Facebook questioned by EU and FTC over data theft scandal

European authorities have given Facebook two weeks to answer questions about its data protection practices and suggested social media platforms should face stricter rules, while chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has rejected a request to give evidence to a British parliamentary inquiry into fake news.

Overnight the US Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into the circumstances of the scraping of 50m Facebook users’ data that was allegedly used by British firm Cambridge Analytica as part of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

After EU leaders discussed the misuse of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, EU's justice commissioner Vera Jourova wrote a letter to the US company's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.

"Have any data of EU citizens been affected by the recent scandal?" Jourova asked in the letter, which has been seen by the AFP newswire. Jourova also requested the company relate what plans it intended to take to prevent a similar scandal in the future.

Jourova, who added that she "would appreciate a reply in the next two weeks", asked whether Facebook and its social media peers should face stricter rules and whether it would change its approach on transparency toward users and regulators.

Facebook's data protection policies have come under scrutiny in the US, UK and Europe after British data analytics company Cambridge Analytica was accused of exploiting data on millions of users of the social media platform and of using dirty tricks to manipulate the US and UK elections, plus the Brexit referendum. Cambridge Analytica uses data on individuals to “micro-target” political messages.

But Cambridge Analytica bosses have denied using Facebook data in their election work.

Speaking to House of Commons' Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee on Tuesday morning, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christoper Wylie said it is “categorically untrue” to say Cambridge Analytica did not use Facebook data. Facebook data was the founding dataset for the company. That is what the company’s algorithms were based on.

He says Nix’s comments to the committee were “exceptionally misleading”. More than that, they were “dishonest”, he says.

Overnight the US FTC’s statement said: “The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises, including to comply with Privacy Shield, or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers in violation of the FTC Act.”

If Facebook is found guilty of breaking a 2011 data protection law it could face fines of billions of dollars. The consent decree included up to $40,000 per violation.

David Vladeck, a former FTC official who oversaw the 2011 investigation, told the Washington Post that it was very likely that Facebook had broken the agreement in 2014 when the data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica.

In a recent undercover investigation by Britain's Channel 4, Alexander Nix, the suspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, said that he met Trump “many times” and his company “did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting” for his presidential campaign. Nix said: “We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy.”

A faculty director at Berkeley Center of Law and Technology said that it could be hard for the government to show that Facebook was at fault, since the apps that users accept allow the social media platform to share the data with its developers.

Attorneys are now asking if Facebook had a way of monitoring what these developers did with the data collected and if they could make sure that it wasn’t being misused.