Time for federal parties to take action on privacy, expert says

OTTAWA (NEWS 1130) – A day after the federal and B.C. privacy commissioners declared Facebook broke Canada’s privacy laws, one expert is applauding the report and hopes federal parties make privacy a campaign issue this fall.

“Facebook’s privacy framework is empty,” Privacy Expert Ann Cavoukian, a Senior Fellow of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre at Ryerson University, says. “They’re not walking the talk. They do a lot of talking, making you believe that they have strong privacy in place, but they don’t.”

She tells CityNews it’s about time privacy commissioners take action against Facebook, and she hopes the Trudeau government and Opposition parties take this seriously.

Watch: Canadian privacy watchdog says Facebook broke the law

Cavoukian wants to see the issue addressed in the October election campaign, and believes Canada should adopt a privacy-by-default policy.

“People shouldn’t have to search through all the legalese and the terms of service and the privacy policy to find the opt-out box for privacy. They should get privacy automatically.”

The commissioners’ report finds Facebook failed to have proper safeguards in place when more than 50-million users had their data harvested in the Cambridge Analytica controversy. Facebook denies it broke the law and says it has taken steps to better protect people’s information.

“If you value your freedom, then you value privacy,” Cavoukian says. “We’ve got to stand up for that.”

The report finds major shortcomings in the social media giant’s practices and highlights the need for legislative reform to protect Canadians.

The complaint that prompted the probe followed reports that Facebook had let an outside organization use an app to access users’ personal information, and that some of the data was then shared with others, including Cambridge Analytica.