Facebook Sues EU Anti-Trust Regulator for Excessive Data Requests

The US-based social media giant, Facebook, has announced that it is suing the EU Anti-trust regulator for seeking information beyond the realm of necessity, including personal details, for their investigations into the company’s data and marketplace.

Background

The social media company is under the EU lens and it has been going on since the last year. The investigation by the European Union Competition Regulator is mainly focused on the data possessed by the company and also the online marketplace launched by its social media giant. This is used by around 800 million Facebook users from 70 countries in order to sell and buy items.

Since the commencement of the investigation, the company has already provided 315000 documents equivalent to 1.7 million pages to the Commission.

However, now the issue is that the company alleges the Commission wants predominantly irrelevant documents from the company that has nothing to do with the investigations. The data also includes highly sensitive personal information such as the medical information of the employees, personal financial documents and also family details of the employees.

All these have prompted Facebook to file a lawsuit against the Commission and it is also seeking interim measures at the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe’s second-highest, to halt such unnecessary requests by the commission till a final decision by the court.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020