Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is meeting with lawmakers in Washington on Monday ahead of his testimony before multiple judiciary committees this week.
Reuters reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is meeting with Washington lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Monday, ahead of his testimony before multiple judiciary committees later in the week. Zuckerberg is expected to meet with multiple lawmakers, some of whom are members of committees holding hearings this week relating to Facebook’s latest user data scandal.
Zuckerberg is expected to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday to testify about the company’s user data scandal. Reuters reports that an anonymous source with knowledge of the matter stated that Zuckerberg is likely to “recognize a need to take responsibility” and “acknowledge an initial failure to understand how many people were affected,” by the Cambridge Analytica scandal in his testimony before both committees.
In a recent call with members of the media, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the company’s treatment of private data by saying that when building an “unprecedented” platform like Facebook, “there are going to be things that you mess up.” Zuckerberg’s testimony is related to an alleged data leak which may have seen the personal information of up to 87 million people used by Cambridge Analytica during their 2016 election advertising campaign.
Facebook is also under investigation for their internal privacy practices by the Federal Trade Commission. Tom Pahl, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, released a statement on their investigation saying:
The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises, including to comply with Privacy Shield, or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers in violation of the FTC Act. Companies who have settled previous FTC actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data security requirements. Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.