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

Posted by BeauHD on from the come-to-terms-with dept.

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."

31 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. I don't blame the little weasel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The UK is a frightening police state where they imprison people over pet videos.

    1. Re:I don't blame the little weasel by sabri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The UK is a frightening police state where they imprison people over pet videos.

      This. Exactly this. If I were Zuck, I'd stay the hell out of the U.K. as well. FB is an American company, and if every single parliament in the world starts to summon American CEOs, it simply doesn't work.

      Moreover, free speech does not have the same protections in the U.K. as it does in the U.S.

      --
      I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
    2. Re:I don't blame the little weasel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Kind of like how America extradites CEOs of non-American companies to the US to face 'justice' in the American court system?

      Be very careful with that glass house you're throwing rocks from.

    3. Re: I don't blame the little weasel by Reverend+Green · · Score: 2

      We're mostly all against that.

      Next!!

    4. Re:I don't blame the little weasel by Cederic · · Score: 2

      erm. Scotland is in the UK, so its legal system is indeed a UK legal system.

      Unless you're suggesting that the legal system of England and Wales is also the UK one? That'll upset our Celtic friends.

    5. Re:I don't blame the little weasel by sabri · · Score: 2

      If the UK courts really wants to talk to him they can always seize whatever assets he has in the UK as a collateral and block all his businesses there until he decides to show up.

      Seize it based on what? What legal basis exists for the U.K. government to rob, under threat of fire arms, a U.S. persons personal assets?

      This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is why the civilized world dislikes the U.K. police state.

      The US have been the frontrunner in trying to censor speech such as "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0".

      See, just this comment shows how much of an idiot you are. "The US" did nothing to censor this. No U.S. court made any legal determinations as to the legality. It was the RIAA/MPAA that was trying to issue DMCA requests to take these down. In fact, would it come to a lawsuit, it would be very likely to be ruled protected speech under the U.S. first amendment. Which, for the record, does not exist in your police state.

      Go back to your free speech zone.

      Just read this news report:

      A man has been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after allegedly posting a tweet in response to the Brussels attacks. The tweet read: "I confronted a Muslim woman yesterday in Croydon. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said 'Nothing to do with me'. A mealy mouthed reply." Matthew Doyle, 46, was arrested on Wednesday night in Croydon.

      This would never happen in the U.S.

      So F you, and F your police state.

      --
      I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
  2. Re:Weeks? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess he needs to bone up on his company security policy and business model.

    Well, he can't exactly bring the Russians with him to explain how things work.

  3. Facebook was built on dishonesty. by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would Zuckerberg comply with anything other than armed officers escorting him out of the building? The entire service was built on dishonesty. Stolen from another student, built to keep tabs on coeds they wanted to bang, and slurping and exploiting data on the other two billion people who have signed up since then. Facebook is toxic. Facebook is a cancer on the Internet. Facebook brings out the worst in people. Facebook breaks every privacy law a million times every day. The Internet needs to rid itself of Facebook.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
    1. Re:Facebook was built on dishonesty. by Luthair · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He's CEO of a company that does business in the UK, no different than being summed by the US government.

    2. Re:Facebook was built on dishonesty. by spire3661 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I dont think you understand the UK on this. They were not 'requesting', its an order couched in nice language. This move is going to cost him a LOT of political capital to fix. You dont refuse a 'request' from Parliament.

      --
      Good-bye
    3. Re:Facebook was built on dishonesty. by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      You dont refuse a 'request' from Parliament.

      Right now the government has far bigger problems in the UK. From the horrible clusterfuck that is Brexit, to constant internal bickering, to outing someone as gay just because they disagreed with them for political reasons, the UK parliament itself is in too much of a disarray to do anything meaningful right now.

      Political capital? I will wager this will all be forgotten within a month or two.

    4. Re:Facebook was built on dishonesty. by Cederic · · Score: 2

      They don't. It would be an order if Zuckerberg was a UK citizen living in the UK but as a foreign national in another country the request becomes merely a request.

      Optional for him to attend, and highly anticipated that he would choose not to.

      They can't impose measures against his company either, without referring to an existing authorised body (ICO maybe?) or passing new legislation.

  4. Cuts both Ways by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I were Zuck, I'd stay the hell out of the U.K. as well. FB is an American company, and if every single parliament in the world starts to summon American CEOs, it simply doesn't work.

    That's fine so long as those American companies "stay the hell out" of other countries too. However, if you are going to do business in those countries and especially if you are potentially involved in a massive violation of their online privacy laws then expect to get summoned by their governments, if not their courts.

    1. Re:Cuts both Ways by Luckyo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's why they usually spin off daughter companies to handle operations overseas. Want to summon representative of Facebook in UK? Sure. Summon whoever is the head of Dublin headquarters.

    2. Re:Cuts both Ways by Blymie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Imagine if 20 countries decided to summon him. Or 100.

      It's not even a demand of any sort. Just a request.

      It would be silly for him to go to the UK. I think the fact that he sent anyone, was a nice gesture.

      NOTE: I hate facebook, but let's be real here.

    3. Re:Cuts both Ways by tomxor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If I were Zuck, I'd stay the hell out of the U.K. as well. FB is an American company, and if every single parliament in the world starts to summon American CEOs, it simply doesn't work.

