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Tuesday, April 10:
Mark Zuckerberg will appear before members of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/facebook-social-media-privacy-and-the-use-and-abuse-of-data www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=E7C85E5C-BBA9-4AD9-861D-85B7340BBDFB Wednesday, April 10: Zuckerberg will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee https://energycommerce.house.gov/news/press-release/ec-announces-facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-will-testify-april-11th/ Monday, April 9 Zuckerberg will be meeting individually with members of Congress, some of whom are on the committees. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress/zuckerberg-to-meet-with-u-s-lawmakers-monday-sources-idUSKBN1HG00H?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter https://www.npr.org/2018/04/08/600616534/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-readies-to-testify-on-capitol-hill https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/08/opinions/zuckerberg-congress-testimony-questions-opinion-alaimo/index.html The Digital, Culture, Media, and Sports Committee of the House of Commons in British Parliament will be interviewing members of the Cambridge Analytica team who were involved in the Brexit campaigns in the U.K. Tuesday, April 17: Brittany Kaiser, director of program development at Cambridge Analytica Wednesday, April 18: Alexander Nix, former Cambridge Analytica chief executive (second appearance) Nix has been recalled to the committee due to inconsistencies in his earlier testimony. Tuesday, April 24: Aleksandr Kogan, Cambridge University and St. Petersburg State University academic who built the “thisisyourdigitallife” application Thursday, April 26: Mike Schroepfer, Facebook chief technology officer https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/06/cambridge-analytica-scandal-mps-committee-fake-news-inquiry-dcms-brittany-kaiser
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 Data from 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that engineered Donald Trump’s social media campaign blitz.
Jessica Rich was head of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection from 2013 to 2017. In 2011 she helped construct the consent decree against Facebook for violating users’ privacy without their knowledge or consent. The order from the FTC against Facebook required that Facebook obtain affirmative consent from users before it could override privacy settings. The order required that Facebook submit a plan for compliance with the order within 90 days, and described penalties for violating the order. The order does not expire until 2032. NPR reporter Ailsa Chang interviewed Rich Tuesday, and asked Rich what she thought upon hearing that Facebook had given detailed, private data on users to Cambridge Analytica in 2014. Rich: “Well, like many people, my reaction was are you kidding? The facts here of allowing third parties to have unfettered access to user data and not exercising the kind of care for Facebook users that they should were the exact same facts that drove us to take action against them in 2011 and that led to the order they're now under.” Chang: “And the penalties for violating that 2011 consent decree, they're huge. It's $40,000…” RICH: “Per violation.” CHANG: “So if you multiply that across 50 million users, we're talking about billions of dollars, potentially, that Facebook faces in fines. Why would a number like that, billions of dollars of potential fines, not serve as enough of a deterrent for a company like Facebook?” RICH: “I really can't answer that question. It must be lack of proper compliance procedures or literally a culture that is not one that really cares about its users.” Here’s the math: $40,000 multiplied by 50 million users equals $2 trillion. Facebook is potentially liable for a $2 trillion fine from the FTC. Tim Wu, a former senior official at the Federal Trade Commission, explained in an interview with Noel King of NPR’s Morning Edition, also on Tuesday, that Facebook’s continuing problems with violating the privacy of its users is fundamental to its business model. WU: “I think the problem lies here. It's actually a very fundamental one, which is Facebook is always in the position of serving two masters. If its actual purpose was just trying to connect friends and family, and it didn't have a secondary motive of trying to also prove to another set of people that it could gather as much data as possible and make it possible to manipulate or influence or persuade people, then it wouldn't be a problem. For example, if they were a nonprofit, it wouldn't be a problem. But they…” KING: “But they're not, right?” (Laughter). WU: “They're not. But, well, that's the problem. I think there's a sort of intrinsic problem with having for-profit entities with this business model in this position of so much public trust because they're always at the edge because their profitability depends on it.” King asked Wu if the FTC could seek damages if Facebook is found to have violated the order. WU: “Yes, they can. Every single violation is punishable by a $40,000 fine. So it could be billions [Editor’s note - actually, trillions] of dollars in damages if the FTC decides to police this very aggressively.” The All Things Considered interview with former Federal Trade Commission official Jessica Rich can be found here. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597390569/ftc-investigating-whether-facebook-violated-consent-decree The March 27 Morning Edition interview with former FTC senior official Tim Wu can be found here. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously-failed-to-keep-privacy-promises-ex-ftc-adviser-says A link to the Federal Trade Commission documents from 2011 can be found here. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/092-3184/facebook-inc A New York Times article from 2011 explains the original order against Facebook from the FTC. