After an initial hearing at the beginning of June which was an attempt to create an appropriate context (see EUROPE 12034), the second joint hearing of the civil liberties (LIBE), industry (ITRE), constitutional affairs (AFCO) and judicial affairs (JURI) committees in Parliament on Monday 25 June tackled the specific ramifications of the Cambridge Analytica affair for more than four hours.
A new development: the three Facebook representatives in turn (see EUROPE 12047) argued that no data from Europeans had been transmitted to the Cambridge Analytica company.
Joel Kaplan, Vice President of Global Public Policy, Facebook, stated that “Our best informations today is that Dr Kogan did not share the Facebook information of any non US persons, including Europeans, with Cambridge Analytica”.
Ursula Pachl, the joint director general at the European Consumer Affairs Office (BEUC) was surprised by these comments and declared that “This is a contradiction, I don’t know how it can be explained”.
At the beginning of April, Facebook disclosed that up to 2.7 million Europeans could have been affected (see EUROPE 11996).
Lord Richard Allan, Vice President of Policy Solutions, Facebook, attempted to clarify the idea that “Dr Kogan collected a lot of data including some Europeans’ data but the data he delivered to Cambridge Analytica was the Americans data because that’s all they wanted”.
Nonetheless, this new revelation appears, for the time being, to be exclusively based on the testimony from Aleksandr Kogan, the developer of the ‘thisisyourdigitallife’ app, as well as the terms of his contract with the Cambridge Analytica company.
The social network still intends to provide its own verification in this regard as soon as it has obtained approval from the British data protection authority in charge of the investigation.
European elections: a “priority” for Facebook
Facebook representatives came to Parliament with both new disclosures and new promises. Joel Kaplan provided assurances that “Protecting the integrity of elections here in Europe is a top priority for us in Facebook”. He added that, “At Facebook we firmly believe that our platform could be a force for good in the democratic process”.
According to Kaplan, Facebook had been too slow in its responses to new threats in the past but that it now had the “capacity” and “responsibility” to tackle this issue and also in the context of the European elections in 2019.
He explained that to achieve this end, the social network would focus its efforts in five areas: combating foreign interference; dismantling bogus accounts; reducing the dissemination of fake news; increasing advertising transparency and, finally; supporting civic engagement and information for the electorate.
Among his numerous examples, he indicated that Facebook had taken on independent fact checkers in several countries. 500 million bogus accounts had been blocked over a three month period and the number of people working on security will be doubled this year from 10,000 to 20,000, he announced.
According to the Italian MEP Mercedes Bresso (S&D), one possible solution could involve providing digital ID on platforms, in addition to the requirement of providing authentication for oneself with a digital ID card. The social network said that it was “open” to this kind of option, whilst it was already looking at the concerns raised by a number of countries. Exploring possible solutions will indeed be the subject of the next hearing planned for 2 July attended by several European Commissioners. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)