU court decision over Facebook threw trans-Atlantic big tech into legal limbo. Schrems' legal assault began after revelations by Edward Snowden of mass digital spying by US agencies, which the EU court at the time said were incompatible with European norms on privacy.
Today, 69% of the population above the age of 16 in the EU have heard about the GDPR and 71% of people heard about their national data protection authority, according to results published last week in a survey from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. Data protection rules are fit for the digital age: The GDPR has empowered individuals to play a more active role in relation to what is happening with their data in the digital transition.
Microsoft president Brad Smith on Tuesday said Europe was the global leader on setting rules for big tech, two years after the EU implemented the GDPR, its landmark data privacy law. Smith spoke at an online debate with European Commission vice president Vera Jourova, the top EU official who was in charge of the data privacy rules when they became reality in 2018.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Monday urged the European Union to take the lead in setting global standards for tech regulation or risk seeing countries follow China as a model. Breton, one of the EU's top officials on tech policy, said that Facebook and other big tech companies must also live up to certain values.
The European Union on Thursday accused unnamed parties of exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to launch cyberattacks on infrastructure and healthcare services. A flood of cyberattacks has targeted European countries, affecting critical systems needed to deal with the virus crisis, said foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in a statement on behalf of all 27 EU members.
The EU's executive Commission said it wants to develop a "Framework for trustworthy artificial intelligence." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had ordered her top deputies to come up with a coordinated European approach to artificial intelligence and data strategy 100 days after she took office in December. "Artificial intelligence must serve people, and therefore artificial intelligence must always comply with people's rights."
Facebook has delayed the rollout of its dating service across the EU, following a Monday "Dawn raid" by Irish privacy investigators. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which takes the lead on all General Data Protection Regulation probes of Facebook, says it was informed on Feb. 3 by the social network of its plan to introduce its dating service in the EU. "We were very concerned that this was the first that we'd heard from Facebook Ireland about this new feature, considering that it was their intention to roll it out ," the DPC says in a statement.
Facebook and its Irish data regulator gave conflicting signals Thursday about what caused the tech giant to postpone the European launch of its vaunted dating app. The regulator said Facebook only informed it about the new product's launch on February 3.