Facebook Targeted In UK Legal Action Over Cambridge Analytica Scandal (bbc.co.uk) 23
An anonymous reader shares a report from the BBC: Facebook is being sued for failing to protect users' personal data in the Cambridge Analytica breach. The scandal involved harvested Facebook data of 87 million people being used for advertising during elections. Mass legal action is being launched against Facebook for misuse of information from almost one million users in England and Wales. Facebook said it has not received any documents regarding this claim. The group taking action -- Facebook You Owe Us -- follows a similar mass action law suit against Google. Google You Owe Us, led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd, is also active for another alleged mass data breach. Both represented by law firm Millberg London, the Google case is being heard in the Supreme Court in April next year.
The Facebook case will argue that by taking data without consent, the firm failed to meet their legal obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998. Representative claimant in the case Alvin Carpio said: "When we use Facebook, we expect that our personal data is being used responsibly, transparently, and legally. By failing to protect our personal information from abuse, we believe that Facebook broke the law. Paying less than 0.01% of your annual revenue in fines -- pocket change to Facebook -- is clearly a punishment that does not fit the crime. Apologizing for breaking the law is simply not enough. Facebook, you owe us honesty, responsibility and redress. We will fight to hold Facebook to account."
The Facebook case will argue that by taking data without consent, the firm failed to meet their legal obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998. Representative claimant in the case Alvin Carpio said: "When we use Facebook, we expect that our personal data is being used responsibly, transparently, and legally. By failing to protect our personal information from abuse, we believe that Facebook broke the law. Paying less than 0.01% of your annual revenue in fines -- pocket change to Facebook -- is clearly a punishment that does not fit the crime. Apologizing for breaking the law is simply not enough. Facebook, you owe us honesty, responsibility and redress. We will fight to hold Facebook to account."
Massive flaw in the case's main argument (Score:4, Insightful)
"When we use Facebook, we expect that our personal data is being used responsibly"
No we don't. Nobody who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 17 years is under any illusion that Facebook uses our personal data responsibly.
On the other hand, I can't imagine Facebook using that counter-argument :) So maybe it will hold water.
Re:Massive flaw in the case's main argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes we do. We expect Facebook not to help criminals use that data to attack out democracies.
Just because they use it to spam us with ads does not mean we expect there to be no limits on its use at all.
Re:Massive flaw in the case's main argument (Score:5, Insightful)
When facebook was a US-only entity, you're right, we (ie. outside the US) would not expect any sort of responsibility. However, the moment Facebook setup shop in the UK, or indeed anywhere in the EU, we expected they would at least have some sort of passing familiarity with the data protection laws we have over here. They weren't even close with the CA stuff, are were too big to say "we didn't know, but we've fixed it now", so there's plenty of room for law suits (whether or not this particular one has merit).
I feel this is the future for facebook now... law suit after law suit about privacy, data (mis)use, censorship, lack of censorship, monopoly behaviour, etc etc.
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anywhere in the EU
Great point. Let this be a warning to Silicon Valley: don't set up shop in they EUSSR.
This is a lesson many U.S. based companies already learned. I recently spent some time in the EUSSR, and 20% of the time I could not access U.S. based websites because they simply refused to serve EUSSR based clients. Examples of this are Fox5 San Diego and PG&E.
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Why on Earth would EU people care to access Fox5 San Diego or PG&E?
The EU is a larger market than the USA. If American companies want to forgo that market and leave it to those willing to obey laws, then *shrug* sure, I guess?
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Why on Earth would EU people care to access Fox5 San Diego or PG&E?
I was in the EUSSR. And I wanted to check to see if my house was going to lose power due to PG&Es PSPS.
I was unable to do so, because PG&E had to protect itself from overreaching EUSSR laws. Call it what you want, but we both know that that's fucked up.
Fox5 San Diego is a news station. Why would the EUSSR want access to a news station? If you ask yourself why citizens need unfettered access to independent news stations, then the EUSSR is already worse than I thought.
