- Parties: The appellant was the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The respondent was Facebook, Inc.

- Subject Matter: The Privacy Commissioner of Canada commenced proceedings alleging that Facebook, Inc. breached the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, 2000 (PIPEDA) through its practice of sharing users’ personal information with third-party applications hosted on its platform. The proceedings arose when the Commissioner investigated how the app “thisisyourdigitallife” scraped Facebook user data and sold the data to Cambridge Analytica Ltd. for psychographic modeling purposes between 2013–15. The Federal Court dismissed the Commissioner’s application upon finding that the Commissioner did not show that Facebook failed to obtain meaningful consent from users for disclosing their data or failed to adequately safeguard the data.

- Ruling: The appeal court ruled in the appellant’s favour and allowed the appeal. The appeal court declared that Facebook’s practices between 2013–15 breached Principle 3 under clause 4.3, Principle 7 under clause 4.7, and under s. 6.1 (once in force) of PIPEDA. The appeal court held that the Federal Court erred in analyzing meaningful consent and safeguarding under PIPEDA. The appeal court concluded that Facebook breached PIPEDA’s requirement of obtaining meaningful consent from users before data disclosure and failed in its obligation to safeguard user data.

- Date: The hearing was set on Feb. 21, 2024. The court released its decision on Sept. 9, 2024.

- Venue: This was a federal case before the Federal Court of Appeal.

- Amount: The appeal court awarded costs in an unspecified amount.