Facebook letter fails to satisfy DCMS chair Damian Collins

Facebook’s denials that it had given “inconsistent evidence” concerning the Cambridge Analytica affair have failed to persuade a senior MP.

The US firm had been accused of contradicting itself in testimony to US and British officers.

It defended itself by drawing a distinction between two incidents that had raised inside pink flags concerning the political consultancy.

But Damian Collins stated the reason was “typically disingenuous”.

Scrape information

Mr Collins chairs the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee, which investigated the social community as a part of an inquiry into disinformation and “fake news”.

He subsequently wrote to Facebook’s communications chief, Sir Nick Clegg, initially of this month, to search “clarity” about why paperwork printed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission appeared to be in battle with proof beforehand given to Westminster.

In specific, Mr Collins drew consideration to the SEC’s assertion that Facebook staff had first requested an investigation into Cambridge Analytica in September 2015.

He famous that Facebook’s chief technical officer had informed MPs that Facebook had first realized concerning the London firm’s misuse of knowledge from a Guardian newspaper report in December 2015.

The US firm responded by saying its representatives had been “entirely consistent” of their accounts – because the two dates referred to “two different things”.

The earlier date, it stated, had referred to the cut-off date its workers had heard of rumours that Cambridge Analytica had been selling its means to scrape information from public Facebook pages.

The second date, it stated, was when it had first heard of allegations that Cambridge Analytica had illicitly obtained non-public person information from a college researcher – Dr Aleksandr Kogan – who had gathered the knowledge through a character app.

It additionally addressed considerations raised by Mr Collins about how lengthy it had taken to carry the matter to the eye of Facebook’s chief govt.

The US expertise firm had beforehand stated Mark Zuckerberg had not been notified till March 2018 about claims Cambridge Analytica had saved maintain of Dr Kogan’s information regardless of having being informed to delete it.

In its newest response, Facebook’s UK…