Privacy Groups Ask FTC For Facebook Investigation

An anonymous reader writes "10 public-interest groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's various business practices. This demand comes right after two similar ones this week: two U.S. congressmen asked the FTC to investigate how Facebook's cookies behave, and Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner has agreed to conduct a privacy audit of Facebook. Given that the social network's international headquarters is in Dublin, the latter is the more serious one as the large majority of the site's users could be affected."

Comments

What are we expecting to find?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Short of discovering that each of Facebook's datacenters is actually a vast, nearly empty, mausoleum, lit only by the unhallowed glow of Masonic runes drawn in the blood of innocents and the blinding glare of the all-seeing-eye atop the pyramid in the center; could there be any revelation about their privacy practices worse than those that can already be inferred from prior activity?

So what actual LAWS are they breaking?

[Gothmolly]

Are they just being cookie monsters and user trackers with their cookies and shoddy privacy policies, or are they actually committing crimes? What gives the various government groups, ones NOT in the executive branch, authority to conduct any of this?