UK Parliament Seizes Facebook Internal Papers

[engine]

UK Parliament appears to have become rather feisty over the lack of responses to information requests to Facebook over data sharing.
According to this report, documents siezed appear to show senior employees at FB were making decisions over privacy and data control which led to the Cambridge Analytica debacle.

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said Collins, who also chairs an inquiry into fake news. “This is an unprecedented move but it’s an unprecedented situation. We’ve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.”

[theguardian.com ]

[JS_Harris]

Do they even have legal authority to do this?

[graeme_p]

Under UK law, yes.

Its unusual to use this particular mechanism which is a last resort but, yes, they can do this.

FB deserved this: [techcrunch.com...] [bbc.co.uk...]

[motorhaven]

It's a pretty crappy thing to do Six4Three's founder. He's not the party that they have a problem with, he sued Facebook and is under court order not to give out the data, and now stands a chance of a contempt charge or worse in the USA because the UK forced him to give it. Leave it to lawmakers to stomp on the innocent, ugh.

[Shepherd]

FB deserved this

Doubleplusgood citizen.

[engine]

We'll have to see what comes of this, of course, but it really is a very unusual step. With FB it really is a big company, and, in the instance, Achilles heel springs to mind.

[graeme_p]

and now stands a chance of a contempt charge or worse in the USA because the UK forced him to give it.

Surely the US court will take into account that he was compelled to hand over the information?

[brotherhood of LAN]

MPs' fury over Mark Zuckerberg 'no-show' [bbc.co.uk]

He must be very important and busy to continually dismiss these people.

[motorhaven]

Or he knows its a no win situation either way.

[mcneely]

Or he knows its a no win situation either way.

Facebook is a no win situation all on it's own -- I don't know what's worse actually -- The constant spamvertising or that clunky whack-a-mole code they're trying to pass off as a social network or maybe that constant nag-bot wanting me to spend 5 bucks so my ad can be shown to 3,000 irrelevant people on the other side of the world.
Facebook still runs on the old m. domain for mobile if any of you are wondering how far behind the times it really is - Facebook is second only to vistaprint's site builder writes of 1999.
From this point moving forward, Facebook's in the big money grab territory - Grab it and go, because surely we (Facebook) can't be bothered to reinvest in even our own code, much less in trying to repair any privacy violations ...

It's a mess, and I don't think even Facebook's top engineers can handle it all. These past 18 months have been a real roller coaster ride.

I've got friends with the Facebook App on their phones, and I get to sit back and watch all of the garbage trickle down from their phones via my Facebook PM's from Apps I've never heard of before and the friend that has the phone has no idea it's even going on ---

As soon as you let an App ... any App ... have access to your contacts on your phone, all bets related to security and privacy are off.

At this stage of the Facebook game, even MySpace is starting to look good again - and that's pretty sad.

[engine]

This story is really about how complicit FB and its executives were in the privacy issue around Cambridge Analytica.
How much did they know, what did they know, what did they do with their knowledge, etc., and what laws might have been broken.

[motorhaven]

Facebook is a no win situation all on it's own

I 100% agree with this. Mark put himself in this position. What I meant was that he's going to be hammered by the EU whether or not he shows up. (And rightfully so, I believe he's complicit in a great many wrongs at Facebook).

It's like being guilty of a crime in the USA. There's nothing to be gained by talking to police directly - the person should have their attorney handle all interaction. Mark, by sending a proxy, avoids saying anything which can be later used against him. He can't avoid being called to testify before Congress here since he's on US soil, but in that case, he could always assert his right to not answer questions. It didn't turn out well for him the last time he talked before them.