The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has accused Facebook's parent company Meta of misusing data.
The ICCL has written to the European Commission claiming that unsealed court documents from a case in the US reveal a "data free-for-all" inside Meta that infringes data protection regulations and makes compliance with EU legislation impossible.
The ICCL said its examination of thousands of pages of documents from long-running litigation in northern California reveals that Meta staff responsible for data systems may not know how those systems are being used by other teams within the company.
"Meta does not know where, how or why data is used internally," said Dr Johnny Ryan, Senior Fellow of ICCL.
"Meta cannot comply with the new EU Digital Markets Act and has failed to uphold its GDPR obligations for years," Dr Ryan said.
In response, a Meta spokesperson said the company had built one of the most comprehensive privacy programmes to oversee data use across its operations and to carefully manage and protect people’s data.
"We have made, and continue making, significant investments to meet our privacy commitments and obligations, including extensive data controls," the company said.
"We will be working with European regulators to comply with the new rules and to provide consumers with the best possible product experience," the spokesperson added.
