At PL&B’s 36th Annual International Conference, journalist Carole Cadwalladr (The Observer) and whistleblower Chris Wylie (Head of Insight and Emerging Technologies, H&M) sat down with Stephen Bonner (Deputy Commissioner, ICO) and Nana Botchorichvili (IDEA Avocats) to discuss what has changed since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal. Michael McEvoy (Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia) chaired the session.

McEvoy opened with his recollection of the events of the CA scandal and how he came to work on this issue at the UK ICO – after Cadwalladr had revealed that CA had harvested personal data of millions of Facebook users for micro-targeted political advertising without their consent. McEvoy noted that a key part of this story was due to Wylie’s whistleblowing as an ex-insider of CA and a key operative for the nefarious business practices at the company. McEvoy highlighted how the ramifications of the case were still permeating throughout the legal world.