Court rejects BCCLA request to intervene in OPC v. Facebook court case

A Federal Court judge has denied an application by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to intervene in an ongoing fight between the federal privacy watchdog and Facebook Inc. In a Wednesday decision, Case Management Judge Mireille Tabib wrote that the BCCLA's application is premature, and that the BCCLA failed to demonstrate that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner would not make similar arguments. The BCCLA "has not been able to satisfy the Court that the issues and arguments it proposes to make are in fact live issues in the application, such that its contribution would be useful to the determination of the Court will be required to make," Tabib wrote. Even " if they were, the BCCLA has not provided any reason to believe that they would not be adequately presented by the Privacy Commissioner." The BCCLA had applied to intervene in the case for the purpose of providing legal interpretation of the requirements of "consent" in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the federal private-sector privacy law. The judge wrote that it is not clear from the OPC's application in the case whether there "is a dispute between the parties as to the interpretation of the requirements of ‘consent’ in PIPEDA. "Further, while there is undoubtedly an issue as to whether Facebook’s conduct complied with those requirements, it is not at all clear whether the controversy lies with how to balance the competing values that underpin PIPEDA or whether it lies in the findings of fact the Privacy Commissioner drew from the factual and evidentiary record," Tabib wrote. In June, the court struck several portions of a key OPC affidavit in the case, after Facebook had argued in Oct. 2020 that the OPC failed to observe "bedrock rules" of evidence. The court battle was born out of a fight between Facebook and the OPC which dates back to April 2019, when the OPC said it would be taking the company to court to force it to abide by what it says are Facebook’s obligations under Canadian privacy law. Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said at the time that his office had determined Facebook broke Canadian law when it scraped data off millions of users on behalf of Cambridge Analytica and that the OPC would take the unprecedented move of taking a private company to Federal Court.

Court rejects BCCLA request to intervene in OPC v. Facebook court case

Brief | December 10, 2021

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Court rejects BCCLA request to intervene in OPC v. Facebook court case

Brief | December 10, 2021

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