Canada: Appealed Federal Court dismissal of case against Facebook for alleged privacy violations

On 12 May 2023, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) appealed the dismissal by the Federal Court of a 2019 data protection investigation into Facebook that was conducted jointly by the OPC and and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia. The Court had dismissed the case on the basis that the OPC had not provided sufficient evidence to prove its allegations. The OPC's allegations followed an investigation of a PIPEDA complaint, claiming that "thisisyourdigitallife", a third-party application, had obtained data through Facebook and subsequently disclosed it to "Cambridge Analytica", a British research firm. Facebook was alleged to have violated Canadian privacy laws and failed to protect the personal information of its users in a number of ways. These findings were disputed by Facebook.