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It is not because you signed a policy that it is binding, a policy/contract must be conform to the applicable regulation. It simply can’t be judged as legitime just because a private company has made it its contractual term. There is jurisprudence on such topic as Privacy and what this ‘Facebook sharing with Third party’ can eventually become: Identity Theft.

The commissionner’s demand for conformity is completely making sense and shows that a good job has been done upstream to any future problematic. Afterall, the day where Identity Theft or other Privacy conflict would become a fact, the burden to resolve the situation and help the victims would be on the public/government’s hand, and to absorb the cost generated on the economy and on the civil service allocated to that.

Users of Facebook indeed choose to opt-in which includes their privacy policy. Should FB let Canadian users know their private data is saved on US servers and therefore not necessarily protected by FIPPA. Or, because FB is a US company, does the responsibility fall on the user? How many Canadian FB users have read the privacy policy enough to show they care in the first place?

I don’t think this has to do with any comparison to police states or Canada to China. I believe FB should give Canadian users a choice by letting them know how and where their data is available and let those users decide to close/delete their account. Or maybe the Canadian government should make this known to their citizens first, before acting on a small percentage of consumer complaints.

Overall, this should not be the Canadian governments call to regulate a US company especially when it is an opt-in site.

The protection of consumer privacy should be a priority for government. I am glad the Canadian privacy commissioner has the foresight and intelligence to see these issues and deal with them in a rational and reasonable way. It’s not like Facebook hasn’t heard similar complaints from astute users in other parts of the world, including the United States.

1. Users should have the right to own data they enter about themselves to a profile they consider their own.
2. In Canada, we have a legal tradition known as Informed Consent. That means a contract must be explicitly clear and the consumer must fully understand its terms to be valid. While it is unreasonable to expect every person who accents to every EULA and TOC has been fully briefed on the explicit details contained within, it is NOT unreasonable to expect Facebook to better explain its privacy policies.
3. Sharing private information with third party vendors or developers is a very touchy subject. In Canada, privacy laws dictate that if you share with a third party, you need to know that third party is in compliance with Canadian privacy laws. In other words, I can not share your personal information with another company unless I know they are going to remain within the law.

The Privacy Commission was reacting to a consumer complaint. As a governmental organization, it is mandated to respond to and address concerns of Canadian consumers. In responding to this specific complaint, the Privacy Commission found Facebook was not complying with Canadian law. What exactly do you think the commissioner should do in such a situation? She did her job and from I am sitting in downtown Toronto, she did it properly.

In an age punctuated with identity theft and electronic fraud, I echo Scott’s comment above,
“I think rather than looking down your nose at the Canadian government, you should be pointing your finger at the US government and asking them what they are doing to protect your privacy!”

In a nutshell, it is more about the country rather than innocent fb profiles

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I think rather than looking down your nose at the Canadian government, you should be pointing your finger at the US government and asking them what they are doing to protect your privacy!

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1) Comparing Canada to China for trying to get Facebook to close a few privacy holes is ridiculous.

2) You say that because “people are opting in and with that comes inherent risk” then (paraphrasing) Facebook should be left alone because people know what they are doing and it is their tough luck whatever happens to that information. Part of what most governments do is protect it’s citizens – despite themselves. Are you saying that citizens should not have such protection?

I am not a fan of anyone trying to regulate the Internet entirely, don’t get me wrong, but it IS good to see our government protecting citizens and keeping companies in line with our strong privacy laws. Without that kind of oversight the web would likely be rife with privacy issues, fraud, and I would hate to think of what else.

3) “So the Canadian government is now telling a private American company just how they are to conduct business to their standards?” Well yes. When countries are as close and friendly as the US and Canada are, congeniality does occur; Facebook is working with them with few problems (see http://bit.ly/iUa5o ). Every country has a right to protect its citizens’ privacy and I am glad to see that Canada has such a fine privacy rating; see the 2007 international privacy ranking http://bit.ly/V6VlH .

So, in short, I think it is great that Facebook has to bend over backwards to protect privacy and I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone (other than Facebook who probably doesn’t want to do the work) would be anything but happy about it.

Just my two bits.

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