Facebook bid to duck Australia privacy lawsuit rejected - Mobile World Live

Facebook bid to duck Australia privacy lawsuit rejected

15 SEP 2020

Australia’s Federal Court rejected Facebook’s efforts to fend off a lawsuit related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, ruling the country’s Information Commissioner could serve legal documents on the social media giant outside of the country.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) in March initiated legal action against Facebook, alleging the social media platform committed “serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy” in breach of the country’s law.

Following the court ruling, OAIC stated: “While these matters remain to be established at trial, the court held the matters were sufficiently arguable to justify service outside of Australia”.

The court decision relates to Facebook Inc, its main operation headquartered in the US which challenged the OAIC’s right to take legal action.

Its European unit Facebook Ireland is also in the crosshairs, but did not dispute the move.

Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk welcomed the latest court decision and said her office would continue to move forward with the case.

Facebook was hit by a major scandal in March 2018, when reports revealed the data of 50 million users was harvested by political consulting company Cambridge Analytica ahead of the US elections in 2016.

Back

Author

Joseph Waring

Joseph Waring joins Mobile World Live as the Asia editor for its new Asia channel. Before joining the GSMA, Joseph was group editor for Telecom Asia for more than ten years. In addition to writing features, news and blogs, he...

Read more

Related

Tags