US: Lawmakers criticize Facebook settlement with FTC

Two US senators on Monday, May 6, criticized reported plans for a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement with Facebook Inc for misuse of consumers’ personal data, saying that top officials, potentially including founder Mark Zuckerberg, must be held personally responsible, reported Reuters.

In a letter to the FTC, Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Josh Hawley, a Republican, told the agency that even a US$5 billion civil penalty is a “bargain for Facebook.

The agency is also reportedly contemplating a settlement that elevates oversight of privacy policies and practices to Facebook’s board of directors and requires the social media giant to be more aggressive in policing third-party app developers.

“It should consider setting rules of the road on what Facebook can do with consumers’ private information, such as requiring the deletion of tracking data, restricting the collection of certain types of information, curbing advertising practices, and imposing a firewall on sharing private data between different products,” the senators wrote in a letter to FTC Chairman Joe Simons.

The FTC has been investigating revelations that Facebook inappropriately shared information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The probe has focused on whether the sharing of data and other disputes violated a 2011 agreement with the FTC to safeguard user privacy.