The European Court of Justice has stated that European data may not simply be sent to the US several times. But Facebook sees no problem with that.
The American data companies send to the US about Europeans has been legally sensitive for years, especially because the US can require American companies to access that data if it is necessary.
In July 2020, among other things, the European Court rejected the so-called Privacy Shield because it offered insufficient protection for Europeans. In the margins of this, the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) were also fired, another instrument for exporting data from Europe.
But Facebook isn’t going to care much about that. According to internal documents that Politico could see, the company believes that the US is doing enough to protect data and continue to pass on data. So it refers, among other things, to the SCCs, even if they are equally insufficient.
“U.S. law and legal practice protect personal data that is essentially similar to the level of protection required by EU law.” It can be read in one of the documents.
That interpretation is indeed good for Facebook. However, politico contacted some legal experts. They also see no possibility for Facebook to do this legally, primarily since some of the legal rulings were based on Facebook’s practices. In other words: Facebook, which has been stringing together privacy scandals for years and has consistently minimized incidents, errors and mismanagement, is now also trying to ignore court decisions by interpreting cases very broadly and incorrectly.
