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Privacy Bills in Congress Get Boost From Facebook’s Latest Data Scandal

The controversy over Facebook’s data privacy practices in March resulted in the introduction of two new potential privacy laws by Senators for consideration. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sponsored the Consent Act as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in Congressional hearings. Later, Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) proposed the Social Media Privacy and Consumer Rights Act of 2018.

Now, the most recent controversy concerning Facebook and Huawei may be galvanizing support for a legislative solution on privacy, according to the Washington Post. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Facebook had data-sharing partnerships with 60 operating system and device manufacturers to recreate the Facebook experience. The device API provided access to the data needed to bring Facebook to those devices. However, according to the NYT report, the API did not honor user controls permitting users to block third-party sharing.

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As a result of this coverage, Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, asked Facebook whether any Chinese telecommunications companies were among those businesses who received access to user data. Facebook confirmed that Huawei, a company that has been on the radar of the intelligence community, and three other Chinese companies received access to the API but said data was only transmitted to user devices and the contractual agreements prevented the companies from using the data for anything other than recreating the user experience.

Nevertheless, the NYT article as well as the follow up information was not well recieved in Congress. Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.) tweeted on Sunday that it “Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have ‘complete control’ over who sees our data on Facebook.”

Senators John Thune and Bill Nelson, the U.S. Senate Commerce Commerce Committee’s Republican chair and ranking Democrate, wrote a letter to Zuckerberg asking if Zuckerberg wanted to revise any statements in his April testimony before the committee. They also asked whether Facebook audited the device manufacturer partnerships under the Federal Trade Commission’s 2011 consent order. Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal, members of the Senate Commerce Committee, also separately wrote to Zuckerberg expressing that the new relevations were deeply concerning.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood also said on Monday that the ongoing investigation into Cambridge Analytica includes Facebook’s data sharing partnerships with other corporations.

The result of the latest round of media coverage on the Facebook controversy is that a groundswell of support could be building in Congress for regulation of privacy on the internet. After the China controversy, it will be hard for anyone to argue that self-regulation by Facebook will be sufficient. Instead, it looks like the only question is how broad and how extensive the regulation will need to be to address the problem.

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Privacy Bills in Congress Get Boost From Facebook’s Latest Data Scandal

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