Italy Facebook user data same as global (3)

(ANSA) - Brussels, March 20 - 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.