Facebook Fined $100 Million For Stealing Personal Data

A court in Brussels has hit Facebook with a fine of over $100 million dollars for collecting data on Belgians without their consent. This is a huge step forward for privacy rights, but the big question is whether or not the US will follow suit. Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this.

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Transcript:

A court in Brussels has hit Facebook. I love this story. They've hit Facebook with a fine of more than 100 million dollars for collecting data on Belgians without their consent. This is a huge step forward for privacy rights. The big question is whether or not the US will follow suit. Now, think about it. The only place in the world so far the Facebook gets hammered is in Brussels when they say, "Look, you owe us up to 124 million dollars in fine." They go up and say, "Every day that you prevent us from knowing about the personal data that you're collecting on our citizens, you're gonna get with $311,000 a day for a fine."

Now, what is your take? It's just common sense-

There's a couple things to me that jumped out. One what that they, that Facebook was secretly tracking the internet activity of people, regardless of whether they had Facebook accounts. But here's what I thought was interesting. Is that their answer from Facebook, they didn't say, "Oh no, we're not." Or, "We're not gathering information." Or, "We're not collecting it." They said, "The cookies and pixels we use are standard in the sector." Meaning we don't do anything that anybody else does. That's the standard. As long as it's a race to the bottom. As long as we just do what everybody else is doing, it's okay.

Well, and by saying that, they're saying everybody's doing it.

Oh yeah.

You understand.

So it's okay. Absolutely.

We're collecting everything we want about you. We're collecting every bit of detail we want. We're hiding the detail form you. You don't even know that we have the detail. And oh, by the way, we're then going around and we're selling it to people so they can make you crazy with sending you all types of advertisements. Now it's not just the internet. Now you're getting mail. You're getting telephone calls.

And that doggone Alexa thing, I swear that's part of it. I thought what was interesting, too, was that the order from the Belgians says that Facebook has to stop tracking and registering internet usage, or else they face a $311,000 fine every day up to 124 million for every day it does not comply. They said, "Knock it off. That's enough."

Well not only that. They tell them that you have to destroy the information you have. Now, let me ask you. What are the chances of that ever happening in the United States?

Never.

With any-

Especially in this corporate environment.

With any kind of agency. Now, Jeff Session of course, has had the opportunity through the Department of Justice to do some things. And of course we've had at least four or five regulatory committees that have had the opportunity to do exactly the same kind of thing that's happening here, but the truth is they don't have any intentions of doing that. That'll never-

He's too worried. He's too worried about the recreational pot smoker out there.

Yeah, marijuana. Much more-

To worry about this kind of stuff.

So this'll never happen. That's the ugly thing about it.

[rafyg]

I cancelled my Fakebook 2 years ago. I don't miss it.

[bjornsantens]

Yeah... we in belgium have pretty strict laws on the privacy of citizens, and Facebook is sharing personal information about private info of our civilians even if they had no Facebook account... so that is like trespassing our personal space and we don't put up with that and want to implement it into European law to protect our friends in Europe... btw, we also have strict gun laws and that's why we don't have school shootings ever(in my lifetime/38year). So Americans have gun because they're claiming it's give them freedom, but knowing that the possibility to get shot by a gun is 25 times less likely to happen in my country is what I call freedom

[doublepownage]

Belgium is very strong on human rights even tho trump says in our capital brussels its a hellhole.
Like any big city we got some bad neigborhoods.

[dulynoted]

Where does the money get allocated to? I had face book, but deleted it for that very reason. Where’s MY compensation??

[wendell]

Although they have every right to, I wish YouTube could be punished by the people for their shady ass algorithm bullshit, which everyone knows was nothing more than a plot to favor The Establishment Media and associated groups, and also not upset their business.

[joanlarochelle]

Why is this site showing an NRA membership ad?

[oscarjones]

Why are ring of fire videos being removed? I'm guessing inaccuracies

[billythedead]

It's ok trust them honest and everything bahahaha