The British Parliament has the right to demand and seize documents through its Sergeant at Arms, who did exactly that over the weekend in a London hotel room.
In this case, the seized documents are alleged to contain confidential exchanges about data and privacy and Facebook, between Facebook executives and others. The documents predate the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
InfoSecurity Magazine reports:
“That the UK Parliament would go to the lengths it did recently to acquire this information about Facebook’s level of involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal speaks volumes about how potentially devastating these findings could be for every party involved,” said Nathan Wenzler, senior director of cybersecurity at Moss Adams.
“If it is determined that Facebook executives not only knew what was happening but actively supported the privacy policy loopholes that allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect user data in the first place, this would be the most egregious abuse of user privacy that we’ve yet seen.”
Facebook’s VP of Policy Solutions, Richard Allan, is due to appear before Parliament on Tuesday, November 27.
Facebook: you'd better give the documents back
Meanwhile, Facebook told The Guardian that Parliament may have seized the documents but it cannot look at them or publish them because they are sealed in a California court case:
“The materials obtained... are subject to a protective order of the San Mateo Superior Court restricting their disclosure. We have asked the DCMS committee to refrain from reviewing them and to return them to counsel or to Facebook. We have no further comment.”
It makes you wonder what is in those documents, doesn't it?
