European Data Protection
Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli on Tuesday responded to a
question on whether Italian Facebook user data may have been
harvested for possible election manipulation, in the same way
that US Facebook user data was utilised in efforts to manipulate
the US elections, as recently reported in the Cambridge
Analytica data breach.
"It's not my role to investigate how this data" on Italian
Facebook users "is used in practice", Buttarelli said, adding
that the "way the (Facebook) system works is global; there isn't
a national approach".
Buttarelli added that next year's European Parliament
elections "are an important test for us all".
He said "we're not her to alarm you but the problem is real
and urgent".
Buttarelli said the EP was planning to set up a committee on
data harvesting and fake news, "to which we offer our support.
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