The Attorney General of the District of Columbia has filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, accusing the social media network of misleading its users in regards to their privacy and failing to protect their data.
Court documents were filed against Facebook in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Attorney General Feneral Karl Racine.
“In our lawsuit, we are seeking to hold Facebook accountable for jeopardizing and exposing the personal information of tens of millions of its users,” Racine told journalists. “We are also seeking to require Facebook to develop new protocols that will safeguard users’ data to ensure this never happens again.”
Racine added that the lawsuit is also “seeking restitution for the consumers who have been hurt as well as appropriate fines and penalties.”
The documents not only point to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but also refers to special data-sharing agreements Facebook has with certain tech firms, a revelation that was newly published in a bombshell New York Times investigation.
It revealed agreements the social media network had with certain “partner companies” that allowed those partners to get around privacy restrictions and settings to access users’ data. The lawsuit pointed to these as examples of how Facebook has allegedly violated the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act.
The court document said: “In sum, Facebook’s representations regarding consumer privacy in connection with applications were misleading and deceptive. Moreover, Facebook’s lack of adequate disclosures and multi-tiered privacy options added to consumer confusion regarding how consumer information was shared with applications.”
The move by the Attorney General came immediately after the New York Times published a damning report highlighting its investigation into how Facebook gave its certain select tech partners intrusive access to users’ data, including private messages.
In some cases, third-parties were given the ability to read, write or delete these private messages. Further, Facebook allowed access even when users had locked down their privacy settings.
In the court documents, the Attorney General of the District of Columbia alleges that Facebook failed to make timely disclosures about the Cambridge Analytica breach.
The documents say the social media delayed notifying its users of the breach once it became known, and “instead profited from [app developer Aleksandr] Kogan’s and Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of this stolen data by selling millions of dollars of in advertising space to Cambridge Analytica and presidential candidate campaigns during the 2016 election.”
