In a first, EU Court fines EU for breaching own data protection law | Hacker News Reader

In a first, EU Court fines EU for breaching own data protection law

reuters.com

25 pointsthm19 comments

> In a first, the EU General Court ruled on Wednesday that the European Commission must pay damages to a German citizen for failing to comply with its own data protection regulations.

This is not, however, the first time that the EU courts have ruled that the EC has failed to comply with its own regulations. It happens frequently.

When the EC hands out its first fines for violations of the DMA (almost certainly to Apple), you can expect that it will be big in the news and widely celebrated here on HN. But you can also expect that it will be appealed to the courts and that years later the fine will be annulled, with the EU court ruling that the EC failed to conduct a thorough investigation and failed to consider relevant circumstances, etc. The news of this will not be big in the news; it will be posted on HN and get 1 or 2 comments, never reaching the front page.

Is this weird? The EU is an organisation like any other, it can make mistakes. It just so happens to be a regulating organisation and have also written the rule it broke.

The American mind cannot comprehend this.

I’m happy that a government is holding itself accountable, but I seriously doubt the fine will go through - and even if it does all it does is cost the taxpayer more money due to either incompetence or just malicious intent.

The European mind can’t comprehend that most Americans think EU regulations are oppressive and unnecessary. The EU can’t comply with their own regulations isn’t a good indicator. Neither is the fact that the EU still displays cookie banners on their own website, despite that being everyone’s favorite jab at American companies.

The EU can comply with its own regulations, it’s just that EU citizens (sometimes) can force it into compliance if it does not. That’s a nice feature.

What if EU Court fines EU and EU fines EU Court? At least officials have a job in the warm office building!

perhaps this is meant as a joke (can't see a /s anywhere) but as far as I understand the EU, the EU (as opposed to the EU court) is a legislative organ that has no power to emit fines.

the EU Court would need to fine itself, basically.

In the EU all is possible.

Only after filling the proper form /s

>The court determined that the Commission transferred the citizen's personal data to the United States without proper safeguards and ordered it to pay him 400 euros ($412) in damages.

400 Euros in damages, wow, how will they ever financially recover from this?

Hey I mean at least they self regulate at all.

> The individual had used the "Sign in with Facebook" option on the EU login webpage to register for a conference. The court, which hears actions taken against EU institutions, found that this transfer of the user's IP address to Meta Platforms in the U.S. violated EU data protection rules.

Which means he already had a Facebook account, so this is only about his IP being given to Meta one time. 400€ per case for this violation seems pretty reasonable.

Or... he didn't even login and the widget already was logging the IP when he opened the page? Either way I agree though.

You think 400 euro per person is small then you wont have problem when EU fines twatter, fb and apple 400 euro per every user rights violated, right?

I sure won't, lol

Did the PII consist of IP only? IP address should not count as personally identifiable information. The threshold is way too low here.

At least they’re consistent? I don’t know seems like folks in the EU would be better off spending time innovating on product and technology. It’s fine to regulate but to make that your only contribution is not fine imo.

We've all but given up. Pessimism for the future is at an all time high and there's a major economic crisis looming on the horizon. We have runaway inflation and stagnant salaries, and for those who manage to mitigate inflation personally or via a union, by getting a salary increase, well they actually contribute to more inflation in general.

Why should I do my best when I'm underpaid. I'm sure many companies here in Europe wouldn't mind paying their employees more, but profit margins are razor thin.

There's no money for R&D.

Europe has many globally successful technology companies. ASML and Siemens, The Pirate Bay and Spotify, SAP and Accenture. It also seems Swedish Match has managed to "innovate" quite well on cigarettes by introducing tobacco free nicotine pouches to the US, which I'd expect to be a continuing financial success story over the coming years.

Infringing on people's data protection rights isn't a precondition to product development and innovation, that's just a weak justification of tyranny.

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