Bizarre: The Federal Data Protection Commissioner bans the German government from operating its own Facebook fan page
Bizarre incident: On 17.02.2023, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection prohibited the German government from operating its own Facebook fan page. The reason: the fan page is being operated without complying with the necessary data protection regulations. Last year, the Data Protection Commissioner had already called on all other federal authorities to shut down their Facebook pages due to possible data protection violations.
Effects of the Schrems II ruling - also on the public sector
This ban has serious consequences for the Federal Press Office, which is responsible for the fan page. Possible penalties range from heavy fines to exclusion from using social media accounts in the future. Other federal authorities should therefore feel warned, as they have not yet complied with Kelber's request to delete their own fan pages.
The reason for this ban is the Schrems II ruling, which also has implications for the public sector. The ruling was made when the Austrian lawyer Max Schrems filed a complaint with the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection in 2013. He objected to Facebook's policy of transferring personal data of EU citizens to servers outside the European Economic Area. According to Kelber, the data protection commissioner, the transfer of such data to countries with inadequate protection standards would be illegal under EU data protection law.
What the future holds
The hearing between the Federal Press Office and the Data Protection Commissioner is the first step in a lengthy procedure. There are no rigid or definitive deadlines, but as a rule, the experts from the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection set a timeframe for the hearing, which is usually within a month. In this intensive procedure, both parties strive to reach an appropriate agreement with valid compromises and proposed solutions.
The future of the transatlantic data protection agreement is currently uncertain. The European Parliament's LIBE Committee has published a draft motion for a resolution on the EU Commission's adequacy decision on third-country data transfers between the EU and the USA. The European Parliament is critical of the equivalence of the level of protection for personal data in the USA. It will therefore be some time before the issue of third-country transfers to the USA is resolved in this way. Until then, Facebook pages cannot be operated in compliance with data protection regulations according to the strict opinion of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection.
To the legal data interview with Max Schrems:
