A privacy watchdog warns that political parties could start endangering the privacy of Canadians.
Elizabeth Denham, the current information commissioner for the United Kingdom, says Canadians have to start questioning political parties about how their personal data is being handled – especially in light of recent controversies involving political advertising.
“The way political parties acquire information on individuals should be transparent,” Denham said in an interview with CBC News. “Whatever’s going to happen in the future, these micro-targeting techniques are only going to get stronger.”
Denham – who previously served as British Columbia’s privacy commissioner for six years – took part in the recently concluded 18-month investigation into political advertising conducted by Cambridge Analytica. The British political consulting firm purportedly harvested data from millions of Facebook users to influence election results.
She and her team of 40 investigators sifted through 700 terabytes of data it had confiscated from Cambridge Analytica.
“We examined the practices of political parties and campaigns and we were astounded by the amount of personal information they had available, and also the lack of transparency and disregard for voters’ privacy,” Denham said, describing her team’s findings.
Denham is also inviting the rest of the international community to actively regulate the data policies of their political parties, as well as social media companies like Facebook.
“It’s a global issue and it needs a global solution. The laws have to allow for extraterritorial reach and we can’t do it alone,” she remarked.
She added that Canada could use stricter privacy laws, such as those in force in the European Union.
“In the EU, we had a once-in-a-generation reboot in improvement of our data protection laws,” she explained. “To look behind the curtain to examine algorithms, to issue sanctions and fines when companies get it wrong. These are tools that are not available to the Canadian privacy commissioner.”
While Canada’s political parties claim they have internal policies for data protection, Denham says the work is best done by a trusted third party.
“You need independent oversight of the policies that are struck by political parties, even if all the parties agree to a certain standard of practice for data and privacy,” the commissioner prefaced.
“If you don’t have independent oversight, how can the public trust what’s going on? Because then the parties are marking their own homework.”
