The leaders of a key House committee recently declared that Facebook officials failed to answer questions about a privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica company and they now want CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before the panel.
Greg Walden of Oregon and Frank Pallone of New Jersey stated that the “latest revelations regarding Facebook's use and security of user data raise many serious consumer protection concerns.”
Representatives from Facebook briefed the committee’s staff according to Walden and Pallone. A spokeswoman, however, for the committee said that the session left many unanswered questions about how Facebook and third-party developers use and protect consumer data on the social media network.
Walden is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee while Pallone is the panel’s top ranking Democrat. Their statement after Zuckerberg stated that he would be “happy” to testify before Congress, but only if he was the right person to do that. He said there might be other Facebook officials better positioned to appear, depending on what Congress wanted to know.
Walden and Pallone said that as Facebook's top executive, Zuckerberg is indeed the “right witness to provide answers,” and said that they would work with Facebook and Zuckerberg to set a date and time for a hearing in the near future as well.
This represents the first official request from a congressional oversight committee for Zuckerberg's appearance amid demands by lawmakers that Facebook explain reports that Cambridge Analytica harvested the data of more than 50 million Facebook users in order to manipulate elections.
