Facebook under fire on two continents for personal data leaks

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in the U.S. and Britain demanded Sunday that Facebook explain how a political data firm with links to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was able to harvest private data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without the social network alerting those whose data was taken.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went so far as to demand that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, appear before her panel to explain “what Facebook knew about misusing data from 50 million Americans in order to target political advertising and manipulate voters.”

The calls followed reports Saturday in The New York Times and The Observer of London that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm founded by Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, had used the Facebook data to develop methods that it claimed could identify the personalities of individual U.S. voters and influence their behaviour. The firm’s socalled psychographic modelling underpinned its work for the Trump campaign in 2016, though many have questioned the effectiveness of its techniques.

But Facebook did not inform users whose data had been harvested. The lack of disclosure could violate laws in Britain and in many U.S. states.

In Britain, Damian Collins, a Conservative lawmaker who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into fake news and Russian meddling in Britain’s referendum to leave the European Union, said this weekend that he would call Facebook back to testify (it already testified in February). But, Collins said, this time he would insist that the social media giant send Zuckerberg or a senior executive to appear.

“It is not acceptable that they have previously sent witnesses who seek to avoid answering difficult questions, by claiming not to know the answers,” Collins said in a statement. “This also creates a false reassurance that Facebook’s stated policies are always robust and effectively policed.”

On Saturday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said she will investigate.

Also Saturday, the two top congressional Democrats leading inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election — Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and

Rep. Adam Schiff of California — called for investigations of the Facebook data leak.

Paul Grewal, a vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said in a statement Sunday that the company was looking into whether the data in question still existed.

“That is where our focus lies as we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information,” he said.