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html Cambridge Analytica: British Public Television Exposes Methods of Trump Campaign "Secret Sauce"3/24/2018  Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison of the British newspaper The Guardian/Observer published an article last week with new information about Cambridge Analytica, the shadowy data firm that worked closely with the Trump campaign in 2016. Christopher Wylie, a data scientist formerly with the company, stated in an interview: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.” In late 2015, Facebook found out that information from more than 50 million individuals, including private details and personality profiles, had been harvested without permission. The company did not alert users, and took limited steps to protect the data of users. The article with the Christopher Wylie interview can be found here. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election British public television station Channel 4 went undercover to glean information about how Cambridge Analytica, a company started in 2013 as an offshoot of SCL Group, uses data to influence elections throughout the world. The results of the investigation are shocking. Some of the revelations, by key members of the company: “We’re used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you." Alexander Nix, CEO, to a reporter he thought was a Sri Lankan businessman working for a prospective political candidate. “We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet, and then, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again… like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘that’s propaganda’, because the moment you think ‘that’s propaganda,’ the next question is, ‘who’s put that out?’...So we have to be very subtle.” Mark Turnbull, managing director of Cambridge Analytica Political Global. Since the exposé aired last week, Alexander Nix has been suspended by the company. However, a few days ago Nix set up a new data company with Rebekah Mercer called Emerdata, which is described in this article from Business Insider. The chief security officer of Facebook, Alex Stamos, has also announced that he is leaving. The Cambridge Analytica expose from Channel 4 can be seen here. https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica An interview with Theresa Hong, a key insider from the Trump campaign data operation who says she wrote Trump's Facebook posts, was interviewed last year by the BBC. She brags about the role Cambridge Analytica played in the campaign. That interview can be seen here. http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-40852227/the-digital-guru-who-helped-donald-trump-to-the-presidency  Additional UPDATE: More articles related to this topic: https://www.recode.net/2018/3/17/17133668/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-new-york-times-observer https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html UPDATE: An article in The Guardian, dated March 18, 2018, provides more information. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election?CMP=share_btn_fb  Facebook has announced that it is suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica. According to a statement from Paul Grewal, vice president and deputy general counsel, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge University psychology professor, lied to Facebook and violated their policies by passing personal data of Facebook users to SCL/Cambridge Analytica and to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies. According to Grewal’s statement, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app, which offered a personality prediction. Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app, which gave Kogan access to personal information about the users and their friends. Grewal states that Kogan violated policies by passing the information to third parties, he had violated Facebook rules. When they found out about the violation, they removed the app and demanded certifications that the data had been destroyed. He states that several days ago, they discovered that not all data was deleted. There is likely more to the story. In January 2017, Motherboard published an article written by two Swiss journalists. Their research revealed that Aleksander Kogan, who has changed his name to Alex Spectre and moved to Singapore, had obtained the data tool used by SCL/Cambridge Analytica from the creators of the tool without their permission. Michael Kosinski and David Stillwell, both doctoral students at Cambridge University, developed a Facebook application that used the Big Five personality traits (openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, or OCEAN) to develop a personality profile that predicted behavior. “ … In early 2014, Kosinski was approached by a young assistant professor in the psychology department called Aleksandr Kogan. He said he was inquiring on behalf of a company that was interested in Kosinski's method, and wanted to access the MyPersonality database. Kogan wasn't at liberty to reveal for what purpose; he was bound to secrecy. “At first, Kosinski and his team considered this offer, as it would mean a great deal of money for the institute, but then he hesitated. Finally, Kosinski remembers, Kogan revealed the name of the company: SCL, or Strategic Communication Laboratories ... “Kosinski knew nothing about all this, but he had a bad feeling. ‘The whole thing started to stink,’ he recalls. On further investigation, he discovered that Aleksandr Kogan had secretly registered a company doing business with SCL. According to a December 2015 report in The Guardian and to internal company documents given to Das Magazin, it emerges that SCL learned about Kosinski's method from Kogan.” Kosinski broke off contact with Kogan and informed the university. He suspected that Kogan’s company had developed a tool using Kosinski’s model in order to sell it to SCL. The Motherboard article can be found here. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win Cambridge Analytica was heavily involved in the Brexit campaign in Great Britain, and in Donald Trump’s campaign for president. In a BBC interview, Theresa Hong, Digital Content Director for the Trump campaign, bragged about how instrumental Cambridge Analytica was in the digital push for the presidency. The company ran operations out of the Trump campaign offices in San Antonio, Texas. The interview can be found linked in this article from Palmer Report. http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/facebook-employees-trump-office/4784/ The statement from Facebook can be read here. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/suspending-cambridge-analytica/  Photos: Top - Aleksander Kogan, Cambridge University; Bottom - Alex Spectre, Facebook, February 2017
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