<\/p>\n
The UK\u2019s data protection watchdog has responded to Meta\u2019s announcement yesterday that it intends to offer (other) Europeans a free choice to deny its tracking-for-ad-targeting but won\u2019t be asking UK users for their consent to its surveillance \u2014 with some, er, pointed remarks.<\/p>\n
Take it away Stephen Almond, the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO)\u2019s executive director of regulatory risk, with this \u201cICO statement on Meta\u201c:<\/p>\n
\nAs a digital regulator, we pay close attention to how companies operate internationally and how people\u2019s rights are respected.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re aware of Meta\u2019s plans to seek consent from users for behavioural advertising in the EU, to the exclusion of the UK. This follows related findings by the Court of Justice of the European Union, Irish Data Protection Commission and Norwegian Data Protection Authority.<\/p>\n
We are assessing what this means for information rights of people in the UK and considering an appropriate response.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Almond\u2019s carefully worded remarks (\u201cclose attention\u201d; \u201cassessing what this means for information rights of people in the UK\u201d, \u201cconsidering an appropriate response\u201d) suggest the regulator is not best pleased that the adtech giant formerly known as Facebook isn\u2019t intending to give UK users the same level of respect for their data rights as people in the EU, European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland are, apparently, set to get soon.<\/p>\n
Simply put it looks very awkward indeed for the ICO, and terrible news for UK users stuck in their post-Brexit not-so-sunny-uplands, that Meta has calculated it doesn\u2019t have to offer the same degree of respect for their information as it must for Europeans living elsewhere in the region.<\/p>\n
Especially since Meta is doing this at a time when UK data protection law is still based on the pan-EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). (I mean, the UK government\u2019s plan to water down the domestic privacy regime, via touted post-Brexit data \u201creforms\u201d, hasn\u2019t even made it onto the statute books yet! So, on paper, the privacy regime is the same as it was when the UK was in the EU.)<\/p>\n
The specific issue the ICO is facing up to here is that defence of domestic data protection rules now falls squarely on its shoulders \u2014 with no protective shielding from the Court of Justice of the EU handing down the last word on how the law must be enforced. Since January 31 2020, when Brexit was fully enacted by the UK government, rulings made by the CJEU don\u2019t apply in UK law. And, notably, Meta has only been moved to \u2014 finally \u2014 announce its intention to give Europeans a choice to deny its tracking-for-ads in the wake of a major CJEU ruling last month.<\/p>\n
That also followed a significant January 2023 GDPR enforcement by EU data protection regulators. And an emergency intervention by Norway last month banning Meta\u2019s behavioral ads locally over the legal basis issue \u2014 rather than waiting for Ireland, Meta\u2019s lead regulator, to do it across the whole EU.<\/p>\n
The cumulative impact of all these EU procedures has left the tech giant with no lawful basis left to claim under EU law for the data processing it carries out to \u201cpersonalize\u201d ads \u2014 except consent. So there is now momentum behind GDPR enforcement that is having a tangible impact on reforming privacy-hostile business models. But, sadly for people in the UK, it sits outside the EU\u2019s implementation of GDPR. And so\u2026 no Meta consent intent for Brits!<\/p>\n
The bloc also hasn\u2019t stood still on lawmaking since the UK upped and left. It\u2019s actually been highly active on digital regulations. Including undertaking a major piece of ex ante competition reform, called the Digital Markets Act \u2014 which also appears to be giving Meta pause for thought on its ads data processing.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s blog post update yesterday announcing its intention to switch to consent for ads data processing in the EU referenced \u201ca number of evolving and emerging regulatory requirements in the region, notably how our lead data protection regulator in the EU, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), is now interpreting GDPR in light of recent legal rulings, as well as anticipating the entry into force of the Digital Markets Act (DMA)\u201d as informing its decision.<\/p>\n
And, well, the DMA doesn\u2019t apply in the UK either. Just as the Irish DPC\u2019s GDPR enforcement and the CJEU\u2019s interpretation of how to apply the GDPR don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Meta switched UK users\u2019 data from falling under its Irish subsidiary to its US entity earlier this year, taking UK users firmly out of EU jurisdiction. That\u2019s Brexit folks!\u00a0 (A \u2018Made in the UK\u2019 digital ex ante competition reform also hasn\u2019t made it into domestic law after facing delays as a result of political turmoil in the governing Conservative party in the wake of, er, Brexit\u2026 So there\u2019s no UK equivalent to the DMA yet either.)<\/p>\n
