On the heels of eyebrow-raising allegations against Facebook in the United States and a six-hour shutdown of social media platforms operated by the company this week, the Jamaican Government is being urged to move faster in its preparation for enforcement of the Data Protection Act 2020.

The suggestion was made by local attorney Roderick Gordon, who specialises in technology. He also argued that it is now time for Jamaicans to start regarding their data as their property and to protect it as they would any other possession. Additionally, Gordon recommended that people begin changing their passwords for the accounts which may be linked to credit cards and other services.

“We really need to jealously guard it. Companies make hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in selling data and profiles of data subjects, whether named or not. They would send a data set of a particular age group in Kingston that shops online. Many websites all over the world would be interested in getting that data. We need to start to understand there is tremendous value to that data and that we have the constitutional right to privacy under our constitution,” he said.

“I would encourage the Government to be as efficient as possible, particularly in these times when so many people are working from home and where COVID-19 has transformed and accelerated the speed of digital transformation, where so many companies do businesses online,” Gordon said, pointing out that not much is known about the progress businesses are making to ensure they are ready for when the Act becomes effective in 2022.

Gordon likened the Data Protection Act to the Road Traffic Act which, he said, has significant fines and punishment but are currently laws that “cannot bite”.

“The Act itself provides for a grace period of two years for companies and those who have access to our data to get themselves in shape to ensure they are complying with the Act. Even that grace period has not yet started. If someone says it lacks teeth right now, I would not say that, because it has significant fines and penalties and people can go to jail. It does have teeth, but it just can’t yet bite,” Gordon said.

He added that, “if data breaches were to occur, persons wouldn’t be able to bring any complaints to an information commissioner or anyone under the data protection law as it currently stands”.

On Monday hundreds of millions of people were unable to access Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp for more than six hours, underscoring the world’s reliance on platforms owned by the Silicon Valley giant.

In an apologetic blog post, Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s vice-president of infrastructure, said that day’s outage was caused by “configuration changes” on routers that coordinate network traffic between data centres.

Cyber experts think that problem boiled down to something called BGP or Border Gateway Protocol — the system the Internet uses to pick the quickest route to move packets of information around.

On Tuesday Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook, told the US Congress that it should strengthen regulation of Facebook, which she accused of aiming to constantly ramp up teens’ use of its services.

She also said that Facebook removed filters set up to sift out disinformation after the US election campaign, aiming to boost visits to its platforms.

Haugen’s testimony has fuelled one of Facebook’s most serious crises yet, and prompted a denial from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said in a post on his account that her claim the company prioritises profit over safety was “just not true”.

Locally, Anthony Clayton, a professor of sustainable development at The University of the West Indies, Mona, said Haugen’s testimony “was quite devastating” and likened it to revelations many years ago that the tobacco industry was concealing evidence that tobacco causes cancer.

“The person giving evidence is a former Facebook data scientist and she is testifying that Facebook knowingly harms children. They know that they are leading young users towards harmful content and they are doing so because it generates revenue for them. Facebook have said for years that they do not do this, but she has produced thousands and thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents,” Clayton said.

“She copied these documents before she left the company, which have conclusively proved that Facebook had been intentionally hiding vital information about the way Facebook has been used to destabilise democracies, to deepen social divisions, and to scare young girls towards websites that encourage anorexia,” he said.

“Both the Republicans and Democrats in the US are now strongly united on the need for more effective regulation of Facebook , WhatsApp, and Instagram and may force them to break up. The evidence points out that they have behaved as an abusive monopoly,” Clayton said.

The Jamaica Observer spoke to a number of citizens in Kingston and St Andrew who said they had always suspected Facebook and other social media platforms of misconduct.

One woman, who gave her name only as Ninoya, said she stopped using Facebook for numerous reasons a few years ago and lauded Haugen for highlighting the alleged breaches.

“I stopped using my Facebook account for numerous reasons. I really like the fact the whistle-blower came out. During the pandemic a lot of things have been hidden and social media has taken part in that. Facebook has tampered with the trust of the people,” she said.

Another woman, who gave her name only as Towana, said she always knew, “ Facebook was not private or safe” for her data and that she only uses it for memes.

“Everything is easily out there on social media and everything is easy to hack.”

Another woman, Serena, shared that she is “glad they came out with the truth. We have been saying it for years and we were called conspiracy theorist. I personally was called a conspiracy theorist in saying that Facebook was using our information, in most cases without our permission. It started to become clear after they bought WhatsApp. Whenever they were accused, they always came out and said that’s not happening. As humans we are tricked to believe that we have some sort of privacy but there is nothing really private any more and that is not comforting,” Serena argued.

A man who identified himself only as Chess, said, “From ever since dem a trick wi, so mi nuh put nothing past dem. Dem will give you something weh look real and it no real. A long time dem a trick wi.”

One woman, Peta-Gaye Young, dismissed Facebook as “total rubbish”, while another, who gave her name as Jahlisa, simply saw what the company is accused of doing as “wrong”.