Today, Public Knowledge submitted a statement on the record for the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce Committees’ joint hearing on “Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data.” An identical letter has been delivered to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, prior to its hearing, “Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data,” to be held on Wednesday.
The following can be attributed to Allie Bohm, Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:
“In the twenty-first century, it is impossible to meaningfully participate in society without sharing our personal information with third parties. These third party companies and platforms should have commensurate obligations to protect our personal information.
“Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that too many third parties fail to live up to this responsibility. Rather, unauthorized access to personal data has run rampant – whether it is in the form of Cambridge Analytica, where authorized access to data was misused and shared in ways that exceeded authorization, or in the form of a data breach, where information was accessed in an unauthorized way.
“This hearing is a good start to begin addressing corporate collection and use of user data in the modern economy. But, a hearing alone is not enough. We hope that the Committees will use this hearing to build the record for strong, comprehensive privacy legislation.”
You may view the letter to the Senate Committees here and the letter to the House Committee here. You can read more about Congressional solutions in response to Cambridge Analytica here.
Members of the media may contact Communications Director Shiva Stella with inquiries, interview requests, or to join the Public Knowledge press list at shiva@publicknowledge.org or 405-249-9435.