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The Supreme Court of Canada has postponed its decision in a major privacy lawsuit connected to Facebook’s part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal from the 2010s.
After a one-day hearing Thursday in Ottawa, the court held back its ruling while considering whether Facebook really got proper consent from users before it collected, used, or shared their personal info through third-party apps.
They also looked at whether Facebook did enough to protect user data.
“What Facebook needs to get consent for is the disclosure by what I’ll call an installing user to an app,” said Michael Feder, lawyer for Facebook.
“What the app does – that’s not Facebook’s business.”
The Supreme Court of Canada has taken Facebook’s appeal under advisement. (Justin Tang/ Cambridge Chronicle)
Facebook is appealing a 2024 Federal Court of Appeal decision that ruled Meta (Facebook’s parent company) broke federal privacy laws by not properly warning users about risks related to their data.
This appeal court ruling reversed an earlier 2023 Federal Court judgment which had found otherwise.
“This is about making sure that people can engage in social media in a way in which they have control,” said Colleen Bauman, speaking for Canada’s Privacy Commissioner’s Office.
The privacy watchdog launched an investigation into Facebook after getting a complaint back in 2019 about whether the company was following Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
The office found that Facebook had indeed violated this law.
Professor says case should push needed updates
David Fraser, a Halifax lawyer with Mc Innes Cooper who focuses on privacy law, mentioned this case could affect how companies handle consent and data management across Canada.
“This has implications, for example, for the [Apple] App Store,” Fraser noted.
“What responsibility does Apple have to supervise every one of the thousands, if not millions, of apps on its platform?”
WATCH | More about the case:
Supreme Court of Canada hears privacy law case over Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data scandal>>>>>>>>>
In 2018, British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was exposed for collecting data from millions of Facebook users – including Canadians. Now Canada’s highest court is looking at whether Facebook broke Canadian privacy laws during that incident...
This case goes back to the decade-old Cambridge Analytica scandal where that UK firm improperly took personal details from around 87 million Facebook accounts without permission for targeted political ads..
The data wasn’t just from people who used their quiz app but also pulled from their friends on Facebook too..
Facebook says over 600,000 Canadians were affected by this breach. .
“It is crazy that a case that’s more than a decade in the making, that’s been addressed by so many other countries, still lingers in Canada,” said University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist..
“We need certainty in Canadian privacy law. We need penalties in Canadian privacy law.”.
Geist pointed out how broken Canadian privacy rules are now. He believes Parliament should step up and fix laws before any final judgment comes down – which could take several months more still..
“The case already should pressure the government,” Geist added. “It is long overdue for Canada to update privacy rules that are now more than 25 years old.”.
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