The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has asked a federal court to find that Facebook has violated Canadian privacy laws, according to a statement from its services released on Thursday.
Commissioner Daniel Therrien is asking a federal judge to issue an order “requiring Facebook to put in place effective, precise and easily accessible measures to obtain and keep the valid consent of all users,” the statement said.
The Commissioner also claims that the social network is prohibited from “continuing to collect, use and communicate the personal information of users” in violation of Canadian laws.
The request, which marks the start of formal legal action against Facebook in Canada, follows an investigation last year by this federal police station and its counterpart in British Columbia.
It had “revealed serious shortcomings in the social media giant’s handling of personal information” in Canada, the press release said.
The investigation followed a lawsuit accusing the global social network of allowing a private company to use an application to obtain user personal information, before communicating it to other organizations like Cambridge Analytica.
The British firm found itself at the heart of a scandal for having used the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, in favor of Donald Trump.
Facebook challenged the findings of the Canadian investigation and refused to act on the recommendations to correct the deficiencies noted, notes the commissioner.
Legal proceedings against Facebook in Canada “could be lengthy, and the timing will depend on various procedural issues,” he warns.
Other countries have already launched lawsuits against Facebook, including the United States, where the network was fined a record $ 5 billion in late July for failing to protect the privacy of its users.
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