Facebook appeal over Cambridge Analytica data rejected by Australian court as ‘divorced from reality’

Facebook has lost a major battle with the Australian regulator over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, after a court dismissed the social media giant's claim that it neither conducts business nor collects personal information in the country.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is suing Facebook, now Meta, for breaching the privacy of more than 300,000 Australian Facebook users in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, exposed more than four years ago by the Guardian.

Throughout the 2010s, consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent using a personality test app called This is Your Digital Life. The information was then used predominantly for political advertising, including to assist the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump.

Only 53 people in Australia installed the This is Your Digital Life app, according to court documents, but it was able to harvest the data of about 311,127 people.

The OAIC was slow to launch a case against Facebook for the privacy breaches compared with other jurisdictions, announcing proceedings in 2020 in the federal court, where it alleged "serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy in contravention of Australian privacy law".

It sought to sue the parent company Facebook Inc, based in the US, and its Irish subsidiary, Facebook Ireland Limited.

Facebook Inc has since attempted to have the case against it effectively thrown out, arguing it does not carry out business or collect or hold personal information in Australia, so it cannot be sued under the country's privacy laws.