Facebook sued by Australian information commissioner over Cambridge Analytica scandal
Facebook could end up paying hundreds of billions of dollars for misusing our data after a lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook is being sued by the Australian information commissioner over the collection and use of more than 300,000 Australian users’ data.
The world’s biggest social media platform is being dragged into court over the Cambridge Analytica scandal that keeps haunting Facebook almost four years after the elections that eventually dragged it into the spotlight.
The lawsuit could potentially cost Facebook hundreds of billions of dollars, but it’s unlikely to end up paying that much and could even settle out of court without admitting to doing anything wrong like Google did to resolve a tax dispute last year.
For the uninitiated, Cambridge Analytica was a political consultancy firm that collected the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users and then used that data to create hyperspecific targeted advertising campaigns with the aim of swaying elections.
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The consultancy firm’s role in the 2016 US Presidential election and the Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit vote has been the source of much scrutiny in recent years.
It eventually led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having to testify in front of the US Congress.
Now it’s forced another lawsuit in Australia.
The Australian information commissioner Angelene Falk said users were powerless to stop their data being collected and had no idea how it would be used.
“We consider the design of the Facebook platform meant that users were unable to exercise reasonable choice and control about how their personal information was disclosed,” Ms Falk said in a statement on Monday.
“Facebook’s default settings facilitated the disclosure of personal information, including sensitive information, at the expense of privacy.
“We claim these actions left the personal data of around 311,127 Australian Facebook users exposed to be sold and used for purposes including political profiling, well outside users’ expectations.”
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Much of the data was collected through “personality quizzes” and other gimmicks you might have been tagged in by the more annoying members of your friends list.
In this case, the Facebook app This Is Your Digital Life was the key offender.
But it didn’t just take the data of the people who were wasting their time on the app.
The app permissions also gave Cambridge Analytica the ability to go through public profiles, potentially collecting data on their friends as well.
That’s how most of the data was collected, according to the claim lodged in Federal Court on Monday.
The claim alleges Facebook breached Australian privacy laws when it disclosed users’ data to the This Is Your Digital Life app between March 2014 and May 2015.
The commissioner also alleges Facebook did not take reasonable steps during this period to protect its users’ personal information from unauthorised disclosure.
She called the alleged breaches systemic failures to comply with Australian privacy laws by one of the world’s largest technology companies.
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The commissioner said all entities that operate in Australia have legal obligations to be “transparent and accountable in the way they handle personal information”.
At the time of the alleged data collection, the penalty for each serious and/or repeated interference with privacy was $1.7 million.
Multiply that by 311,127 Australians and you get a potential bill of more than half a trillion dollars.
In the US, where tens of millions more citizens had their data collected and weaponised against them, Facebook settled with the Federal Trade Commission for around $US5 billion ($A7.6 billion), so it would be surprising to say the least if Facebook had to pay any more than that in Australia, let alone more than $500 billion.
The social media platform is publicly listed on the NASDAQ and closed Monday with a market capitalisation of $US483.15 billion ($A733.82 billion).
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The lawsuit against Facebook comes after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced in October it would be suing Google for allegedly misleading users over how their location data was collected and used.
Both Facebook and Google featured heavily in the ACCC’s digital platforms inquiry last year.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company had “actively engaged” with the investigation by the Office of Australian Information Commissioner “over the past two years”.
“We’ve made major changes to our platforms in consultation with international regulators to restrict the information available to app developers, implement new governance protocols and build industry-leading controls to help people protect and manage their data,” the spokesperson said, but they were unable to comment further given the case is now before the court.
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