Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to be hauled in front of MPs to explain ‘catastrophic failings’ of how up data of 50million users was supposedly harvested by Cambridge Analytica
FACEBOOK CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned by MPs to explain how 50million users had their data harvested for political campaigns.
Culture Chairman Damian Collins wants him to come for a grilling after his team provided "consistently misleading" answers on data protection.
He wrote in a furious letter published today: "It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process.
"There is a strong public interest regarding user protection."
He blasted the California-based web giant for sending junior executives to previous hearings instead of clued-up company bosses on fake news - and demanded answers about "whether data had been taken without consent".
And he demanded an answer by next Monday as to whether the boss would be able to come and address MPs.
Facebook in crisis
WHAT has happened?
Facebook is accused of passing 50 million users’ information to British company Cambridge Analytica, without their consent.
How was the information collected?
In 2014, 270,000 Facebook users took part in a personality quiz on an app on the network. The app harvested information from the person taking the quiz and all their friends.
How was it used?
The data was sold to Cambridge Analytica who profiled US users in order to send them pro-Donald Trump campaign messages.
Was this against Facebook’s rules?
Harvesting data was allowed but selling it on was not. Facebook said it demanded the data was deleted when it found out about “the breach”.
Is this the case?
A whistle-blower says this was never checked and all the information was kept, with some still available online.
It was announced this afternoon that Facebook is now under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission over the use of personal data.
Users are fuming that the firm knew about the harvested data since 2015 but did nothing to let users know or protect them.
Theresa May demanded answers yesterday over the whole saga.
Mrs May’s spokesman said: "The allegations are clearly very concerning.
"It is essential that people can have confidence that their personal data will be protected and used in an appropriate way."
The data of 50million users has apparently been tapped from Facebook by political firms without permission, reports from the Guardian, Observer, and New York Times have revealed in recent days.
This information was allegedly used to map out voter behaviour in 2016 for both the Brexit campaign and the US presidential election.
Cambridge Analytica has been suspended from the social network after being accused of wrongly obtaining vast amounts of data.
Facebook has denied that the fiasco breached data, but blamed Cambridge Analytica for violating their rules.
MPs have previously slammed social networks for failing to crack down on online hate and the spread of fake news.
Last night it was revealed that the Cambridge Analytica boss was filmed boasting about using honey traps and Ukranian sex workers to "swing" elections.
An undercover expose by Channel 4 Dispatches caught boss Alexander Nix and other executives boasting about dirty tactics to entrap politicians.
Executives - including boss Alexander Nix - spoke to undercover reporters about the dirty tricks used to help their clients including hiring prostitutes and entrapping rival political candidates.
In one exchange, Mr Nix tells them: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.”
Spelling out the dirty tricks the firm has used he revealed they worked with ex spies in Israel and the UK.
What is Cambridge Analytica and how did users' information get harvested?
CAMBRIDGE Analytica is a British company that helps businesses "change audience behaviour", and supposedly helped get US President Donald Trump elected.
Back in 2015, a Cambridge psychology professor called Aleksandr Kogan built an app called "thisisyourdigitallife".
The app was a personality quiz that asked Facebook users for information about themselves.
Kogan's company Global Science Research had a deal to share info from the app with Cambridge Analytica.
Roughly 270,000 Facebook users signed up and took personality tests.
But the app also collected the information of each user's Facebook friends, who couldn't possibly have provided consent.
We only know about this because a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower exposed the whole ruddy affair to The Guardian.
Christopher Wylie said: "We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles.
"And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.
"That was the basis the entire company was built on."
Around 50 million people are believed to have had their data harvested without their permission.
And the New York Times reports that copies of the data are still available online.
Facebook has flatly denied that the fiasco was even a data breach.
They say Kogan's app picked up information in "a legitimate way".
However, they admit that their rules were violated when the data was sold on to Cambridge Analytica.
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In a series of now-deleted tweets, Facebook's security boss called The Guardian's story "important and powerful".
But he went on: "IT is incorrect to call this a 'breach' under any reasonable definition of the term.
"We can condemn this behaviour while being accurate in our description of it.
"The researcher in question, Aleksandr Kogan, enticed several hundred thousand individuals to use Facebook to log in to his personality quiz in 2014. He lied to those users and he lied to Facebook about what he was using the data for.
"However, Kogan did not break into any systems, bypass any technical controls, or use a flaw in our software to gather more data than allowed.
"He did, however, misuse that data after he gathered it, but that does not retroactively make it a 'breach'."