Facebook accuses the EU of requesting too much data, the EU responds

Regarding the differences in antitrust data requests, Facebook and the EU are still at odds. Facebook stated that the data requested by the EU is too broad and endangers the privacy of employees’ families. The European Union said that it will fight for reasons in court, and the investigation of Facebook will continue .

Since the summer of last year, the EU has launched two preliminary investigations on Facebook, mainly about classified advertising services and data behavior. One of the surveys focused on its massive data, and the other focused on Facebook’s online market platform launched in 2016. Currently, 800 million users in 70 countries use this platform to buy and sell goods.

So far, Facebook has provided 315,000 documents to the European Commission, totaling approximately 1.7 million pages. However, on July 15, Facebook filed a lawsuit against the European Commission, claiming that the data required by the latter in investigating Facebook was too broad, beyond the necessary scope, and may harm user privacy.

On July 28, Facebook won a court order requiring the EU to temporarily stop requesting more data from Facebook . Facebook believes that this data includes highly sensitive personal information that is not required for antitrust investigations.

As for the scope of the data requested by the EU, you can get a glimpse of it in the documents submitted by Facebook to the court (just released today). According to the documents submitted by Facebook, the data sought by the EU includes “employees’ communication links on medical issues; communication links at the time of bereavement; documents related to personal property investment; job applications; internal assessments; and assessment of the safety of Facebook’s key personnel’s family members Risk documents”.

In response, Facebook asked the court to restrict the EU’s broad power to request and screen company information. At the same time, Facebook called on the court to allow independent lawyers to review and exclude “documents and/or personal documents that are clearly not related to the investigation.”

Analysts said that the final ruling can be appealed to the EU Supreme Court, which may hinder and delay the EU investigation. Previously, companies had won similar cases, and the EU had to close an investigation due to lack of evidence.

In response, the European Commission stated in an e-mail statement that the European Commission “will defend itself in court” and that its “antitrust investigation on Facebook is still ongoing.”

Facebook reiterated a statement issued in July: “The scope of the European Commission’s requirements is very broad, which means that we are required to submit documents tha