German Cartel To Appeal Court’s Suspension Of Facebook Restrictions

After a regional court decision suspended restrictions on Facebook data gathering in Germany, the Federal Cartel Office said it is filing an appeal to the highest court, Reuters reported on Monday (Aug. 26).

The regional court in Duesseldorf on Monday (Aug. 26) suspended the Federal Cartel Office’s February decision that restricted what kind of data Facebook could gather in Germany.

“We are convinced that with the available antitrust laws, we can take regulatory action,” Andreas Mundt, the head of the cartel office, said in a statement. “To clarify these questions, we will file an appeal to the Federal Court of Justice.”

February’s decision alleged that Facebook misused its size and popularity to collect users’ data without asking or informing them.

“The suspension of the order means that Facebook does not have to implement the decision of the Federal Cartel Office for the time being,” the Higher Regional Court of Duesseldorf said in its ruling earlier on Monday. The court said Facebook’s data gathering could continue until a final appeal was decided.

Facebook declined to comment to Reuters.

The Federal Cartel Office specifically had issues with how the company gathered data from third-party apps, including its own WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as games and websites. In addition, the German agency objects to the company’s tracking of people who are not members of the site.

The Federal Cartel Office has been investigating Facebook since 2015, before it was revealed that the now-defunct political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica accessed the data of 87 million Facebook users without their consent. That scandal is being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Justice Department and the FBI.

Aside from its issues in the U.S. and Germany, Facebook was also hit with a $644,600 fine in the U.K. after it was found that an estimated one million residents were affected by the scandal.