Israel to also investigate possible Facebook privacy breaches
Privacy Protection Authority announces opening of administrative investigation regarding alleged improper use of Israeli users' personal data in breach of Israeli law; such personal information may have been collected on Facebook by Cambridge Analytica, embroiled in a worldwide scandal also involving President Trump's election campaign.
The Israeli Privacy Protection Authority (formerly ILITA) informed Facebook Thursday that it had opened an administrative investigation into its activities, following publications on the transfers of personal data from Facebook to the Cambridge Analytica company, and the possibility of other Privacy Law infringements regarding Israelis.
According to the Israeli Privacy Law, personal data may only be used to the purpose for which it was given, with the consent of the individual.
The authority will therefore investigate whether personal data of Israeli citizens was illegally used in a way that infringes upon their right to privacy and the provisions of the Israeli Privacy Law.
In Facebook's instance, the investigation will be an administrative enforcement procedure that may include sanctions in the form of fines, instructions on remedying flaws or a demand to provide reports on actions already undertaken. Information stemming from the investigation will be made public at its conclusion, possibly opening the door to class action suits on the matter.
The social network entered a tailspin this week after it came to light Cambridge Analytica collected personal data on tens of millions of its users.
Also Thursday, British police removed cordons around the London headquarters of Cambridge Analytica after they deemed a suspicious package that sparked a security alert to be safe.
The police had earlier closed roads and evacuated the building after receiving reports of a package at the offices of the London political consultancy.
"The package was assessed. It was deemed not to be suspicious. Police cordons have now been removed," the police said.
The London-based political consultancy has been at the center of a storm this week after a whistleblower said the company had paid an academic to harvest the data of 50 million Facebook users to build profiles of American voters before the 2016 US election.
MK Revital Swid (Zionist Union), deputy chairperson of the Knesset's Lobby for Virtual Space and Social Networks, commented on the administrative investigation and said it was merely a "finger in the dam of the loss of the right to privacy, a dam that has long since burst."
"What we demand of banks and beauticians we must also demand from Facebook—a company hoarding information about us. Facebook and other web giants conduct themselves in a lawless no man's land. They collect information, store it and then sell it off to the highest bidder," she accused.
"But while anyone owning a database must meet the legal and administrative requirements and stiff technological standards meant to allow to safeguard the information," the MK continued, "Facebook and its compatriots dodge (the requirements) under the claim they are not 'based in Israel.'"
According to Swid, "A person's right to have his personal information safeguarded must be anchored as a basic right. Anyone in possession of personal information should be subjected not only to Israeli law, but also be limited in transferring the information, and it should be ascertained that any such transference will be transparent and minimal.
"I have therefore contacted the attorney general (Wednesday) demanding to apply the Privacy Law and related regulations to web juggernauts' databases. The Justice Ministry must change tack and realize that a company operating in Israel in Hebrew and raking in profits must be subjected to Israeli law."
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg breaks silence
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided his first public comment on the biggest controversy in the company's history Wednesday. In a post uploaded to the social network, Zuckerberg delineated a timeline of the events leading to the privacy of millions of users being compromised—all under Facebook's watchful eye.
Zuckerberg wrote, "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again.
"The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it."
The company's CEO then went on to explain that leveraging users' personal data began by a "Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan, who in 2013 created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data."
Kogan, it was later discovered, then traded the data to Cambridge Analytica in contravention of Facebook's terms of use.
"In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica," Zuckerberg wrote. "It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent, so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications."
"This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it," Zuckerberg said.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who worked for Cambridge Analytica, recently exposed the company's methods of operation in spying after web users for its clients' political ends.
According to Facebook's post on the company's page, Cambridge Analytica insisted that it was utilizing a basic psychological quiz to analyze personality, when in fact they were tracking the positions of the person taking the quiz.
Among the company's clients were the "yes" campaign for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign. An investigative report aired this week on British Channel Four showed that the company used Israeli and British spies to swing elections around the world and to disseminate false information.
Reuters contributed to this report.
