TikTok has launched a High Court challenge to a €530m fine imposed on it by the Data Protection Commission (DPC).
It is the latest legal attempt by Big Tech to overturn penalties imposed by the Irish privacy regulator. Of the more than €4bn in fines levied on companies including Meta and Amazon, only €20m has been paid so far.
The other penalties are being challenged in the Irish courts. There is no date set for any of the hearings, as a decision is awaited from the European Court of Justice on a key legal point.
[…]
“TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the personal data of European Economic Area (EEA) users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU,” DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said at the time.
“As a result of TikTok’s failure to undertake the necessary assessments, TikTok did not address potential access by Chinese authorities to EEA personal data under Chinese anti-terrorism, counter-espionage and other laws identified by TikTok as materially diverging from EU standards.”
[…]
In a further “serious development”, the DPC noted that, throughout its inquiry, TikTok had said it did not store EEA user data on servers in China. However, in April it told the regulator that, two months earlier, it discovered that “limited” data had in fact been stored on Chinese servers.
“TikTok informed the DPC that this discovery meant it had provided inaccurate information to the inquiry,” the regulator pointed out. The DPC is currently engaging with other European data regulators on that issue.
Ban it
Those fines are never getting paid. When the tech giants collectively tell the EU “No, U!” and they threaten to pack their shit and leave, EU will fold like a dried leaf in autumn.
I think they already did fold, given that eu is now trying to speed up trade deal talks with usa just because that fuck from washington said he would impose tariffs on eu if they didnt (eu leaders just dont know what european interests mean unfortunately)
