Published On : March 21, 2018

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The Trudeau government has turned its attention to the spy agency to be assured about the privacy rights of the people of Canada if they are being secured owing to news of Facebook data being subjugated for political gains.

With regards to this, Scott Brison, acting minister – Democratic institutions also mentioned Tuesday that he would be straight in streamlining federal privacy laws to a greater extent for protecting information shared online.

Daniel Therrien – Federal privacy commissioner, in the meantime, officially opened an investigation to find out if any personal info of the people of Canada has been compromised by unofficial access of Facebook profiles of users.

Brison was replying to openings by Christopher Wylie – Canadian data expert, who is condemning Cambridge Analytica – data analytics firm for obtaining data illegally from Facebook users in order to help aid Donald Trump's movement efforts in advance of the U.S. election.

Policy initiators around the globe are contending with the information succeeding media reports that information collected by Facebook and different social media companies is being used for elections.

Even in the Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Cambridge Analytica was hired; as stated by the recent reports by The New York Times and The Observer of London. This bluntly opens that private information of 50 million people on Facebook is being compromised.

Wylie, who has employed at the federal Liberals some years ago, has stated that information was being taken for profiling voters. But the company denies any offense.

Facebook’s unproven data harvesting has created rifts in Canada as the country is about to take part in polls this year owing to federal election sitting for 2019.

"We've reached out as a department of democratic institutions to (the Communications Security Establishment) to ask them to do an analysis of these recent events and to consider other ways that we can further strengthen the protection of our democratic institutions,'' Brison mentioned.

"Social media platforms have a responsibility to protect the privacy and personal data of citizens, and to protect the integrity of our electoral system where they operate,''

Brison added that he arranged meeting with CSE and the CSIS – Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the national domestic spy service to discuss on worldwide issues and threats to elections as well as for information security of users.

Brison stated that he is ready to introduce strong privacy laws if required.

The government is also keen to take measurements if the information has been breached. Charlie Angus – MP told Monday that Social Media giant like Facebook if is distorting information pre-elections, they must be held accountable. He also stated that Facebook has an official international responsibility to secure data of users from being used for negative purposes.

"Facebook seems to have a very cavalier attitude towards the protection of private information,'' Angus told.

"What's come out of the allegations against Cambridge Analytica was the ability to subvert Facebook to use the stories, the chats that people have, to create the perfect propaganda machine.''

Angus specified that now is the time to create a global framework for dealing with social media platforms that have enormous amounts of personal information. He also said that PM Justin Trudeau should point out the issue in G7 summit in June.

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