Organizers described the unusual event on Tuesday as the inaugural hearing of the “International Grand Committee on Disinformation.” Topics included data protection and online disinformation.
Lawmakers from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom attended, and their questions highlighted the global nature of the challenges faced by Facebook.
The committee left an open seat for the CEO on Tuesday, complete with a nameplate.
Lawmakers questioned Richard Allan, the company’s vice president of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Allan is a former member of the House of Commons.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like Facebook, where while we were playing on our phones and apps, our democratic institutions … seem to have been upended by frat boy billionaires from California,” said Charlie Angus, a lawmaker from Canada, as the hearing got underway.
The documents are under court seal in the United States. Facebook wrote to Collins on Sunday asking him to consider hearing from the US court before making the documents public.
Collins wrote in a response to Facebook on Sunday that he had the power to publish the documents.
He said that the documents could shed light on “whether the policies of Facebook … are consistent with the public statements the company has made on the same issues.”
Collins changed tact on Tuesday, however, saying he would not release the documents during the hearing. He did, however, question Allan about an email included in the trove that was written by a Facebook engineer.
Collins said that the email, written in 2014, warned that entities with Russian IP addresses were collecting billions of Facebook data points a day through Pinterest.
Allan did not address the alleged incident directly, but he told Collins that “the information you have seen is at best partial and at worst potentially misleading.”
Facebook told CNN Business that “the engineers who had flagged these initial concerns subsequently looked into this further and found no evidence of specific Russian activity.”
The company did not respond to questions about the nature of the incident, or whether the company contacted law enforcement.
Pinterest did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Members of parliament have certain legal immunities when conducting official proceedings.
This protection from prosecution ensures freedom of speech, including documents and reports published as part of parliamentary proceedings.
Allan, a member of the House of Lords, said he was responsible for the decision for Zuckerberg not attend the hearing. [does that mean, he advised Z not to attend? if so, that might be clearer]
Asked how that looked for a member of parliament, he said: “Not great, I guess is the answer.”
Source : Nbcnewyork
