Facebook's Triple Woes Over Cambridge Analytica Data Harvesting Scandal

Earlier this week, Techdirt wrote about a defeat for Facebook in the Irish courts. In fact, the case in question is not about Facebook itself, but about transatlantic data transfers. Facebook will certainly have some problems if the EU's top court goes on to rule against the Privacy Shield framework -- the real issue here -- but it won't be alone. Moreover, if that were the company's only problem, it probably wouldn't cause Mark Zuckerberg to lose much sleep. However, it is far from his only headache. Recently, no less than three decisions specifically about Facebook were handed down, all related to the by-now infamous Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal, and all going the wrong way for Zuckerberg.

As Bloomberg reports, a San Francisco federal judge indicated he won't dismiss lawsuits brought against Facebook on behalf of tens of millions of users. They blame the company for allowing their private information obtained from their friends' accounts to be shared with Cambridge Analytica:

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria is overseeing dozens of suits alleging users have no real control over their personal information, and that the company has repeatedly misled users to continue mining it.

The suits have a long way to go before users stand a chance of claiming billions of dollars in damages. Chhabria isn't addressing the merits of the complaints, only deciding whether the allegations are legally sufficient to proceed. The next step will be for users to seek internal information from the company to back up their claims.

Reuters says that Facebook suffered a similar fate in Washington, D.C.:

A U.S. judge on Friday denied Facebook Inc.'s request to dismiss a lawsuit by the Washington, D.C. attorney general over the social media giant's improper sharing of 87 million users' data with British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

The U.S. capital city sued Facebook in December, accusing it of misleading users because it had known about the breach for two years before disclosing it and had allowed third-party app makers to access user information without their consent.

Around the same time, a court in Delaware was also ruling against Facebook in connection with Cambridge Analytica, reported here by Forbes:

A court in Delaware sided with Facebook shareholders who are suing the company for access to internal information that might show wrongdoing relating to the company's various privacy issues. The investors want access to emails and other documents relating to Facebook providing Cambridge Analytica with data on some 87 million users.

It's important to note that in all three cases, the rulings are preliminary, simply allowing things to proceed to a full trial. But we do have a sneak peek of what one of Facebook's main arguments might be. Speaking before the judge in San Francisco, a lawyer for Facebook claimed as follows:

"There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy," on Facebook or any other social media site, company attorney Orin Snyder told U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.

A month before that interesting statement, Mark Zuckerberg was telling everyone that "The future is private". Given what one of his lawyers is now insisting in court, that seems to imply that Facebook's social network is not the future.

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