Facebook Fined $33 Million for Failing to Help Brazilian Authorities

rgMekanic

[H]ard|News
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,943
Facebook has been fined $33 million for failing to help Brazilian authorities. The fine comes from two years ago when a court froze $6 million of Facebook's cash after it didn't hand over data for a criminal drug smuggling investigation. Facebook is apparently still not cooperating, and a judge just handed down a 111.7 reais ( $33 million) fine for failing to grant authorities access to messages related to the investigation according to a report from Reuters.

Tough to find non-Facebook news lately, and impossible to find any good Facebook news. $33 million is a massive amount of a fine for failure to comply, but unfortunately is barely a scratch in the companies $460.41 billion market cap.

The fine amounted to 1 million reais plus interest for every day Facebook did not comply with the order, beginning when it took effect in mid-June 2016, and ending when the corruption investigation was made public that September, police said.
 
Last edited:
Considering the Cambridge Analytica shitfest Zuckerberg is facing, I am not surprised he is more than a little gun-shy at handing out personal info.

In any case I wish the Brazilians luck in getting a dime out of him. It is not like Facebook is in Brazil's jurisdiction.
 
I am not even sure Facebook can give the courts the data they are asking for. Isn't WhatsAPP encrypted end to end? So FB wouldn't even have a decrypted copy of the data..
 
Market cap is what investors think is it worth. The real net worth of the company at the end of 2017 looks to be about $74 billion of which 8 billion is cash or equivalent. As for Brazil collecting, depends on what treaties are in place between the US and Brazil. Wonder if the timing of the deleted Zuckerberg messages is related to this or merely a bizarre coincidence? I would be surprised if there isn't a backup somewhere of the data in question. The folks maintaining backups are often the last to know when old data is being requested.
 
I'm sure Zuckerberg can find that between the couch cushions...
Chump change. Though the stock devaluations have got to be smarting a bit. When all you care about are big numbers it's very disappointing when they get smaller...maybe some of the tech multi-multi-billionaires can form some sort of support group to get through these tough times.
 
I am currently unable to muster any outrage over this. Brazil doesn’t have the same privacy laws as we do, and not just failing, but to actually refuse to cooperate with a drug smuggling investigation, when they have the power to do so, is stupid.
 
I bet if it were incriminating evidence against POTUS Trump, Facebook would have handed it over as fast as it possibly could.
 
Back
Top