UK tells tech firms to streamline data policies as political allegations thicken
The UK government is to tell tech companies to make their data management policies easier for users to understand, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said yesterday that companies such as Facebook and Twitter were bewildering consumers with long terms and conditions about how their data is used. He wants their service agreements to fit on one page.
“People are bewildered by pages of unwieldy terms and conditions,” Mr Hancock told
The Times. “I want these boiled right down so that people can see in one glance what they’re signing up to. I want the big platforms to answer questions and demonstrate they are willing to change.”
Tech companies have come under closer scrutiny after claims last week that consultancy CA harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook accounts. The company worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 United States presidential campaign.
The UK government has summoned executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter to discuss data management.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took out fullpage advertisements in yesterday’s British newspapers, vowing to do better for social media users. “We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it,” the advertisements read.
Facebook’s share value dropped by 14 per cent after the CA revelations. Britain’s privacy watchdog said it was examining evidence gathered from a raid on CA’s London offices at the weekend.
“We will now need to assess and consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions,” the information commissioner’s office said.
On Saturday, Shahmir Sanni, a BeLeave volunteer, said the Vote Leave Brexit campaign group broke referendum rules on spending limits through additional sums to Canadian data company AggregateIQ. He told the Observer that Vote Leave used BeLeave, signing off on donation decisions contrary to Electoral Commission rules. Vote Leave denies this.
Ex-CA employee Christopher Wylie said during the Brexit referendum AggregateIQ worked “almost as an internal department of Cambridge Analytica”.
AggregateIQ denies entering into a contract with CA.