The even more particular problem for the ICO is it has systematically failed to act on similar complaints about adtech tracking lacking a proper lawful basis for \u2014 literally \u2014 years.<\/p>\n
It was actually sued for inaction back in 2020 over just such a complaint. And even paused its investigation into adtech entirely during the pandemic, saying it didn\u2019t want to saddle the industry with \u201cundue pressure\u201d at such a difficult time.<\/p>\n
What about UK users\u2019 rights not to be unlawfully creeped on by advertisers during Covid? The ICO evidently didn\u2019t feel it should press the industry to care about such details back then \u2014 or, well, ever since really. So it\u2019s a bit rich for the ICO to suddenly square up to Meta with implicit concerns that Brits\u2019 info rights aren\u2019t being properly respected. Unless this is the regulator\u2019s Damascene conversion moment \u2014 on the need to actually enforce against adtech abuses it has been publicly critical of for years.<\/p>\n
Previously the UK regulator has considered an \u201cappropriate response\u201d to rampant law-breaking by the adtech industry to mean convening a few roundtables where advertising execs were seemingly able to fill the room with hot air about respect for compliance while being allowed to continue lucrative data-mining business as usual as the ICO continued \u2018investigating\u2019.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s not clear what action the UK regulator might deem \u201cappropriate\u201d to take against Meta if it keeps trampling local users\u2019 rights to deny its tracking. Hopefully we\u2019re not going to see another open-ended\/neverending investigation.<\/p>\n
Technically the UK GDPR allows for penalties for confirmed breaches that can reach as high as 4% of global annual turnover \u2014 which, in Meta\u2019s case, could sum to a few billion pounds. But the ICO hasn\u2019t strayed anywhere near the theoretical maximums in the GDPR enforcements it has chalked up to date. So the adtech giant may have decided there\u2019s minimum regulatory risk on UK turf \u2014 and set the level of respect for local users\u2019 data accordingly. Ergo: No consent for you, you\u2019re British.<\/p>\n
We reached out to the ICO with questions about its historical lack of enforce against adtech\u2019s tracking and profiling, and to ask what specific responses it may consider if Meta continues to provide UK users with a lesser level of data protection than other people in European, but the regulator told us it had nothing more to add beyond Almond\u2019s public remarks.<\/p>\n
Meta also declined comment on the ICO\u2019s statement. But its spokesman pointed us back to the section of its blog post we quoted above \u2014 where it says its intention to switch to consent in the EU and EEA was taken in response to a number of enforcement decisions by the region\u2019s regulators and courts. So, basically, Meta is making the salient point that its looming switch of lawful basis tracks enforcement action. No enforcement, no switch. Simples!<\/p>\n
Of course this also means the ICO does<\/em> have the power to change how UK users\u2019 rights are treated by Meta or any other adtech entities operating on UK soil. I.e. by actually enforcing UK law on the adtech industry as privacy campaigners have been calling for it to do for years.<\/p>\n
Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights at the University College London, who was one of the individuals behind the aforementioned complaint about adtech industry practices to the ICO back in 2018 \u2014 and who also subsequently took legal action after the regulator closed the complaint a couple of years later without taking a decision \u2014 urged the ICO to seize the opportunity it now has to act on its stated concerns for UK users\u2019 rights by regulating adtech giants like Meta directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Meta moved its relevant headquarters for UK users from Ireland to the US, the UK is now obliged to regulate the tech firm for itself, not to wait for Ireland. This would be a great time [for the ICO] to show it is ready for these significant new responsibilities,\u201d he told .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe text of the relevant law applying to Meta is in all relevant ways identical in the EU and the UK. Meta\u2019s choice not to extend the same rights to UK users is it making a calculated decision that privacy enforcement in the UK is weak enough to ignore,\u201d Veale added. \u201cSome of the court judgements do apply to the EU and not the UK, as they were handed down after the end of 2020. But that does not mean that the regulator cannot take clear action using the information provided in the course of these judgements, and on the solid reasoning within them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UK\u2019s data protection watchdog has responded to Meta\u2019s announcement yesterday that it intends to offer (other) Europeans a free choice to deny its tracking-for-ad-targeting but won\u2019t be asking UK users for their consent to its surveillance \u2014 with some, er, pointed remarks. Take it away Stephen Almond, the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office (ICO)\u2019s executive director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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