Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has now included Mark Zuckerberg in a lawsuit against Facebook over user privacy violations associated with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data,” Racine spoke of the decision to name Mark Zuckerberg in the lawsuit.
BREAKING: I just added Mark Zuckerberg as a defendant in my lawsuit against Facebook.
Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data.
— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) October 20, 2021
The Lawsuit Against Facebook Entails Access to Users’ Data Without Their Consent
Moreover, Racine noted that his office has studied “hundreds of thousands” of documents and conducted numerous depositions with former workers since registering the suit in 2018. The D.C. AG filed the lawsuit against Facebook in 2018 after the revelations of the company allowing British political consulting corporation Cambridge Analytica to obtain profile data on more than 50 million Facebook users without their consent.
This Could Endanger Mark Zuckerberg to Personal Liability
Furthermore, the choice to name Mark Zuckerberg in the lawsuit against Facebook is notable because it could endanger the Facebook founder to personal liability for the first time in a lawsuit conducted by a government entity in the U.S. “This lawsuit is about protecting the data of half of all District residents and tens of millions of people across the country,” stated D.C. Attorney General. “We’ve taken our obligation to investigate wrongdoing very seriously — and Facebook should take its responsibility to protect users just as seriously.”
Read more: Facebook Under Microscope over Ignoring Hate Speech against Indian-Muslims
The D.C. Attorney General, Racine is a democrat who has also actively investigated Trump and his allies on unrelated matters, such as their spending on the inauguration. In the revised objection, D.C. Attorney General Racine charges that Facebook’s 2010 choice to open up its platform to third parties, which he claims was Zuckerberg’s plan, helped unveil a bunch of user data that developers could access through a “side door.”
“Mark Zuckerberg was personally aware of the risks that sharing consumer data with apps posed, but actively disregarded those risks because sharing data was otherwise beneficial and lucrative to Facebook’s business model and Platform growth,” the complaint declares.
Source: TechCrunch
