Facing pressure
Feds urged to hold giants like Facebook more accountable for misuse of data
The Trudeau government is facing pressure to do more to protect the online privacy of Canadians as policy-makers around the world grapple with the implications of using data collected by Facebook and other social-media companies for political purposes.
The demands come after Canadian data expert Christopher Wylie alleged that data analytics company Cambridge Analytica inappropriately obtained private data from Facebook users in order to help advance Donald Trump’s campaign efforts ahead of the U.S. election.
New Democrat MP Charlie Angus says if information giants like Facebook have the potential to distort the outcome of elections, they need to be held to account.
Angus says the time has come for the creation of a global national framework to deal with social-media companies that hold vast stores of personal information.
The NDP wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to raise the issue when Canada hosts the G7 summit this summer.
Angus says he believes Facebook has a legal international responsibility to protect users’ information from bad actors
looking to use it for nefarious purposes.
“Facebook seems to have a very cavalier attitude towards the protection of private information,” Angus said. “What’s come out of the allegations against Cambridge Analytica was the ability to subvert Facebook to use the
stories, the chats that people have, to create the perfect propaganda machine.”
On Monday, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said his office would contact Facebook to find out whether the personal information of Canadians was affected by the major data leak
involving the global social media platform.
Reports by The New York Times and The Observer of London say Trump’s 2016 campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to collect private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users.