U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, issued the following statement after his meeting today with Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. The meeting comes just one day before Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees on Tuesday:
“I just met one-on-one with Mr. Zuckerberg and in no uncertain terms reminded him that Facebook has a responsibility to its users to protect our personal data. Facebook failed us. Not only did they fail to safeguard the personal information of millions of users, they concealed it from us – and this is not the first time the company mishandled user information. Only now are they coming clean and informing those who have had their information compromised and telling us they are going to make things right.
“Meantime, we still don’t know what Cambridge Analytica and other third parties have done with the data they collected. That’s why I’ve asked Chairman Thune to haul Cambridge Analytica in to answer these questions at a separate hearing. The chairman has given me his assurance he plans to do just that. The bottom line here is: if Facebook can’t fix its privacy problems, then how can Americans trust them to be caretakers of their sensitive information?”
