Hey Team,
Thanks for all the help preparing for my testimony in front of Congress. Hopefully I was as careful and guarded as you wanted me to be. As you heard, I didn’t always have a full answer to many of the questions, but promised to follow up with the folks on the US House and Senate committees when they started looking for specifics. Could you take care of filling in the following legislators? See below for what we need to get to them ASAP.
Thanks again,
Mark
What Facebook owes US senators
To Chuck Grassley: The past activity of third parties using Facebook data in prohibited fashion. Also, the number of audits Facebook conducts on third-party apps, and details of those audits.
To Dianne Feinstein: Something more precise than “in the tens of thousands,” regarding the number of accounts Facebook has taken down as part of Russian efforts to spread misinformation.
To Maria Cantwell: The specifics of Facebook’s engagement with the 2016 Trump campaign, and whether Facebook employees worked with Cambridge Analytica employees during that engagement.
To Roger Wicker: The Facebook policy around minors and the collection of call and text history in the Facebook Messenger app on Android
To Patrick Leahy: Whether or not the Facebook posts the Senator showed were verified to be posted by non-malicious actors.
To Lindsey Graham: Proposals for regulations Facebook would welcome to police certain business practices (presumably, concerning privacy and user data).
To Amy Klobuchar: The details on what Facebook thinks about a rule requiring us to notify users of a data breach within 72 hours. I said such a rule “makes sense to me.” Also, the state by state breakdown of the number users whose data was captured by Cambridge Analytica.
To Roy Blunt: Specifics about Facebook’s tracking—if we do any—of devices that have never logged into Facebook but are associated with devices that have logged into Facebook.
To Ted Cruz: How Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum as it pertains to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
To Sheldon Whitehouse: Whether or not Aleksandr Kogan still has a Facebook account.
To Deb Fischer: The number of data points Facebook collects on each of its users.
To Ed Markey: Work with the Senator to flush out his proposed legislation on requiring affirmative user permission before their data can be reused.
To Jerry Moran: The details about the bounty program to compensate third parties who report unauthorized access to data.
To Dean Heller: The number of people from Nevada whose data was captured by Cambridge Analytica. Also, how long Facebook keeps a user’s data once they delete their account.
To Gary Peters: Facebook’s principles on machine learning and the status of any efforts to create principles to guide development toward preventing the creation of discriminatory algorithms.
To Tammy Baldwin: Further information about how confident Facebook is that foreign entities are excluded from placing political ads in the US.
To Cory Gardner: How long a Facebook users’s data persists in back up copies after the user deletes their account. Also, which data gets deleted when a Facebook user deletes their account, and which does not.
What Facebook owes House members
For GK Butterfield: We need to discuss adding employee retention figures to our diversity report.
To Fred Upton: The reasons why a Michigan politician’s seemingly inoffensive ad was rejected by Facebook.
To Steve Scalise: How the data Facebook collects about users after they log off is used. Also, which employees—if any—were held accountable for the mistake Facebook made in regards to the Diamond and Silk page.
To Jan Schakowsky: The names and numbers of all of the companies that Aleksandr Kogan sold Facebook users’ data to.
To Cathy McMorris Rodgers: The steps Facebook takes to make sure content reviewers are not biased toward blocking certain types of content, such as religious or conservative viewpoints.
To Adam Kinzinger: Exactly how Facebook responds to valid law-enforcement requests for Facebook user data from Russia.
To Morgan Griffith: Facebook’s plans for promoting and providing broadband internet speeds to rural communities in West Virginia and western Virginia.
To Scott Peters: The things I think the Europeans got wrong in its GDPR data protection rules.
To Debbie Dingell: The number of third-party webpages with a Facebook share button. Also, the number of third-party webpages with a Facebook like button, the number of third-party webpages with a Facebook pixel tracker, and whether or not Facebook can notify the House Energy and Commerce committee within 72 hours of a data breach.