Facebook backs its refusal to share data

Facebook is giving no ground to New Zealand’s privacy commissioner, who this week launched an attack on the social media giant.

Facebook took to its own platform to defend itself on Thursday after Privacy Commissioner John Edwards accused the American company of a breach of the Privacy Act.

The accusation comes after an unnamed New Zealand complainant asked Facebook for personal information held on the accounts of several site users.

The complainant raised the issue with Edwards, who found Facebook was subject to New Zealand’s Privacy Act, and had fundamentally failed to engage with it.

Facebook global deputy chief privacy officer Stephen Deadman described the case as ‘‘a difficult one’’.

‘‘In September last year, the commissioner notified us of a complaint – a Facebook user wanted access to content posted by other users of Facebook that he believes concerns him.

‘‘The posts were private and the complainant did not know where or when this content had been shared. To locate the content, the commissioner asked us to search through and disclose the records of seven people’s account for a yearlong period, from August 2016 to August 2017.’’

Facebook could not do that without a legal basis because releasing the information would violate Irish data protection law. It was Facebook Ireland that provided New Zealand’s Facebook service, he said.

‘‘However, even if the New Zealand Privacy Act did apply to Facebook in this case, we firmly believe that Facebook would not be legally required to disclose the information requested, because it would violate the data protection rights of the New Zealand citizens concerned.’’

It would be usual in cases such as this for the New Zealand complainant to go to court, he said.

‘‘But he has chosen not to. Instead he has asked the [privacy commissioner] to treat this like a request for access to his own data. This doesn’t seem right to us, and we are concerned about the use of this process for this type of issue.

‘‘I hope that you understand why we believe it would be wrong to disclose the information requested. We remain open to finding a solution, and will work with the authorities in Ireland and New Zealand to do so.’’

Deadman stressed that he had the ‘‘highest respect’’ for the commissioner.