CCLA Intervening at SCC to Protect Privacy on Social Media Platforms

CCLA was granted leave to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in Facebook v Privacy Commissioner of Canada, SCC File No  41538, which will determine key questions regarding the scope of privacy rights on social media sites.

The appeal arises from a regulatory decision issued by the Privacy Commsisioner of Canada regarding Facebook’s disclosure of personal information to a third party application.

Squarely at issue in this appeal is the nature of consent on social media platforms. In the regualtory decision under appeal, for example, the social media platform in question disclosed sensitive personal information to a data harvesting application masquerading as an online quiz. The majority of people whose data was disclosed had never even interacted with the app in question. Their data was shared simply because one of their social media contacts had taken the quiz. Consent for most of the 600,000 people in Canada who never took the quiz but nonetheless had their personal data disclosed by Facebook is based on a general notification in the social media platform’s privacy policy.

CCLA’s intervention argues that our quasi-constitutional federal privacy law (the Persoal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) requires robust consent before a social media platform can disclose peoples’ personal data to a third party application if privacy safegaurds are to be effective in complex digital ecosystems.

In an era of ever escalating data exploitation, general statements in a privacy policy are an insufficient basis for mass disclosure of sensitive personal data.

CCLA is grateful for its excellent pro bono representation in this matter by Jennifer Hunter, Nadia Jandali Chao and Jaime McKibbon of Lerners LLP.