Mark Zuckerberg woke up to a feisty letter today, requesting his presence at the British parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee to answer questions about Trump consultant Cambridge Analytica obtaining more than 50 million users’ data.
Committee chair Damian Collins accused Facebook representatives of giving “misleading” answers to his committee and having “understated” the risk of Facebook users’ data being taken without their consent when they submitted answers to the committee in December. He said the company had committed a “catastrophic failure of process,” and called on Facebook to send a senior executive with “sufficient authority to give an accurate account.”
“Given your commitment at the start of the New Year to ‘fixing’ Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you,” wrote Collins, a Conservative MP. Collins is investigating Russia’s use of Facebook to influence the Brexit vote in 2016.
US senator Ron Wyden has called on the company to explain “troubling” reports in the New York Times and and Britain’s Observer on the affair, and senator Amy Klobuchar has said Zuckerberg should testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Read Collins’ letter in full: