Congressional Committee Asks Mark Zuckerberg to Testify on Facebook Data Scandal

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify over the recent Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

The Washington Post reports that key congressional lawmakers from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a group that oversees the actions of companies such as Facebook and Google, has requested that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appear before them to testify in a formal hearing. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) and the committee’s head Democrat representative, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), said in a statement:

The latest revelations regarding Facebook’s use and security of user data raises many serious consumer protection concern. After committee staff received a briefing yesterday from Facebook officials, we felt that many questions were left unanswered. Mr. Zuckerberg has stated that he would be willing to testify if he is ‘the right person.’

We believe, as CEO of Facebook, he is the right witness to provide answers to the American people. We look forward to working with Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg to determine a date and time in the near future for a hearing before this committee.

A Facebook spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post. The call to testify before Congress comes after the revelation that the user data of millions of Facebook accounts was allegedly compromised via a personality quiz app. Facebook stock dropped by 6.7 percent on Monday, wiping out all of the company’s gains for the year so far. Bloomberg reports that Facebook lost more than Tesla’s entire market cap over Monday and Tuesday’s market sessions.

In an interview with CNN, Zuckerberg said that Facebook would be reaching out to “anyone whose data might have been affected” by the Cambridge Analytica situation “And going forward, when we identify apps that are similarly doing sketchy things, we’re going to make sure that we tell people then, too.” Surprisingly, the Facebook CEO also discussed the issue of tech regulation, stating that he was not entirely against the idea. “I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated,” Zuckerberg said. “There are things like ad transparency regulation that I would love to see.”