News

UK Parliament Seize Facebook Documents

It’s certainly been a bit of a rough year for Facebook. With various scandals, including most notably the Cambridge Analytica matter, the social media site has been working hard this year more to put out fires rather than to improve its service. Things got so bad that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before both a US Senate and EU Commission to answer questions.

With the UK Watchdog fining the company £500,000 for the way they failed to handle data, you may recall how Facebook decided to appeal this decision. Submitting their appeal at the 11th hour wasn’t entirely unexpected. That being said though, many believed that the social media site were just going to pay it. It would certainly have dropped the matter without any further investigation.

It’s a decision that may have already backfired within days as in a report via the BBC, it has been reported that the UK Parliament has seized various documents appertaining to how the social media site handles privacy and security.

How Did They Do This?

The UK Parliament does have the power to seize documents which fall under the government’s jurisdiction. It’s a very rarely used power. When it was, however, found that a US tech firm Six4Three executive was in London, the government submitted a ‘subpoena’ (of sorts) to him to submit the requested papers. When he initially refused, he was given an ultimatum. He could provide the documents or face fines and even potentially a custodial sentence. He chose to give up the documents, but Facebook is not happy! What? You didn’t think they’d be happy about this did you?

What’s In the Documents?

It’s hard to say with any certainty. With the recent data scandal and their now appeal of the fine, this is certainly something the government is going to want to pay a lot of close attention towards. As you can imagine though, Facebook isn’t happy. Do they have something to hide?

The social media site has demanded that the documents are returned stating they believe them to be protected under a prior US ruling. I do, however, more suspect that there might be something sensitive in them. Something that the social media site doesn’t want the public to know. Frankly, that makes me all the more curious.

What do you think? Is Facebook trying to hide something here? Did you know the US Parliament had this power? – Let us know in the comments!