Belgium Tells Facebook to Stop Storing Personal Data from Non-Users (2015)

[DyslexicAtheist]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-09/facebook-told-to-stop-storing-personal-data-from-belgian-surfers

[rndmind]

Ouch, facebook faces a fine of 250,000 euros ($269,000) a day if it doesn’t comply with the ruling, the court said in an e-mailed statement Monday.

Does anyone know if f*book appealed this?

[PeterStuer]

As far as I can tell:

- Belgium sued in 2015 and won.

- Facebook appealed and won in 2016 with that appeals court declaring it didn't have jurisdiction

- Belgium appealed to a higher court and won with a recent verdict in Feb. 2018. FB said it would comply with the law but also intends to appeal.

[reaperducer]

How exactly did Belgium intend to enforce such an order? Facebook could just say, "OK, done" and change nothing.

It's not like Facebook was going to let Hercule Poirot pop over to look through the FB databases.

[omarforgotpwd → reaperducer]

Lying usually doesn't end up working in your favor legally.

[craftyguy → omarforgotpwd]

Belgium would still need a way to enforce it, and unless they build their own Great Firewall, they cannot physically prevent FB from doing business in their country, nor could they collect fines from them. The best they could do would be to petition the EU and/or the US to do something about it.

[John_KZ → craftyguy]

They can just ask their ISPs to remove facebook.com from their DNS. That'll remove 80% of the users. If that doesn't work, they'll just have to ask their ISPs to block traffic to facebook and their associated IPs. It's not like they can't just install DPI equipment.

[PeterStuer → John_KZ]

Wel, they could, but ISP's (as well as regulators btw) are fairly reluctant to block 'popular' services. Companies generally use the legal system to fight back. They don't go around just ignoring laws when caught or scoff at verdicts. Facebook has already said they will comply but appeal.

[bognition → craftyguy]

These are some pretty tall assertions, what evidence is there that Belgium lacks the legal tools to enforce this?

[craftyguy → bognition]

That they didn't?

[chopin → craftyguy]

they could go after advertizers doing business in Belgium. They could go after their payment processor. They could involve EU authorities.

[zencash]

I work in adtech, the number of sites using a 'Facebook tag/pixel' is way too high for this to happen. Every single user who hits a site with this tag has their data collected.