Norwegian Decision Banning Behavioral Advertising on Facebook and Instagram
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority (DPA) on July 14 imposed a temporary three-month ban on “behavioural advertising” on Facebook and Instagram to users based in Norway. The decision relied on the “urgency procedure” under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which exceptionally allows direct regulatory interventions by other national authorities than the authority of the country where the business is registered (here: Ireland).
My initial view of the decision is that it is both a misuse of the urgency procedure and mischaracterizes the leading judgment from the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) on which it purports to rely (see my analysis of that judgment: part 1 and part 2). The decision misses the critical legal issue that it’s unclear to what extent the CJEU’s analysis applies to first-party personal data (collected by Facebook and Instagram) as the Court’s judgment expressly covered third-party data (collected “off-platform”).