EU parliament invites Zuckerberg to speak on data breach

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The European Parliament said Tuesday it has invited Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg to speak, following revelations that a firm working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign harvested data on 50 million users.

"We've invited Mark Zuckerberg to the European Parliament," its President Antonio Tajani tweeted. "Facebook needs to clarify before the representatives of 500 million Europeans that personal data is not being used to manipulate democracy."

This comes after the European lawmakers demanded answers from Facebook over a major data breach, as Britain's information watchdog sought a warrant to search the London offices of the analysis firm involved.

Facebook has launched its own investigation into claims that data from up to 50 million of its users was harvested by a British company, Cambridge Analytica, and used in US President Donald Trump's election campaign. However, it was forced to suspend the probe late Monday following a request from Britain's information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, who is making her own inquiries into both companies.

Facebook news feed /Reuters

"We are seeking a warrant so that, as the regulator, we can go in and get to the bottom, search the servers, do a data audit," Denham told BBC radio. "We are also looking at Facebook at the same time, so our advice to Facebook was to back away, let us get in there as a regulator and do our work, and they have agreed."

A British parliamentary committee has also called on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to personally explain to them what happened with "this catastrophic failure of process."

US lawmakers have likewise called on Zuckerberg to appear before Congress, along with the chief executives of Twitter and Google. They said the firms have "unprecedented amounts of personal data" and the lack of oversight "raises concerns about the integrity of American elections as well as privacy rights".

Amid fears of a regulatory crackdown, Facebook shares fell by 6.8 percent on the Nasdaq index on Monday and were down two percent at 169.17 US dollars in early trading on Tuesday.

Safeguards in place

Facebook says the data was taken without its knowledge or consent, and has suspended the accounts of Cambridge Analytica and some of its associates.

It has hired forensics firm Stroz Friedberg to "conduct a comprehensive audit" of the British firm, which it said had agreed to comply and provide access to its servers and systems. Their experts were at the company's London offices on Monday night when the information commissioner asked them to withdraw.

CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, speaks during the Web Summit, Europe's biggest tech conference, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 9, 2017. /VCG Photo‍‍

"There are provisions in the Data Protection Act that require a platform like Facebook to have strong safeguards in place," she said. "So, we are looking at whether or not there were safeguards, and whether or not Facebook acted appropriately when things went wrong."

Cambridge Analytica has also strongly denied the allegations against it. A former employee claims it developed an app downloaded by 270,000 people to scoop up information about their friends, which were then used to design software to predict and influence voters' choices at the ballot box.

The company blames the academic who developed the app, University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, for misusing the data. It said the data was never used on the Trump campaign, and has anyway been deleted.

Facebook said Kogan violated their rules by passing the data onto a third party, and the app was removed in 2015. It said he and Cambridge Analytica had confirmed the data had been destroyed, but recently found out this was not the case.

Source(s): AFP