Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO has been summoned before a UK parliamentary committee due to a growing discontent over data leakages related to the social media network.
The chair of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS), Damian Collins sent the letter addressed to the American billionaire. The DCMS is in charge of leading the investigation over the matter of fake news.
“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” the letter mentions.
“Given your commitment at the start of the new year to fixing Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you,” it adds.
The letter was sent shortly after UKs Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham announced that she would turn to court to procure a warrant authorizing her to investigate the offices of Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based political consulting firm that is being suspected of utilizing data collected from 50 million Facebook profiles to sway the 2016 US presidential election.
The company, which has also carried out election-related work in India, is seeing red at the moment after its senior executives were videotaped giving examples of how the firm could disgrace political rivals by organizing several unethical campaigns by an undercover reported.
The reporter, disguised as a Sri Lankan businessman wishing to influence his local election was advised by Cambridge Analytica boss Alexander Nix to set up encounters or honeytraps as called in the milieu, faking situations whereby explicit bribery is caught on tape.
A statement release by Cambridge Analytica’s boss Alexander Nix denies any offense, “I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called honeytraps, and nor does it use untrue material for any purpose.”
The evidence caught on hidden camera comes after a newspaper reported Cambridge Analytica received data illegally from tens of millions of Facebook profiles in what would seem to be the company’s biggest data breach.
“Deep digging is interesting, but you know equally effective can be just to go and speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that’s too good to be true, and make sure that that’s video recorded.
“You know, these sorts of tactics are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption, putting it on the internet, these sort of things,” Alexander Nix was recorded saying in the hidden camera video tape.
He also proposed the idea of sending “some girls around to the candidates house,” and shortly after suggesting that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well.”
According to Nix, the entire backlash Cambridge Analytica is being confronted to is due to the firm’s role in successfully helping US president Donald Trump win the elections in 2016.
The company is also boasting that they and their parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories have been offering their services to over 200 elections globally in countries that include India, Nigeria, Kenya, the Czech Republic and Argentina.
Since the reports of Cambridge Analytica surfaced about the use of Facebook users’ information to influence countrywide elections, many individuals have started using hashtags such as #DeleteFacebook or #BoycottFacebook.