Zuckerberg summoned to House Of Commons inquiry

Hacker News had various articles explaining that the EU soon will have something called the GDPR (https://www.eugdpr.org/). UK is going to exit the EU, but it's not about that in particular. If EU citizens didn't give explicit permission for this data to be shared Facebook is not following this law. As UK is questioning this behaviour it seems they'll probably have something similar to GDPR after they leave the EU.

Further, this was NOT about providing ads, instead the data personal information was shared with a third party without this being explicitly consented to. People have been profiled without this been explicit, further no consent was given. That's what is not ok.

All the other questions seem like strawmans.

... to become the government.

It was used by a political campaign; that it was not used by a government is...less clear. The Trump-Mercer-CA-Lukhoil-Putin connections are intriguing, and part of the reason this is getting so much media attention with the ongoing Mueller investigation.

There is a very subtle distinction here, no? What you're talking about is relevancy but the criticism levied against Facebook, CA, et al, is that it's not necessarily relevant per se, but manipulating fears and emotions of people based on easily identified characteristics.

If this was purely relevant then you'd expect Facebook and Google to serve you content that challenged your opinion, rather than vying for your approval. As it stands, the technology understands you like certain things and does whatever it can to hide things it assumes you won't like.

Do you feel more informed when targeted with relevant adds?

Ah yes, the poor plebs just don't know what's good for them!

What does "relevant ads" mean? They're more than just ads for something you would want to buy, the message is specifically tailored to you, and they use what they know about you to decide what to tell you and what not to tell you.

This is bad enough when it's used to advertise products, it's much worse when used to influence how you vote, given candidates and political parties will have views / policy ideas on many different subjects. Targeting means you only hear about the ones you would agree with, not the ones you wouldn't.

Secondly, the context of this is the "fake news" enquiry. It seems that the Facebook advertising and targeting has been used to identify people who are already susceptible to lies (conspiracy theorists, woo believers, anti-vaxers etc) or racism and then feed links to "fake news" stories that were guaranteed to make them angry while encouraging them to share.

It doesn't matter if an algorithm deems that my neighbour finds "relevant" an article on "here's why we should deport all the Poles", it's not an acceptable thing for Facebook to be showing people and they need to take responsibility for it.

That's what you're giving up your privacy for. So you see more ads that relate to your interests. And you're grateful.

Are you from Mars?

The other is that this might not be legitimate advertising at all. Depending on what eventually shakes out regarding Cambridge Analytica's intent, there might be fraud in play, and conspiracy to fraud to various actors that may have assisted in some fashion. I'm not saying for certain, just raising the possibility as this unfolds.

Does every country have the "right" to summon a multinational CEO? That'd get crazy really quick, and I doubt it'd benefit anybody (beyond politicians.)

I had the same reaction as the parent comment - to "request" his presence is perfectly fine, but a "summons" would be a bit much...

The procedure for soliciting evidence before a select committee is first to extend an invitation - as has been done - and only after that would a summons be expected to be issued, if at all.

Hell, I've seen product demos from 2012 that showed big players offering private FB/Twitter post analytics for targeting ads/marketing. It's been going on for a long time.

So that does raise this serious concern: why are we making such a big deal of it now? One whistle blower?

A hundred other people groups discovered the continents we call The Americas long before Columbus. His timing was right to gain the popularity he did.

So it could be coincidence, or it could be intentional. That 2nd thing should be thought of as a crazy conspiracy theory. Our media/TV is tightly manipulated and controlled. I mean if anything, this leak should make that more obvious than anything! So it's not so far out there as you might think.

I'm assuming you're American so let me use an American metaphor. The UK House of Commons is basically the House of Representatives. They hold enormous direct legal authority.

In this case it is a "select committee", which is a cross-party group of MPs which has been appointed to investigate the case. Committees can also invite special outside advisors to help. Select committees are not criminal investigations; their findings are passed to the government for consideration.

The house of commons is the elected body and is by far the most powerful body of UK government. A select committee is a group of people (largely made up of members of the house of commons) with a specific goal in mind. In this case investigating the actions of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. These findings will then be delivered to the House (of Commons) along with any recommendations. The government has a large influence as to who is on the select group, so normally listens to their advice.

Most places there are constitutional limits on what parliament can decide and/or qualified majorities and other constraints needed to change constitutional law. In the UK, a central principle is that parliament is entirely sovereign. That is, parliament is not bound by any law decided by past parliaments, but can revoke or alter any of them (they are bound as long as they let a law stand, though) with a simple majority.

While your comment elsewhere that they need things to pass through House of Lords is sort of right, consider that the House of Commons powers are bootstrapped - e.g. the UK Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 severely curtailed the Lords powers, and both were passed as a direct response to the House of Lords being seen as obstructing the House of Commons. The Lords failed to stop both, because they knew in advance of the 1911 act that the government had threatened to simply stuff the Lords full of sympathetic new peers (lords).

As such, while the UK has a bicameral system, the Lords exceedingly rarely stop laws, it usually only delay them or cause negotiations over revisions, as if the Commons decide to push something through over the objections of the Lords, they generally get their will, and coupled with the lack of constitutional hindrances, they're more powerful than even most unicameral legislatives.

> I interpret this as trying to understand the problem better, not prosecute someone, in which case it's not who's-legally-responsible, but who-gets-Facebooks-DNA-and-vision-for-the-future.

This is true. It's not in any way a court proceeding. In this respect it's no different from being summoned to attend an inquiry in any other parliament.

The House of Commons is the highest authority in the UK and one of the most powerful and sovereign bodies in the world.

