FB is committed to integrity of polls in India: Zuckerberg

Washington, April 11: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday his organisation was committed to ensure integrity of elections across the world, including India, as he testified before the US Congress amid a firestorm over the alleged hijacking of data of millions of Facebook users by British firm Cambridge Analytica.

“2018 is an incredibly important year for elections. Not just in the US mid- terms, but, around the world, there are important elections — in India, Brazil and Pakistan — and we want to make sure we do everything we can to protect the integrity of these polls,” he said. “These are some of the biggest issues the company has faced, and we feel a huge responsibility to get these right,” he said.

UK- based political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica is reported to have denied using data of Facebook users in India.

In its reply to the notice issued by the IT ministry, Cambridge Analytica categorically denied using any data of Indians from Facebook, said sources.

Government is now looking to issue a second notice to Facebook and CA to seek further clarifications.

However, contrary to the stand taken by CA, Facebook said that around 5.62 lakh people in India could have been impacted by the data breach undertaken alleg- edly by the political consultancy.

In March, the government had issued a notices to Facebook and CA seeking to know whether personal data of Indian voters was compromised to influence elections in the country. Facebook data breach has snowballed into a major controversy in India with main political parties BJP and Congress accusing each other of engaging services of Cambridge Analytica to influence elections in the country. Facebook has over 20 crore users in the country. It had said that globally personal information of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with CA.