Facebook continues to make headlines around the world, last week its Founder Mark Zuckerberg spent Tuesday and Wednesday last week speaking with the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on privacy and user data. This of course is all due to the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal where it has now become public that over 87 million uses data (mainly in the Unites States) was leaked. Previously Facebook disclosed that closer to 50 million user’s data was leaked.

The People vs Facebook

The world is still awaiting to see what the outcome of “The People vs Facebook” will be, but there was a time when Facebook did have to bow down to the will of the Canadian government and adhere to the ruling from The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and its then head Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada.  Back in 2012, the Privacy office took its role very seriously as it looked to protect and enforce protection of Canadian consumers. As it states on their website, “The Privacy Commissioner of Canada is an Agent of Parliament whose mission is to protect and promote privacy rights.”

Protecting the citizens is exactly what it once did when the Privacy Commissioner took on Facebook and made it change user privacy features for Canadians.  This also ensured that any user of Facebook, including those in the United States and other parts of the world were also protected from their privacy being impacted by Facebook, or any organization that had access to is users private data.  Jennifer Stoddart actions were a very big deal back then and made headlines around the world, maybe it is time to bring her back to help protect consumers.