I think you were thinking of the House of Lords.

Since UK Parliament doesn't have any jurisdiction over the CEO of a US corporation?

The parent appears to be asking why Zuckerberg should come.

There's a very good chance that legally speaking he's "unknown" to the UK - a private citizens of a foreign country that holds no position that brings him in to UK jurisdiction.

Perhaps they're also calling Facebook's CEO in the UK, the Facebook pertinent to UK law?

It does seem wise to call the person whose likely to actually be in control rather than the person who legally is responsible.

[1] http://publicregulatoryblog.fieldfisher.com/2016/declining-a...

it also sets a precedent for other (european) countries to try the same.

If he doesn't show up their, they might take this "up the bloc" so to speak, and make this an european issue.

Does facebook want that on it's hands?

The only real impact a government can have, cutting Facebook access, even in the direst circumstances, is rarely a smart option.

Serious question: if I were to be called by the UK chair of the committee, aside from optics - why cant I just say "FU"? What authority do they have over me?

NOTE: Not defending FB/Z

Is this accurate? The House of Commons briefing paper on Select committees: evidence and witnesses[1] describes the power as:

> In general a select committee with the power to send for persons, papers and records may summon any person within the United Kingdom jurisdiction as a witness.

[1] researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06208/SN06208.pdf

They'll probably send their highest level UK exec, or US exec that serves in some kind of ambassador role.

Edit: Plus, if Zuckerberg screws up and says something he shouldn't or commits to something he shouldn't, Facebook has no recourse. If they send a representative, that representative can always be deemed to not be properly representing the company, the statement can be clarified, and/or the representative can be chastised or replaced.

They will need of that all.

I think that sending “only” the Chief counsel Colin Stretch to the US Parliament was seen as a snub and they will want to correct that. The stock drop hurts: Mark sees that as his own performance review and the drop was large.

- Nicola Mendelsohn CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, a British high-ranking title) is the CEO of the International holding (based in Dublin); as her title indicates, she’s in Whitehall as a fish in water and she’s certainly already making sure everything is fine; I’m not sure she will speak publicly, but she will absolutely brief the speakers on who is on the committee, so look for her in the delegation;

- Sheryl Sandberg is widely seen as the politician whisperer; I can’t imagine her not close to this; she’s more soft-spoken than other in this list, the most European in the team and a good orator, especially when things get complicated; I’d recommend her as she’s the recognised “grown-up”: some of Mark’s star power and closer to the age group of the committee;

- Elliot Schrage, Head of Comms, PR (& somehow also Legal); he is a fixer and the kind of attorney claiming his bloody-handed client is innocent; he’s directly involved in most of that and I think not sending him would be a mistake; he can be a little too American and brash for something like Whitehall so I would definitely make sure he’s properly trained, but that guy could sell them their own shirts and get paid a commission for the pleasure; I was surprised that he wasn’t at the US Commission hearing;

- Colin Stretch, Chief Legal counsel, didn’t made a great showing in the US, so it’s unlikely he’ll speak, but I can’t imagine he won’t be close;

- Boz who twitted about it would make sense, as he’s still the head of Ads and I believe was in charge of the Platform at the time, but he kind of already burned himself with the argument that it’s not a “data leak” and might not play well.

- Chris Cox has a notoriously staggering reality-distortion-field. He’s a probably billionaire with Facebook but would likely have made more money as a cult-leader. Works well on larger, more passive crowd, but this is an angry committee looking for his pound of flesh -- I’d be surprised, but if he talks, I would demand all of you watch it, because that is probably going to be spectacular public speaking, even by the Parliament’s high standards; Chris had been to London earlier in the past years (there are many product teams there); whether the felt this was productive might influence if he find the time to come back;

- for the rest of the leadership committee: Mike Schroepfer (CTO) has a real work to do, and is less relevant; I don’t know Dave Wehner (CFO) but he’s probably less relevant too.

Mark works with all those (and a handful more) as a close committee and I suspect that he mainly limits travel to avoid being too far from that committee for too long. To avoid breaking that, it is possible that most of those people show up. It will be disruptive of many of them to go, but it will send a strong signal and they can reach out to different members individually more effectively that way.

Facebook has misunderstood why European countries are trying to regulate them since their opened the service internationally. Getting at least to understand how UK see what they are doing would help. I would encourage them to reach out, as UK is the easiest to understand in detail and the closest to the US system.

On the other hand, Facebook would be keen to downplay the incident and might not send senior people -- but that’s misunderstanding British politics.

I'd guess it's more likely than not that Zuckerberg himself will appear.

The reason is simple: this is the nightmare scenario that privacy advocates have been talking about. It's a massive leak of personal data, which has been deliberately and seriously abused, and there is substantial evidence of profound implications going to the heart of our democratic processes.

It also happened just a few weeks before arguably the biggest shift in privacy law in the history of the EU comes into effect, and all of this is set against a backdrop of much increased public scepticism about both social networks specifically and big data hoarders in general, following a string of other worrying stories (some of which were about Facebook and some of which weren't, but that doesn't matter very much as far as public sentiment goes).

If this one is handled badly, it really could become an existential threat to Facebook's current very lucrative business model throughout the EU. And apparently it's already been mishandled on a previous occasion with the same parliamentary committee, so sending someone that isn't going to command the committee's confidence this time would be mishandling on a scale of pulling the pin and dropping the grenade at your feet.

I however assume the original poster was more inclined "do the, have any means to summon some American citizen" (to which the answer is "they can summon who they like, and the other can do what they like, unless his state of residence has some form of agreement (like extraditement in criminal court cases)")