Alleged refusal to respect privacy – despite GDPR laws
Facebook stands accused of disregarding mobile phone users’ rights in a UK court action that could have wider implications for Europe’s telecoms industry and publishers. UK legal campaigner Tanya O’Carroll launched a lawsuit on Monday against Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, alleging breaches of UK data laws by failing to respect her right to demand Facebook stop collecting and processing her data. O’Carroll has lodged a claim in the high court and is awaiting Meta’s acknowledgment of the claim and confirmation that the company intends to defend it, followed by a hearing and court judgment. O’Carroll is not seeking damages but a yes/no decision on whether she can opt out of being profiled for advertising purposes.
O’Carroll, a senior fellow at Foxglove, a UK legal campaign group that focuses on accountability in the technology industry, is claiming that Facebook has breached article 21 (2) of UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives individuals the right to protest against the processing of their personal data for marketing purposes. “We know that privacy is important to our users and we take this seriously,” said a spokesperson. Meta/Facebook claimed that software routines like its Privacy Check-up and Ads Preferences are there to help people, by showing them what data people have shared. Some critics say these are not user-friendly tools, but Meta claimed that they show how people can exercise control over the type of ads they see.
Tanya Carroll is challenging the entire basis of the Facebook business model., according to Jonathan Compton, partner at DMH Stallard. “If the court upholds her case, Ms O’Carroll may have significantly undermined Facebook’s operations in the UK and, I suspect, the EU. At first glance, it looks as if she has reasonable prospects of success,” said Compton.
After she discovered that Facebook used 700 tags to characterise her, allowing them to allocate ads relating to her O’Carroll tried to stop the profiling using the Facebook settings. Unsuccessfully, it turned out. However, the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 provides safeguards to protect peoples’ data. One of these rights is to have personal data ‘used in a way that is limited to only what is necessary’. There is a right to have data erased.
As the figurehead of a non-profit community interest group O’Carroll said a successful case could set a precedent for millions of Facebook, social media and search engine users. It would also have huge knock-on consequences for the telecoms industry and publishing groups in Europe, since the funding model of those industry’s most influential oligarchs would be severely disrupted.
“With this case, I’m really using this right that’s long been there on the law books, but has been up until now not been exercised, which is to simply say ‘I object’, and if we are successful in that then everybody will have that right,” O’Carroll told the BBC. “This case is really about us all being able to connect with social media on our own terms, and without having to essentially accept that we should be subjected to hugely invasive tracking surveillance profiling just to be able to access social media.”