Lawmakers hope to use Facebook’s ‘oil spill’ privacy mishap to usher in sweeping new laws

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It was October 2010, and two members of Congress were furious with Facebook. In the eyes of then-Rep. Edward J. Markey and Rep. Joe Barton, the company had failed its users in allowing app developers to take personal data from them and their friends — and transmit it to marketers.

Fretting that those “series of breaches of consumer privacy” had affected millions on the social site, the bipartisan duo then sought to issue Facebook a subtle warning, touting the “comprehensive privacy legislation [that] is currently pending” on Capitol Hill.

Such legislation never passed. Almost eight years later, though, Facebook is once again under fire for a privacy mishap involving millions of users’ personal details landing in the hands of a third party, Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm that worked for the Trump campaign. And some members of Congress are once again threatening to act. “I think that this privacy spill is politically the equivalent of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Sen Markey (D-MA). “Because it involves our very democracy, I think [it] is going to draw more attention of the American public to this issue.”


Lawmakers hope to use Facebook’s ‘oil spill’ privacy mishap to usher in sweeping new laws