META Meta Platforms Inc

By Byron Tau 

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers are pushing for an aggressive inquiry into allegations that a firm tied to President Donald Trump's presidential campaign gathered data from millions of Facebook Inc. profiles without authorization, calling for hearings on Capitol Hill and possible additional regulation of digital advertising.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers are calling for the top executives of tech companies including Facebook, as well as Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Twitter Inc., to appear before Congress to explain how they protect user data from being exploited by third-party companies for advertising and other targeting purposes.

Last week, Facebook said it suspended the firm Cambridge Analytica from its platform after reports the firm had violated Facebook policies that govern how third-party developers can deploy user data they obtained from the company.

The firm, which worked for Republican presidential candidates including Mr. Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz during the 2016 campaign, was financed in part by a major Republican donor. It was founded on the premise of using cutting-edge social science to deliver better targeting to political campaigns.

"Facebook, Google, and Twitter have amassed unprecedented amounts of personal data and use this data when selling advertising, including political advertisements. The lack of oversight on how data is stored and how political advertisements are sold raises concerns about the integrity of American elections as well as privacy rights," said Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and John Kennedy (R., La.) in a joint statement on Monday.

The senators said testimony from the companies' CEOs would provide an update on steps being taken to block foreign interference in U.S. elections and how the companies are protecting Americans' data.

The bipartisan duo are both members of the Judiciary committee and have asked the panel's chairman, Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), to hold hearings. A spokesman for Mr. Grassley didn't immediately return a request for comment.

They join others on Capitol Hill and in Europe calling for additional scrutiny of both tech companies and Cambridge's practices. Other senior members of Congress are calling for either additional investigations or renewed steps to curb abuse in digital advertising.

"This is a big deal, when you have that amount of data. And the privacy violations there are significant," Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in an appearance on CNN. "So, the question is, Who knew it? When did they know it? How long did this go on? And what happens to that data now?"

"This is more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West," said Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It's clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency."

Facebook shares were down 7% at midday Monday. Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser said the weekend's episode was another sign of "systemic problems" within the company, elevating the risk that Facebook face further regulation. Mr. Wieser has a "sell" rating on the stock.

Mr. Warner's panel held a hearing last year about the use of Facebook by actors linked to the Russian government as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at disrupting the U.S. election. Mr. Warner and Ms. Klobuchar have coauthored legislation that would force additional disclosures about political disclosures on Facebook.

Facebook said it had learned in 2015 that Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., broke its data policies when he shared user data gleaned from his personality-prediction app, "thisisyourdigitallife," to third parties including Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie, who runs a company called Eunoia Technologies Inc.

About 270,000 people downloaded the app, giving Mr. Kogan access to information such as the cities they lived in, the content they had liked, or information about their friends, Facebook Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal wrote in a blog post. According to a report in the New York Times, as many as 50 million Facebook users were ultimately swept up in the data collection.

A Cambridge Analytica spokesman said in a statement that its political division didn't use Facebook data collected by Mr. Kogan's company. The firm said that it deleted all data it received after it became clear that Mr. Kogan violated Facebook's policies.

A Facebook spokesman said the parties, including Cambridge Analytica, entered legal agreements on the deletion, but Facebook couldn't independently verify that it was scrubbed. The company has since changed its data policies so developers can't easily gather as much data about Facebook users, it said.

--Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.

Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 19, 2018 13:29 ET (17:29 GMT)

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