Facebook Documents Seized by British Government Reveals That Company Knew About Data Breach by Russia
The British lawmaker who seized the cache of documents reported that he could make them public within a week.
It has been a rough year for Facebook, which has been dogged by scandals and controversies. But the discovery of recent documents which has now been seized by the United Kingdom parliament, it appears that the California-based company is now at its worst. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, the recent very controversial documents reveal that the social media giant considered selling its users’ data to large corporations. Reportedly, Mark Zuckerberg did not comment on the documents during the UK hearing. Further, the British lawmaker who seized the cache of documents reported that he could make them public within a week. Millennials Are Deleting Facebook! 44 Percent of Youngsters Have Already Quit The Social Media Platform, Finds Pew Study.
The social media giant has fought for months claiming that they kept the documents private. This is the latest blow to the company’s inability to protect its user’s data. Bloomberg reported that the head of a committee of British lawmakers, Damian Collins was investigating on the pressing issue. He had reviewed an email from a Facebook engineer that highlights suspicious Russian-linked data harvesting as early as 2014. It is worth mentioning here, that earlier Facebook has said it was unaware of such breaches of Russian activity on social network until after the 2016 election. Facebook Security Breach: Here's How You Can Check If Your Facebook Account Was Hacked.
The document cache was taken from the founder of U.S. software company Six4Three during a recent business trip to London. Facebook’s public policy Vice President Richard Allen contacted Collins about the documents. Collins argued that the U.K. has the right to publish them.
Here is what Collins had shared to Allen.
These documents are also said to include private emails between Zuckerberg and Facebook executives. Six4Three obtained Facebook’s private documents as a part of a lawsuit which alleged the company knowingly allowed Cambridge Analytica to take advantage of its lax privacy policy to collect user data. When MP Collins learned Six4Three founder’s trip to London, they demanded the copies of the documents as part of the UK’s inquiry against the social media company. Initially, the software company refused to comply with a given two-hour deadline. But was forced to hand over the documents after being escorted to UK’s Parliament and threatened with fines and imprisonment.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 30, 2018 11:29 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).