Zuckerberg Refuses UK Parliament Summons Over Facebook Data Misuse, Agrees To Testify Before Congress (techcrunch.com)

PolygamousRanchKid shares a report from TechCrunch: So much for "We are accountable"; Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declined a summons from a UK parliamentary committee that's investigating how social media data is being used, and -- as recent revelations suggest misused -- for political ad targeting. The DCMS committee wrote to Zuckerberg on March 20 -- following newspaper reports based on interviews with a former employee of UK political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, who revealed the company obtained Facebook data on 50 million users -- calling for him to give oral evidence. Facebook's policy staff, Simon Milner, previously told the committee the consultancy did not have Facebook data. In a statement a Facebook spokesperson said it will be offering its CTO or chief product officer to answer questions. Today, CNN reports that Mark Zuckerberg has decided to testify before Congress within a matter of weeks, and Facebook is currently planning the strategy for his testimony. "The Facebook sources believe Zuckerberg's willingness to testify will also put pressure on Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to do the same," reports CNN. "Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has officially invited all three CEOs to a hearing on data privacy on April 10. That means Washington, not London, will be the stage for the trial of big tech."

Comments

First HOSTS

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:...or worse

[serviscope_minor]

Really annoying an entire government is a dangerous thing to do given that they literally make the rules and the UK has no written constitution to constrain it:

Rah! Rah! Americuhhh!

The written constitution doesn't help all those people imprisoned that no other countries sees fit to imprison. Nor does the 4th amendment seem to prevent unlawful seizure if it's renamed to "civil forefiture". Nor does it stop a party stacking the supreme court with very partisan judges so that they can "interpret" the constitution to mean whatever the hell they like.

Besides, it doesn't stop the government from passing a constitutional amendment, as has happened in the past.

The government can't do precisely what it likes, since there's a lot of laws on the books already and it would have to specifically repeal those that clash. And we're still a signatory to the ECHR even after Brexit (it that stupidity presists), so they can still overrule. And so on and so forth.

Having a constitution doesn't magically make your government awesome. For a counter example, see every country with a written constitution ever.

it's a parliamentary dictatorship

That is arguably the stupidest thing I've heard on the internet today.