SEC deposition shows Zuckerberg misled Congress about Cambridge Analytica timeline

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg misled Congress and the American public about how early he knew concerning the menace Cambridge Analytica posed to Fb person privateness, in keeping with a newly revealed US Securities and Change Fee doc. The sworn deposition was obtained by Zamaan Qureshi, a coverage advisor with the Actual Fb Oversight Board. 

In 2019, Zuckerberg informed the SEC he was conscious of Cambridge Analytica not less than as early as 2017. At first of that yr, Zuckerberg despatched an e-mail to Fb workers asking about an article Motherboard revealed concerning the knowledge agency. The Vice Information outlet was one of many first English-language publications to element Cambridge Analytica’s use of on-line knowledge to construct psychographic profiles. 

The SEC requested Zuckerberg if that was the primary time he had turn into conscious of the agency. “I believe that is most likely proper,” he informed the Fee. “My guess is I heard of them earlier than. And that this was after seeing a few mentions of what they have been claiming to do, I wished to ask individuals who I trusted what their evaluation was.”  

Zuckerberg additionally thought of explicitly calling out Cambridge Analytica in a press release he made about Fb’s makes an attempt to fight Russian election meddling within the fall of 2017. His first draft known as for him to state: “We’re already wanting into overseas actors together with Russian intelligence actors in different Soviet states and organizations like Cambridge Analytica.” Nevertheless, on the day of the livestream, he at greatest alluded to the agency, saying Fb was investigating “organizations just like the campaigns, to additional our understanding of how they used our instruments.”

The timeline Zuckerberg offered to the SEC contradicts the one he gave throughout sworn testimony earlier than the Home Monetary Companies Committee in 2019. “I am unsure of the precise time, but it surely was most likely across the time it grew to become public, I believe it was round March of 2018. I could possibly be fallacious, although,” he informed Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  

When requested to touch upon Actual Fb Oversight Board’s findings, Meta pointed Engadget to its 2019 Federal Commerce Fee settlement, which noticed the corporate comply with pay $5 billion in monetary penalties and implement new privateness measures. “This has been a settled case for over three years,” a Meta spokesperson added. The workplace of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t instantly reply to Engadget’s remark request.

The findings are more likely to immediate new questions on Fb’s dealing with of Cambridge Analytica. To at the present time, the scandal is the biggest in Meta’s historical past. The information agency harvested data from as many as 87 million Fb profiles and should have handed on that knowledge to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign and the Brexit marketing campaign.