A flood of criticism rained down on the US social media giant, Facebook, on Friday, following revelations in The New York Times and The Observer, regarding the use of the personal data of millions of users by the Cambridge Analytica company. On Monday 19 March, several representatives from the European institutions called on Facebook to demonstrate what it is doing to resolve this affair.
Cambridge Analytica is a data analysis company that worked for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. It has been accused of recovering the data of 50 million users and using it to develop a software that can help forecast the vote of US voters.
The ‘thisisyourdigitallife' application is at the source of this affair. It was developed by Aleksandr Kogan, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, who said on Facebook that it was “a research application used by psychologists”. His developer, however, had in actual fact tricked Facebook and breached its policy by transmitting data recovered by way of this application, to Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie, the CEO of the Eunoia Technologies company.
Around 270,000 people have downloaded this application, thereby allowing its developer to access some of their personal information. In 2015, Facebook became aware of this and withdrew the application from its platform. In a press release, the social network argued that at the time it had demanded certification for all data that had been destroyed.
Nonetheless, Facebook indicated that it had only received proof a few days ago that the data in question had in fact been destroyed and therefore on Friday decided to “suspend” access of Cambridge Analytica and the individuals involved in the social network on its behalf.
Although Aleksandr Kogan breached the platform user conditions, Facebook rejects the description of “data violation”. On Saturday in a press release, Paul Grewal, the deputy legal director at Facebook stated, “The claim that this is a data breach is completely false. Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone involved gave their consent. People knowingly provided their information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked”.
At the EU, the first reactions came in fast and furiously. Speaking on Sunday evening on Twitter, the European Commissioner for Justice, Věra Jourová, stated, “Horrifying, if confirmed. Personal data of 50 million Facebook users could be so easily mishandled & used for political purpose. We don't want this in the EU”. The President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, also declared on Twitter that, “Allegations of misuse of Facebook user data is an unacceptable violation of our citizens’ privacy rights” and announced that the European Parliament intended to launch an investigation. Claude Moraes (S&D, United Kingdom), the Chairperson of Parliament's civil liberties committee called on Facebook to explain itself to MEPs.
During a visit to Washington, which comes to an end on Wednesday, Věra Jourová said that she intended to discuss this case with Facebook directors and the US authorities. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)