Mark Zuckerberg was sued on Monday by Washington prosecutor Karl Racine for deception and violation of a consumer protection law, in connection with the Cambridge Analytica affair, which had seen this firm use quantities massive amount of data collected on Facebook.
This is a second attempt to include the co-founder of the social network in the lawsuits related to Cambridge Analytica.
In March, a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, jurisdiction of the American capital Washington, had refused to the prosecution to call Mark Zuckerberg as a witness in the procedure initiated in 2018 and which targets Facebook.
Cambridge Analytica is accused of having collected and exploited, without their consent, the personal data of 87 million Facebook users, to which the platform had given it access.
This information would have been used to develop software used to guide the vote of American voters in favor of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Mark Zuckerbeg “is largely responsible for the + vision + of his platform which required (…) to expose the personal data of consumers”, argues the prosecutor in the document of the subpoena, filed Monday in the Superior Court of the district of Columbia.
For the public prosecutor’s representative, the CEO of Facebook “was aware of the compromise” which involved dealing with the personal data of Facebook users to increase the profits of the company.
He was “directly responsible for Facebook’s laxity in the application of its regulations”, continues prosecutor Racine.
As CEO, Mark Zuckerberg “had authority to control deceptive practices and misrepresentation” of its operation to consumers in Washington, according to the prosecution.
In July 2019, federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion for “misleading” its users and imposed independent oversight of its handling of personal data.
Contacted by AFP, the company declined to comment.
Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Facebook has removed access to its data from thousands of applications suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information accessible to developers in general and made it easier for users to calibration of personal data sharing restrictions.
(AFP)
