INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Facebook has reached a settlement with the U.K
data protection watchdog, the ICO, agreeing to pay in full a £500,000 (~$643K) fine following the latter investigating into the Cambridge
Analytica data misuse scandal.
As part of the arrangement, Facebook has agreed to drop its legal appeal against the penalty
But under the terms of the settlement it has not admitted any liability in relation to paying the fine, which is the maximum possible
monetary penalty under the applicable U.K
(The Cambridge Analytica scandal predates Europe GDPR framework coming into force.)
Facebook appeal against the ICO penalty was focused on a
claim that there was no evidence that U.K
Facebook users& data had being mis-used by Cambridge Analytica .
But there a further twist here in that the company had secured a win, from
a first-tier legal tribunal — which held in June that &procedural fairness and allegations of bias& on the part of the ICO should be
considered as part of its appeal.
The decision required the ICO to disclose materials relating to its decision-making process regarding the
The ICO, evidently less than keen for its emails to be trawled through, appealed last month
It now withdrawing the action as part of the settlement, Facebook having dropped its legal action.
In a statement laying out the bare bones
of the settlement reached, the ICO writes: &The Commissioner considers that this agreement best serves the interests of all UK data subjects
Both Facebook and the ICO are committed to continuing to work to ensure compliance with applicable data protection laws.&
An ICO spokeswoman
did not respond to additional questions — telling us it does not have anything further to add than its public statement.
As part of the
settlement, the ICO writes that Facebook is being allowed to retain some (unspecified) &documents& that the ICO had disclosed during the
appeal process — to use for &other purposes,& including for furthering its own investigation into issues around Cambridge
Analytica.
&Parts of this investigation had previously been put on hold at the ICO direction and can now resume,& the ICO adds.
Under the
terms of the settlement the ICO and Facebook each pay their own legal costs
The £500K fine is not kept by the ICO but is paid to HM Treasury consolidated fund.
Commenting in a statement, deputy commissioner, James
Dipple-Johnstone, said:
The ICO welcomes the agreement reached with Facebook for the withdrawal of their appeal against our Monetary Penalty
Notice and agreement to pay the fine
The ICO main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm
Protection of personal information and personal privacy is of fundamental importance, not only for the rights of individuals, but also as we
now know, for the preservation of a strong democracy
We are pleased to hear that Facebook has taken, and will continue to take, significant steps to comply with the fundamental principles of
With this strong commitment to protecting people personal information and privacy, we expect that Facebook will be able to move forward and
learn from the events of this case.
In its own supporting statement, attached to the ICO remarks, Harry Kinmonth, director and associate
general counsel at Facebook, added:
We are pleased to have reached a settlement with the ICO
As we have said before, we wish we had done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015
We made major changes to our platform back then, significantly restricting the information which app developers could access
Protecting people information and privacy is a top priority for Facebook, and we are continuing to build new controls to help people protect
and manage their information
The ICO has stated that it has not discovered evidence that the data of Facebook users in the EU was transferred to Cambridge Analytica by
However, we look forward to continuing to cooperate with the ICO wider and ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for
political purposes.
A charitable interpretation of what gone on here is that both Facebook and the ICO have reached a stalemate where their
interests are better served by taking a quick win that puts the issue to bed, rather than dragging on with legal appeals that might also
have raised fresh embarrassments.
That quick wins in terms of PR (a paid fine for the ICO; and drawing a line under the issue for Facebook),
as well as (potentially) useful data to further Facebook internal investigation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Good luck with anyone
in the UK suing Facebook for anything to do with Cambridge Analytica after today.
— Tim Turner (@tim2040) October 30, 2019
We don&t know
exactly what it getting from the ICO document stash
But we do know it facing a number of lawsuits and legal challenges over the scandal in the U.S.
The ICO announced its intention to fine
Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal just over a year ago.
In March 2018 it raided the U.K
offices of the now defunct data company, after obtaining a warrant, taking away hard drives and computers for analysis
It had also earlier ordered Facebook to withdraw its own investigators from the company offices.
Speaking to a U.K
parliamentary committee a year ago the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, and deputy Dipple-Johnstone, discussed their (then)
ongoing investigation of data seized from Cambridge Analytica — saying they believed the Facebook user data set the company had
misappropriated could have been passed to more entities than were publicly known.
The ICO said at that point it was looking into &about half
a dozen& entities.
It also told the committee it had evidence that, even as recently as early 2018, Cambridge Analytica might have retained
some of the Facebook data — despite having claimed it had deleted everything.
&The follow up was less than robust
And that one of the reasons that we fined Facebook £500,000,& Denham also said at the time.
Some of this evidence will likely be very
useful for Facebook as it prepares to defend itself in legal challenges related to Cambridge Analytica
As well as aiding its claimed platform audit — when, in the wake of the scandal, Facebook said it would run a historical app audit and
challenge all developers who it determined had downloaded large amounts of user data.
The audit, which it announced in March 2018,
apparently remains ongoing.
Facebook denies making contradictory claims on Cambridge Analytica and other ‘sketchy& apps
