Friday, June 20, 2008

Ottawa law students file complaint over Facebook

Josh Visser, CTV.ca News Staff

A group of University of Ottawa law students have filed a complaint with the privacy commissioner of Canada against the social networking website Facebook.

The 35-page complaint alleges 22 separate violations of Canadian privacy laws by the California-based company under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

"To boil it down simply, it's an issue of honesty and an issue of consent," Lisa Feinberg, a University of Ottawa law student who has just completed her first year, told CTV.ca. "Facebook isn't being completely honest with its users. It presents itself as a social utility site . . . but they are actually involved in a lot of commercial activities."

Feinberg is part of a team of University of Ottawa law students who filed the complaint as part of a project developed while they were interns with the university's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, led by Philippa Lawson.

Read the whole article here.

Good on these guys. I happen to hate Facebook. I'm on it, due to some distinct family pressure, and an innate desire to track down some specific friends, but I always worry about people knowing a bit too much about me and my family.

2 comments:

  1. You know, just another example of the "new society" where everyone needs to be protected from their own stupidity.

    The service agreement you sign on with basically gives them authority to use the information - and, frankly, if you don't bother to read or understand the terms of participation - well, I for one don't want to pay the Canadian government to hold you or your child's hand to protect you from your own ignorance.

    Freedom, in a society, means freedom to be stupid. Every day, the government finds new and novel ways of taking tax dollars that the average person pays too much of and wasting them on frivolous exercises, usually, to help protect someone from being an idiot.

    I'd prefer to spend less tax dollars, and let people make their beds and they lie in them, thank-you very much.

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  2. Anonymous7:28 pm

    I say shut facebook down..I don't want those Nazis down in the states to have any information about me...

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