      Except the most significant leaks in question occurred in the UK with a UK company and resulting in clear manipulation of the most significant UK referendum of the century not to mention the last US election... I'd not be surprised if the US government forced Zuckerburg to go to the UK since the whole affair is deeply tied to both countries.

    4. Re:Cuts both Ways by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dublin isn't in the UK either.

    5. Re:Cuts both Ways by e3m4n · · Score: 2

      not entirely accurate. I ran across similar jurisdictional issues a decade ago dealing with servers for online gambling sites. The Attorney General in many states had absolute control of whether their residents could participate in the online gambling sites, regardless of where the servers are located, or where the company was incorporated. If the website allowed a user of lets say Oklahoma, to use their credit card, registered to an Oklahoma address, as payments for online gambling, they would find themselves in a world of shit. Suddenly all financial assets would find themselves frozen (im not a banker but similar stuff happened in the 80s when they took all of Noriega's money). I don't know how the world banking industry works in such cases, but suffice to say that they CAN and DO use the world banking mechanism to seize cash. If FB were violating laws in the EU or UK, with regards to their citizens, they can impose fines, and international agreements made between countries will go and collect large swaths of cash from poor baby zuckfuck.

    6. Re:Cuts both Ways by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It would show he was serious about dealing with this issue.

      No going tells us that he is just waiting for the news cycle to move on and blow over. Facebook won't change, it's not sorry, it doesn't even think it did anything wrong. The only problem is that they got caught.

      In fact, he probably views it as free advertising. Look how great this data is, look what you can do with it.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:Cuts both Ways by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      No, but it's in EU, which is in the same economic zone. The entire point of the single market is that you need only one representative to cover it all, because it's a single market.

    8. Re:Cuts both Ways by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      What if Facebook doesn't technically "do business" in the UK? Suppose they don't sell adverts to the UK, but still allow UK users to log in and post for free? Is that still "doing business"?

  5. Not "Big Tech" by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These are data miners, not technologists. They provide little to no net benefit to society, they simply trick idiots into handing them information so they can sell it off to marketing and PR parasites.

    1. Re:Not "Big Tech" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are *some* benefits in allowing people to easily communicate with each other, share their vacation pictures, discuss shared hobbies & interests, etc.

      There are, but we have yet to realize what the actual cost is. There's a ton of data on many people that's been leaked out, and can and likely will be used against their own interest.

      captcha: CRIMES

  6. Re:American Companies by e3m4n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    not entirely. Google kow-tows to China all the time. Remember google, the anti-censorship company from about 8yrs ago? Slowly but surely they let China boss them around and no longer allow chinese IP addresses to discover information the PRC has declared 'subversive'. Facebook doesn't have to appear, but then again the UK could simply ban all FB Access and impose sanctions on FB assets if they try to subvert the embargo. As far as FB being an american company, I honestly dont know about this. Too many times I learn that, what I assumed as an American company, paid Zero tax dollars in the USA because they incorporated all their crap into Ireland (General Electric, Amazon, etc).

  7. ...or worse by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They can do a lot more than just ban his site. 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: it's a parliamentary dictatorship.

    1. Re:...or worse by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      You do realise that the term "unwritten constitution" with regard to the UK refers specifically to the fact that there is no single document, right? Not that we don't have *any* constitution limiting the powers of Parliament and the sitting government.

      We do have a constitution, its just one that is formed from many Acts of Parliament, judicial rulings and other sources - and many of its principles date back to the Magna Carta...

    2. Re:...or worse by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

      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.

      Sorry but you clearly do not have any idea how parliament works. If two laws clash then the one passed the latest automatically has precedence. There is literally no limit to parliament's power. They can pass any law they like and, provided it passes both houses and get royal assent it becomes the law. Even if that law violates previously entered treaties and agreements it is still the law and there is literally no means to prevent it because of a well-established principle that no parliament may bind another.

      I know that this is hard to comprehend for an American but the UK and other parliamentary governments are only bound by custom and a general desire to behave well. This is a far better system than a written constitution since it gives far more flexibility while also preventing the rich from hiring armies of lawyers to strike down laws that they do not like....which is exactly why Zukerberg should be concerned because, unlike the US, his army of lawyers will find it very hard to protect him from a parliament that is out to get him.

  8. Re:sound and fury signifying nothing by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 3, Informative

    Photo op for politicians. No laws were broken, at least no one has cited one law that was broken. .

    https://www.gov.uk/data-protec...

    The UK Data Protection Act. 1998.
    That's the law that was broken.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  9. Re:American Companies by jd · · Score: 2

    Well, annoying Britain means a likely complaint to the data protection people in Europe, which means a potential billion dollar fine from the EU or a permanent ban across the entire continent. The EU takes data protection seriously (unlike America) but won't generally take action unless a nation state complains. Until Britain leaves, it's a nation state the EU would take seriously.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  10. Re:sound and fury signifying nothing by jd · · Score: 2

    Data Protection Act, both the British and European versions.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  11. Re:"We are accountable", *I* am not personally tho by slew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know, it's a corporation thing... The shareholders made me do it.

    Since Zuck owns enough Facebook Class B shares** to give himself 60% of the voting rights in FB, I'm not sure that is the best argument for him to make...

    **Facebook Class B shares have 10x the voting rights of Class A shares...