Finally, Mark Zuckerberg appeared in front of US Congress, where he spent 5 hours in commercial and judicial proceedings. Both Zuckerberg and senators treated each other with respect. No one lost their nerves. The reason for such long proceeding was an incident with Facebook that allowed Cambridge Analytica, a British political analytics agency, to collect data on 87 million people.
During the weeks that preceded the appearance in the court, Facebook made a series of public announcements about the degree of seriousness with which the company treats user data, about how they deal with data leaks, and about the amount of effort they put into prevention of situations like that. Mark Zuckerberg, on many instances, mentioned the changes that are to expect in the nearest future, such as simplified access to privacy settings, limited data that third-party apps receive through the connection with Facebook, labeled political advertisement, and a project that provides monetary rewards to anyone who detects unauthorised use of data.
There was not much new information revealed during the hearing. Most of the time the senators were trying to clarify the basics of platform’s operation: how they use the data; how long they store it, what control users have over their data, etc – everything that, regardless, could be found in a user agreement. Mark Zuckerberg dispelled the rumour that Facebook uses microphones on mobile devices to illegally obtain information on people. However, he could not name company’s biggest competitor and, hence, was accused in monopolising the social media market.
As a company that deals in IT security in London, this case attracted our attention. We implement effective policies and technologies to keep you safe in cyber space.