Three federal NDP MPs are asking Canada's privacy watchdog to investigate Facebook amid concerns the social media giant is not properly securing the private data of Canadians.
On Monday NDP MPs Charlie Angus, Matthew Dubé and Brian Masse wrote to Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien in the wake of media reports alleging massive privacy breaches at Facebook.
"Over the weekend, the troubling news emerged that Cambridge Analytica, a firm owned by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and linked to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, was able to access tens of millions of Facebook users' private data without their consent for use in psychographic modelling for political purposes," the letter said.
"The reaction of Facebook's executives to this enormous breach of its users' privacy has been incredibly cavalier."
The letter goes on to ask Therrien to ensure that the information of Canadian Facebook users has not been compromised and that the social media outlet will adequately protect users going forward.
"As Members of Parliament, we will also be calling for a parliamentary investigation into this breach, as well as broader review of the practices of large tech and media platforms with regard to user privacy, data storage and market competition."
Privacy commissioner reaching out to Facebook
Daniel Therrien, Canada's privacy commissioner, said in a statement on Monday that the reports raise "serious privacy concerns."
Therrien said that his office will be contacting Facebook to seek information into whether the personal information of Canadians was affected.
He also called on the Canadian government to strengthen regulations surrounding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by political parties.
This weekend The New York Times and British newspaper The Observer reported that U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign hired Cambridge Analytica, and that the company harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users.
In a lengthy blog post, Facebook said that, while none of the information leakage was a result of a data breach, it did appear to involve the passing of personal information from Cambridge Analytica to a third party when that data was supposed to have been destroyed.
"We are suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories, including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from Facebook," the social media company's vice-president and deputy general counsel Paul Grewal said after learning of the allegations.
"Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted. We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made," said Grewal.
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