Facebook: No pleasing Belgian agency

A lawyer for Facebook accused Belgium’s data privacy watchdog of waging a “public vendetta” against the social media giant in a court clash over the legality of measures the company says help combat thousands of hacking attacks every day.

Facebook’s European unit in Ireland “repeatedly tried to engage” with the Belgian data protection commission, but whatever the company does “it’s never enough” for the authority, Paul Lefebvre, a lawyer representing Facebook, told the Brussels appeals court.

Facebook is appealing a ruling that ordered it to stop storing data from people who don’t have an account with the social network, or face a $279,000 daily fine. Willem Debeuckelaere, president of the Belgian commission, said last May that Facebook’s “disrespectful” treatment of users’ personal data, without their knowledge, “needs tackling.”

At issue in the case is the consent required for the company’s use of a so-called Datr cookie, which Facebook uses to protect its platform and the data of its users against “malicious attacks.”

Facebook’s lawyers said the ruling forced the company to take the “drastic security measure” of blocking nonFacebook users in Belgium from surfing the company’s public pages. This was “the only feasible” measure to comply with the ruling without compromising security, they said.