Australia has also opened an investigation into the matter, according to that country’s Information and Privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim.
Congressional Briefings
In Washington, Facebook said it would conduct staff-level briefings of six congressional committees, including the House and Senate Judiciary committees, as well as the commerce and intelligence committees of both chambers. A key question will be their appetite for a public appearance by the company’s leadership, especially Zuckerberg. The Facebook officials set to handle the briefings include the company’s deputy general counsel and deputy chief privacy officer, said a congressional official.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wants to hear testimony from Zuckerberg, while Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said any decision about calling Zuckerberg to appear before the panel is further off.
Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, repeated their bipartisan call Monday for testimony by the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet before the Judiciary Committee.
The growing issues surrounding big social media companies "aren’t going away," Kennedy told Bloomberg TV Tuesday. "Mr. Zuckerberg and the other CEOs need to come," he added. "Some of Facebook’s behavior has kind of gotten creepy."
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who also serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that she has "grown increasingly concerned as we’re learning more and more about the manipulation of data, the harvesting of data from Facebook, the ads that were placed to sow the seeds of discord in this country."
White House spokesman Raj Shah demurred on Tuesday when asked if Zuckerberg should testify, but he said Trump supports investigations by Congress or the FTC into the incident.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.