Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify to the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees at 2:15 p.m. Tuesday in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center. “With all of the data exchanged over Facebook and other platforms, users deserve to know how their information is shared and secured,” Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday evening. Commerce's Ed Markey, D-Mass., responded Wednesday to Facebook's announcement that as many as 87 million users could have had their data compromised in the Cambridge Analytica controversy. “The more we learn, the clearer it is that this was an avalanche of privacy violations that strike at the core of one of our most precious American values -- the right to privacy,” Markey said. More than 200,000 groups like Demand Progress and individuals signed a pledge demanding Facebook notify all affected users. Zuckerberg had agreed to appear before the House Commerce Committee Wednesday (see 1804040048).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the House Commerce Committee April 11 at 10 a.m., the committee announced Wednesday. Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said the hearing “will be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online.” The social media giant announced Wednesday that data of as many as 87 million people, mostly in the U.S., may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. Original estimates were around 50 million. Pallone and other members of Congress penned a letter to the FTC last month asking for details on the agency’s investigation into the matter. Facebook announced Tuesday it removed 70 Facebook and 65 Instagram accounts created by Russia’s Internet Research Agency. IRA “has consistently used inauthentic accounts to deceive and manipulate people,” Facebook said. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., expects Zuckerberg to continue to identify Russian troll activity and work with Congress.

Facebook lacks transparency, and should consider an independent body to filter acceptable online speech that reflects social norms and values, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Vox, which an analyst called a positive development a day later. “I don’t think we are transparent enough around the prevalence of different issues on the platform,” he reportedly said. Zuckerberg said the platform is researching how to improve the quality of time users spend on the social media site. It’s wrong to assume Facebook is a bad use of time, he said, but maximizing the day-to-day length of user engagement shouldn’t be the goal, either. In the past year, Facebook has researched “what drives well-being for people and what uses of social networks are correlated with happiness and long-term measures of health and all the measures of well-being that you’d expect and what areas are not as positive,” Zuckerberg said. Positives "from a Beltway perspective" included the CEO acknowledging "need for transparency in how Facebook's editors and algorithms make content decisions" and being open to oversight, though the arbiter Zuckerberg suggested is unlikely to come to fruition, wrote Cowen's Paul Gallant Tuesday.

The FTC seeks comment by May 9 on a proposal to amend a video game industry self-regulatory program the agency approved under its Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule. The Entertainment Software Rating Board plans to amend its COPPA safe harbor program, the FTC said. ESRB potentially could alter its definition for personal information and data to reflect additional COPPA guidance issued in October, among other changes.

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica controversy highlights the marketing industry’s need to address consumer privacy and transparency issues, the Association of National Advertisers said Thursday. The scandal shows there's “enormous frustration” with organizations that “fall short on promises of protection and safeguards,” ANA said, which has led to “blunt responses” like the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR). The GDPR offers some degree of consumer protection, but it's detrimental to the free flow of information, the group said. Through increased privacy accountability and transparency efforts, online advertisers need to earn back the trust of consumers, ANA said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) should investigate potential data privacy and election law violations committed by Cambridge Analytica, said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and a group of five other lawmakers Tuesday. Texas would join Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, which have opened their own independent probes. “Campaigns in our state must be free of nefarious actors masquerading as political strategists,” the group wrote in a letter to Paxton. “We take privacy and election laws incredibly seriously, and urge you to move as quickly as possible to investigate these issues.”

California consumer groups urged stricter privacy rules for smartphones. In a Tuesday joint petition, The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and Consumer Federation of California urged the California Public Utilities Commission to update privacy rules for wireless carriers’ use of consumer proprietary network information (CPNI). The CPUC should expand protected personal information to include precise geolocation, information of children younger than 13, content and data consumption and web-browsing and application-use histories, the consumer groups said. The California regulator should require telecom providers to get opt-in approval -- and not as a condition of service, they said. Providers should include privacy disclosures as the first section of its customer agreement and include a summary of customers’ opt-in and opt-out privacy choices at the beginning of its privacy policy, they said. And CPUC should require providers to conspicuously “include on its home webpage” links to the privacy policy and CPUC’s customer bill of rights (General Order 168). “Phone companies aren’t leaking your data, they’re eagerly selling it, regardless of whether you’ve agreed,” said TURN Executive Director Mark Toney. “Even customers who are able to navigate the privacy settings on their phones may not realize their CPNI needs to be protected separately, and their location data separately from both of those. Requiring consent before a customers’ personal information can be sold is much more consistent with California’s constitutional commitment to privacy, and would be more effective in disclosing the sale of data by phone companies that now routinely track customers every seven seconds.” CTIA didn’t comment.

The Senate Judiciary Committee invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress April 10 about the company's past and future policies on consumer data protection, Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced Monday. Grassley also invited Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The discussion will involve privacy standards for the “collection, retention and dissemination” of consumer data for commercial use, Grassley said. Measures for preventing misuse and improper data transfer also are expected to be discussed. Facebook didn’t comment.

The FTC has opened a nonpublic investigation into potential privacy practice violations at Facebook, following allegations that Cambridge Analytica misused personal data of 50 million Americans for political purposes (see 1803200047), acting Director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Tom Pahl said Monday. Pahl said the FTC enforces against failures to comply with the Privacy Shield, the FTC Act and data security requirements, among other areas of consumer privacy concern. “The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook,” Pahl said. The National Association of Attorneys General on Monday sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking for answers about the company’s user privacy policies and practices. The group of 37 state and territory AGs also asked Zuckerberg how the company is making it easier for users to control their privacy. “These revelations raise many serious questions concerning Facebook’s policies and practices, and the processes in place to ensure they are followed,” the group wrote.

FTC members 2-0 agreed to Sears' request to let it use some tracking software without telling customers, changing a 2009 settlement that the retailer didn't fully disclose what personal information it collected via app when offering people $10 to install research software on their computers. "While mobile applications are still covered under the modified Order, the Commission added exceptions to the definition of 'Tracking Application' that exclude software that tracks only the configuration of the software program or application itself; information regarding whether the software program or application is functioning as represented; or information regarding consumers’ use of the program or application itself," the FTC announced Wednesday. A dozen comments were made on the request, with some seeking changes to what the company sought or having concerns. The company's petition overall is "deeply lacking in supporting facts, and would set a precedent deleterious to consumer interests," said the World Privacy Forum. Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Digital Democracy asked the agency "to limit the language of Sears’s third requested exception to the definition of 'Tracking Application' to apply only to instances in which information to be obtained is reasonably expected and necessary to perform a service or transaction the consumer has requested." The new order addressed such concerns, saying some weren't likely to occur or not technically likely. The decision "will help allow the many mobile apps provided by Sears to compete on an equal footing with others in the marketplace," emailed a company spokesman without answering our specific questions. He said the commission recognizes "the mobile ecosystem has changed dramatically since 2009. In that time Sears has expanded its mobile apps offerings to support and encompass everything from shopping at Sears and Kmart to controlling your smart Kenmore appliances."