Saturday, April 21, 2018

Google, Twitter May Testify Next


The CEOs of Google and Twitter may be next to follow Mark Zuckerberg into a gauntlet of congressional hearings, reports AdAge.

Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune said he's considering another public hearing on data privacy and spoke with representatives of Alphabet Inc.'s Google this week, suggesting the company send CEO Sundar Pichai to answer questions.

"I've told them I'd like to have them come in and talk to us about data privacy and maybe some of the other social media platforms as well," Thune says. "It'll help to really know what they're doing, and it'll help and instruct what we might be thinking about doing. We haven't scheduled anything yet, but we're having conversations with them."

Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, spent about 10 hours over two days this month answering a barrage of questions from lawmakers in House and Senate hearings triggered by revelations that a British firm with ties to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign harvested information from as many as 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. The use of the data by Cambridge Analytica has prompted questions about Internet privacy and calls for potential government regulation to protect personal data.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, who originally sought to schedule all three major social media company CEOs before Zuckerberg became the focus of the inquiries, said this week he may seek testimony from Pichai and Twitter's Jack Dorsey. He sent them letters the day of the Zuckerberg hearing asking about their data privacy practices and actions to counter foreign interference in U.S. elections. He told them he wanted answers by April 25.

Representatives of Google and Twitter declined to comment.

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