April 3rd, 2015
Facebook (again) struggles with Privacy
By: Fernanda Echavarría
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-confronts-european-probes-1427975994
http://www.technewstoday.com/22579-facebook-probed-in-europe-over-privacy-issues/
http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-privacy-probes-ramp-up-in-europe/
Privacy regulators from Spain, France and Italy have recently joined Dutch, Germany and Belgium authorities in the investigations of Facebook privacy practices. In particular, the group of European regulators would be investigating the use of the worldwide famous “Like” feature to track user’s habits, as well as the collection techniques and aggregation of data for the purposes of targeted advertisement.
Facebook is not the only U.S. located company under examination by European authorities (see Google, Apple and Amazon). The differences between U.S. and E.U. Privacy Law have created an increasing tension that is screaming for legislative harmonization action. Previous attempts in this regard, such as the Safe Harbor Agreement, have proven not enough in the data protection current state of affairs. Notwithstanding how difficult it may seem to achieve, an organized set of rules promoting proper balance between privacy rights and development of new businesses in the U.S. and Europe, should be a primary concern of the authorities at both sides of the Atlantic. Countries outside Europe and the U.S. usually follow one or the other approach, so the lack of a uniformed legislation will have effects all around the world.
As for the current investigation, and notwithstanding Facebook’s allegation of lack of jurisdiction from the group of European privacy regulators, we will have to see if Facebook will wait for an official resolution of such group or, as we have seen in previous occasions, e.g. Belgium investigations and introduction by Facebook of the timeline feature, if it will attempt to avoid possible fines by adapting its practices to comply with the concerns of the European watchdogs.
But European privacy issues are not the only privacy related problems faced by the social network company. This week a man sued Facebook in the U.S. claiming that the facial recognition system used to tag persons in photos would be illegal under Illinois Privacy Law. Considering the allegations, the problem appears to be that there is no option to delete the information collected by Facebook when a person is tagged to a photo. Even if the person is no longer tagged, after the user takes the relevant steps in that sense on its privacy settings, Facebook still has that data and the user cannot erase it.
The multiple uses and features and the constant development of Facebook, and social media in general, will continue to raise privacy issues as the ones mentioned here. It is to be expected that the relevant authorities will face these new challenges on time and properly balancing all interest at play.