EU slaps Meta with record $1.3 billion privacy fine for transferring user data to US

London: The European Union slapped Meta with a record $1.3 billion privacy fine Monday and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic, the latest salvo in a decadelong case sparked by U.S. cybersnooping fears. The penalty fine of 1.2 billion euros from Ireland's Data Protection Commission is the biggest since the EU's strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon's 746 million euro penalty in 2021 for data protection violations. It's yet another twist in a legal battle that began in 2013 when Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems filed a complaint about Facebook's handling of his data following former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about U.S. cybersnooping. TikTok has tried to soothe Western fears about the Chinese-owned short video sharing app's potential cybersecurity risks with a $1.5 billion project to store U.S. user data on Oracle servers.