There was quite a bit of chatter this week flowing from the fact Meta and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada were in the news again, this time because the federal court released a couple of decisions dealing with the entire Cambridge Analytica fiasco from a number of years ago.
In one matter, the OPC had commenced an application pursuant to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act in the hopes of obtaining a court order that would have compelled Meta to implement its recommendations. The OPC, however, was not able to convince the judge such an order was warranted. The court dismissed the application for a number of reasons, but the gist of it is the judge said the OPC didn't present sufficient evidence to warrant a finding that Meta had violated the PIPEDA.
The other matter was an application for judicial review brought by Meta against the OPC. They cited a number of grounds for why they felt the OPC lacked jurisdiction to even investigate in the first place. Meta was late to bring their application and, on these issues, the court ended up siding with the OPC.
There's already a fair amount of commentary on these two cases, with people providing their own take. David Fraser has a couple of YouTube videos and Teressa Scassa was also quick to put out a thoughtful blog post.
Maybe Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne will share his thoughts on this at the IAPP Canada Symposium in May when he delivers the Commissioner's Annual Address or when he participates in the Commissioners' Game Show. On that note, I know I mentioned it already last week, but I feel like one last warning might be in order with the conference only a month away. It is likely going to sell out, so reserve your spot quickly!