Perspectives | By Sally Vazquez Castellanos
By Sally Vazquez Castellanos
Published on Saturday, October 24, 2026, at 3:49 p.m.
“…what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.” (Audible)
—Not to be confused with my own special closet, or maybe …
Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis invoked this warning in their landmark 1890 essay, The Right to Privacy. Writing about photography, newspapers, and emerging technologies, they recognized how new methods of collecting and circulating information could intrude upon private life. Their concern resonates more than a century later: technology can expose personal information far beyond the circumstances in which it was originally shared. See Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, 195 (1890). (law.louisville.edu)
Cambridge Analytica brought that concern into the digital age. The scandal revealed how a personality quiz—and the connections between Facebook friends—could become a pathway to collecting personal information for political profiling.
What happened? Beginning in 2014, researcher Aleksandr Kogan collected Facebook information through a personality quiz app known as thisisyourdigitallife. Facebook’s permissions at the time allowed the app to obtain certain information about participants’ Facebook friends, reaching millions of people who had never taken the quiz. Information was then provided to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, for voter profiling and targeting. The Federal Trade Commission later found that Cambridge Analytica used deceptive practices to obtain personal information. (about.fb.com, ftc.gov, ftc.gov)
How many people were affected? Facebook estimated that information belonging to up to 87 million people, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. This was an estimate of potentially affected users, not proof that every person’s information was used in a particular political campaign. (about.fb.com)
Why did it matter? The scandal became a major public controversy in March 2018 following investigative reporting and whistleblower disclosures. It exposed a fundamental problem with digital consent: someone’s information could be collected because a friend installed an app. Regulators examined how Facebook’s safeguards and oversight failed to prevent inappropriate access and subsequent misuse. (priv.gc.ca)
The concern extended beyond disclosure. Personal information could be analyzed to infer characteristics and help target political messages. That raises a different privacy question: even when information is never published for everyone to see, who may use it to draw conclusions about us—and for what purpose? The FTC’s findings established deceptive data collection for voter profiling and targeting; they did not establish that Cambridge Analytica determined an election’s outcome. (ftc.gov)
What were the consequences? In 2019, the FTC found that Cambridge Analytica violated Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and ordered it to delete deceptively obtained Facebook information and associated work product. Separately, Facebook agreed to a $5 billion penalty and substantial privacy restrictions to resolve allegations that it violated a 2012 FTC privacy order. That settlement addressed broader Facebook privacy practices; it was not compensation paid to individual Cambridge Analytica victims. (ftc.gov, ftc.gov)
For Perspectives, Warren and Brandeis’s warning provides a useful starting point. Today, private information need not be proclaimed from the rooftops to affect someone’s life. It can move quietly between organizations, become the basis for a profile, and shape the messages a person receives. Meaningful privacy protection therefore requires accountability for collection, sharing, inference, and use—not simply assurances at the moment someone clicks “agree.”
Sources
- Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy
, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890).
- Federal Trade Commission, Opinion and Order Against Cambridge Analytica
(Dec. 6, 2019).
- Federal Trade Commission, Facebook Privacy Settlement
(July 24, 2019).
- Facebook, An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook
(Apr. 4, 2018).
- Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, PIPEDA Findings No. 2019-002
(Apr. 25, 2019).
Legal disclaimer: This post provides general information and commentary, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Generative AI disclosure: Prepared with assistance from ChatGPT.