Calls increase for Facebook policy hearings
Senators press for inquiry into firm’s privacy protections
WASHINGTON — Congressional calls for Facebook to testify on Capitol Hill grew louder and more bipartisan Monday, as lawmakers demanded that the tech giant explain how a data analytics firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign obtained names, “likes” and other personal information on 50 million people.
The increasingly sharp and personal tenor of the requests — many of which sought an appearance by CEO Mark Zuckerberg — raised the odds for a fresh round of potentially contentious hearings, following lawmakers’ intense questioning of Facebook and two other technology companies last fall.
“While Facebook has pledged to enforce its policies to protect people’s in- formation, questions remain as to whether those policies are sufficient and whether Congress should take action to protect people’s private information,” wrote Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Kennedy, R-La., in a joint letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Cambridge Analytica is under increasing scrutiny after newspapers reported the firm obtained data on 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge to subject them to political messages. The company is funded in part by Trump supporter and billionaire financier Robert Mercer.
Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Cambridge earned $5.9 million in 2016 from the campaign to elect Trump for president. Cambridge also earned $5.8 million from Sen. Ted Cruz’s failed presidential campaign.
Facebook suspended the company from using its services Friday, hours before the reports came out. Members of Congress want Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before a hearing.
Cambridge Analytica earned more than $16 million from 2014 to 2016 from nearly 20 GOP candidates and political committees.
Facebook’s stock plunged 7 percent Monday in its worst one-day decline since 2014. Officials in the U.S. and European Union sought answers, while Britain’s information commissioner said she will seek a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica’s servers because the British firm had been “uncooperative” in her investigation.
After two years of failing to disclose the harvesting, Facebook said Monday that it hired an outside firm to audit Cambridge.
Researchers in a 2013 study found that Facebook likes on hobbies, interests and other attributes can predict personal attributes such as sexual orientation and political affiliation. Computers analyze such data to look for patterns that might not be obvious, such as a link between a preference for curly fries and higher intelligence.
Chris Wylie, a Cambridge Analytics co-founder who left in 2014, said the firm used such techniques to learn about individuals and create an information cocoon to change their perceptions. In doing so, he said, the firm “took fake news to the next level.”
“This is based on an idea called ‘informational dominance,’ which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of information around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what’s actually happening,” Wylie said Monday on NBC’s “Today.”
In their note, which asked Grassley to convene a hearing, Klobuchar and Kennedy said the Senate Judiciary Committee should invite Zuckerberg and also the top executives from Google and Twitter. Those companies also ap- peared at hearings in October and November.
Those previous hearings focused on Russian manipulation of social media platforms to potentially affect the 2016 presidential election, but lawmakers now are aiming to grill Facebook on an even more sensitive matter: how it handles the personal information of its 2.1 billion users.
Grassley has not scheduled such a hearing, and a spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Facebook has denied any wrongdoing and has declined to comment on whether Zuckerberg would agree to appear on Capitol Hill.
“We are in the process of conducting a comprehensive internal and external review as we work to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists,” Justin Osofsky, vice president of global operations, said in a statement. “That is where our focus lies as we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information.”
Before changing its policies in 2014 and 2015, Facebook allowed developers of apps to gain detailed information on people who downloaded apps as well as their online “friends.”