New revelations that Facebook shared users’ personal data liberally with a host of partner companies raises fresh questions about the privacy commitments made by the social network to its users and several world nations, including India. The latest expose will further dent Facebook’s credibility, coming after the Cambridge Analytica scandal where personal data of millions of Americans on Facebook was harvested and subsequently used by Russia to influence voter choices in the 2016 US presidential elections.

These data sharing partnerships with companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and Netflix could have violated Facebook’s agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission that prohibited sharing of user data without explicit consent. But Facebook continues to brazen it out. It says these companies were “integration” partners “helping” people access Facebook accounts, services and features on various devices, platforms and apps and thus it did not violate the FTC agreement. Like oil, personal data has become a vaunted commodity, as it helps target customers directly through aggregation of their personal preferences, consumption patterns, and social networks. No wonder that even competing companies have joined hands to share and maximise data.

Enforcing the rules of informed consent would be a win-win scenario. But to get there we need a strong data protection law. Despite the Supreme Court ruling that privacy is a fundamental right and the Justice Srikrishna committee submitting detailed recommendations and a draft bill, a legislation looks unlikely any time soon. The Srikrishna panel wanted companies to seek user consent before collection, sharing and processing of data and “explicit consent” for sensitive personal data. It also emphasised anonymisation and de-identification of collected data to prevent privacy violations. In a statutory vacuum, data companies like Facebook face little accountability. The Facebook scandal is a timely reminder to government to discuss the Srikrishna committee’s draft bill in Parliament’s winter session and elicit MPs’ views.