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I think you'll find it's the American end not serving the pages
I think you'll find it refreshing to read the entire comment thread. I wrote:
This is a lesson many U.S. based companies already learned.
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"When we use Facebook, we expect that our personal data is being used responsibly"
No we don't. Nobody who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 17 years is under any illusion that Facebook uses our personal data responsibly.
"We expect..." in this context means "they should, according to the law at the time," not "we predict".
It wasn't a breach. It was their business model (Score:3)
Just read the numerous articles and books on this, especially Targeted by Brittany Kaiser, who actually worked for Cambridge Analytica.
It's the nature of the business... (Score:4)
Facebook is just doing business as was Cambridge Analytica. Why are we surprised that Facebook gives access to their user data to businesses like Cambridge Analytica? Further, why are we surprised that such data is abused for profit? Facebook isn't there to serve it's users, it's there to SELL access to it's users.
It's the nature of this beast.
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Facebook is just doing business as was Cambridge Analytica. Why are we surprised that Facebook gives access to their user data to businesses like Cambridge Analytica? Further, why are we surprised that such data is abused for profit? Facebook isn't there to serve it's users, it's there to SELL access to it's users.
It's the nature of this beast.
It's the nature of the beast that these companies have chosen to ride. If they had a subscription model, they wouldn't have to do this stuff.
Now, you might say that a subscription model would fail or at least would not have the impact that FB had but that's their problem.
If you were arrested with stolen goods the court wouldn't pay much attention to the defence that "staying within the law didn't pay well so I had no choice."
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The specific claim being brought here is that Facebook allowed a 3rd party app to access not only excessive amounts of data about individuals, but also data about their friends.
Facebook claims this was an error in the API and should not have happened, which seems to be an admission of liability. The API should have been properly secured, and users using this app should have been clearly informed what they were agreeing to.
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Targeted? You mean held accountable (Score:3)
What's with the weasel words of "targeted" in the headline??
Targeted makes them sound like a victim. Victim my ass -- they profited off of other people's data; worse, they failed to take proper steps to respect the privacy of their user's data. They were irresponsible. It is a good, first step, that they are being held accountable.
--
A genius has intelligence, but not necessarily knowledge nor wisdom.
"owe" or "own"? (Score:1)
"When we use Facebook, we expect. (Score:1)
"When we use Facebook, we expect that our personal data is being used responsibly, transparently, and legally."
HAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!
This is the funniest thing I have read in ages. These people deserve to lose the case not because Facebook is not a amoral criminal enterprise, but being stupid does not automatically give you an actionable case.
Disclaimer:
The above is not an endorsement of FarceBook and their sociopathic business model.
Cambridge Analytica -- Emerdata (Score:2)
What Cambridge Analytica did was to change its name to Emerdata and continue business as usual.
Their services are vital to the politicians, so nothing will come out of this.
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Their services are vital to the politicians, so nothing will come out of this.
More than that, their services have been paid for by the UK (and likely US) military to engage in psychological warfare operations and influence hundreds of elections globally. I have no problem with that on it's face because other counties undoubtedly try to influence our elections. But how can we allow our own political parties to use those same services and skills to influence OUR elections? Because it's the right-wing parties doing it, that's why. Read about it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
They're between a rock and a hard place (Score:1)
Cambridge Analytica uses Facebook data and Facebook gets sued, as above.
New York University researchers use Facebook data and when Facebook tells them to buzz off, Facebook is still the bad guy?
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
I'm not crying any tears for Facebook, but it seems they're in a very difficult position here.
Mistargeted (Score:1)
And of course nobody is interested in suing the offender (Cambridge Analytica), or its parent company that relaunched CA under different name, or the data source (Cambridge University). Because why go after the ones who took the data, falsely claimed deleting said data, etc. Wouldn't make the news, and they have too little money for lawyer fees.
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