Australia Files Charges Vs. Facebook For User Privacy Violation

Australia's privacy monitoring body is filing charges against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data violation -- which in 2018 became a global controversy that cost the tech giant's share price billions in losses.

Australian tech regulators alleged that Facebook shared personal information of clients with political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica without their consent.

The case filed by Australian Information Commissioner Angelene Falk accuses that Facebook violated the nation's Privacy Act of 1988 when the company revealed data of around 311,127 Australian citizens to a third-party application for an intention other than for which the data was collected.

In a statement released on its official website late Monday, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner disclosed Facebook committed serious interferences with privacy.

"Facebook's platform design meant that users were not able to exercise control and reasonable choice about how their personal data was disclosed," Information Commissioner Angelene Falk said.

The OIAC disclosed that between March 2014 and May 2015, the social network firm released the personal information of users to "This is Your Digital Life" app, without any knowledge of signing up for the app themselves.

The allegations further claims the information was revealed to the risk of being shared to Cambridge Analytica and used for purposes of political profiling, and shared to other third party clients.

The lawsuit sought unspecified amount of damages, stressing that each violation of privacy law could require a maximum penalty of $1.1 million. The penalty would amount to $529 billion if the federal court awarded the maximum for each of the 311,127 violations.

The 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was one of the largest data violations in digital media's history, and influenced the public discourse surrounding data privacy.

The "This is Your Digital Life" app was created by a software engineer called GSR who was hired by Cambridge Analytica to gather and process Facebook's user information for political ad targeting purposes.

A company representative said Facebook had engaged actively with the OIAC in the last two years as part of the probe. "We are unable to issue any further comment as the case is now before the court," the Facebook spokesperson said.

Facebook said the information of around 87 million users were affected worldwide. The Mark Zuckerberg-led firm reached a settlement with the US FTC in the case in July 2019.

In all, Facebook was accused of inappropriately revealing and sharing data that belong to 87 million users worldwide, with the survey app of now-defunct European firm Cambridge Analytica. The analytics firm's customers included the election campaign of US President Donald Trump in 2016.