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The controversy over Facebook data gathering has a Canadian backstory far older than the adventures of the young whistleblower from British Columbia who worked for the contentious firm Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is admitting his platform failed to protect the data of its users and is planning to audit all apps that "had access to large amounts of information" before it introduced restrictions in 2014.

The Canadian data scientist who admitted to helping political parties score electoral wins by exploiting the private information of millions of Facebook users also oversaw a short-lived pilot project for the federal Liberals shortly after the 2015 election.

"Let's say he had boundary issues on data even back then," said the insider, who noted that Christopher Wylie's descriptions of his methods in media reports sounded familiar. "He effectively pitched an earlier version of exactly this to us back in 2009 and we said, 'No.'"