Harvester of Facebook Data Wants Tighter Controls Over Privacy--Update
June 19 2018 - 7:43PM
Dow Jones News
By John D. McKinnon and Deepa Seetharaman
WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers said Tuesday they were weighing
bipartisan privacy legislation to address data misuse at a hearing
where an academic central to Facebook Inc.'s recent privacy scandal
suggested the government would have to intervene.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.), chairman of the Senate's consumer
protection subcommittee, said he was considering joining in an
effort by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) to pass a privacy
bill of rights in Congress.
His comments showed that the risks for big internet companies
haven't dissipated since Facebook's scandal involving Cambridge
Analytica, a political data consultancy that worked with President
Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and obtained data of millions of
Facebook users from an app developer, Aleksandr Kogan.
Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), the chairman of the powerful
Commerce Committee, added that Facebook "remains under the
microscope" and said lawmakers continue to examine potential
measures to protect user privacy.
But key lawmakers appeared to be far from a consensus on how to
proceed.
At Tuesday's hearing, Mr. Kogan, a social psychologist and
University of Cambridge lecturer, in prepared testimony, called for
strengthening the system of obtaining users' consent for subsequent
use of their information. That, in turn, would require government
intervention, he added, because big internet companies'
profit-making interests inevitably clash with consumers' privacy
interests.
Mr. Kogan shared data with Cambridge Analytica, a political data
consultancy that worked with President Donald Trump's 2016
campaign, that he had gathered from Facebook through an app.
The academic said Tuesday he was "very regretful" for the anger
that many users felt over the revelation that their data had been
passed along from Facebook through him to political
consultants.
Facebook has described Mr. Kogan's actions as "a breach of
trust," saying the academic violated its developer policies by
selling the data to a third party.
Mr. Kogan said in his remarks that the controversy "points to a
much broader problem with how companies interact with consumers in
the tech space -- in particular, the conduct of companies whose
business model is predicated on digital advertising."
But he acknowledged that "trying to fix this problem will not be
simple, " given the conflict of interest between online advertising
firms such as Facebook and their users.
The testimony underscores the knotty complications that face
both businesses and policy makers as they consider what to do in
response to the scandal.
The controversy began when Mr. Kogan collected data for research
purposes from millions of Facebook users, by creating a
personality-quiz app in 2013 that plugged directly into the social
media giant's platform.
At the time, Facebook's platform allowed outsiders access to
extensive data about its users as well as their Facebook
connections. Within a couple of years, Facebook had severely
restricted the amount of data available to outsiders. But by then,
app developers like Mr. Kogan already had vast data about Facebook
users in hand.
Mr. Kogan later teamed up with Cambridge Analytica and shared
his information with the data-analytics firm.
On Tuesday, he said that approximately 30 million personality
profiles were transferred to Cambridge Analytica's parent
company.
Cambridge Analytica has said the data wasn't used in the U.S.
presidential race.
Mr. Kogan on Tuesday repeated his belief that the data was of no
significant value to Cambridge Analytica.
"I believe there is almost no chance this data could have been
helpful to a political campaign -- and I still haven't seen any
evidence to indicate that the Trump campaign used this dataset to
micro-target voters," he said in his prepared testimony.
Lawmakers continue to gather information about the scandal. The
prospects for legislative action on data privacy this year appear
dim. But the issue is likely to keep bubbling, as Tuesday's
comments by key lawmakers suggested.
The Federal Trade Commission also is investigating whether
Facebook violated the terms of an earlier consent decree when the
data was transferred to Cambridge Analytica. Under the decree,
approved in 2012, Facebook agreed to get user consent for
collecting personal data and sharing it with others.
Facebook has said it remains strongly committed to protecting
people's information.
Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Deepa
Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 19, 2018 19:28 ET (23:28 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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