Zuckerberg faces US Senators over private data breaches
WASHINGTON: One Silicon Valley star witness, 44 mediahungry senators, and five hours of mostly tough questions and often ambiguous answers.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially ran the congressional gauntlet yesterday during a joint committee hearing in which nearly half the Senate grilled the social media executive about his platform’s ability to protect Americans’ personal data and ferret out foreign meddling in US elections.
Zuckerberg would not commit to a proposal that would require the social media giant to automatically let users ‘‘opt out’’ of having their data collected or shared. Right now, users must manually choose privacy settings that block such data sharing.
‘‘I think that’s the right principle,’’ Zuckerberg said in response to a question about optout legislation.
‘‘The details matter.’’
That was Zuckerberg’s answer to many questions about what kind of regulation of legislation Facebook would support to beef up Americans’ privacy in their use of social media platforms.
He said Facebook officials were working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election but gave no details.
He was unable to answer questions about how the company would stop foreign meddling in US elections and the extent to which the Russians used Facebook to sway the 2016 elections.
Senator Richard Blumenthal caught Zuckerberg flatfooted when he asked about the terms of service that Facebook agreed to when it allowed Alexander Kogan to download Facebook users’ data with an app he developed. Kogan and that app were at the centre of the data breach, as he later sold that users’ data to Cambridge Analytica. — TCA