Facebook made mistakes, says Zuckerberg; vows to 'fix'

Agencies
March 22, 2018

Washington, Mar 22: In the midst of revelations of a major data breach, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today admitted that his company made mistakes on user data secrecy and vowed to take steps to prevent the misuse or breach of personal data of users by developers or business partners.

Zuckerberg, 33, through a lengthy Facebook post, broke his silence over the alleged privacy scandal that hit the social media giant.

"I started Facebook, and at the end of the day, I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community," Zuckerberg said.

Reports alleged that personal data from as many as 50 million people might have been used improperly in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign by Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based political research firm.

Zuckerberg said Facebook has a "responsibility" to protect its users' data and if it fails, "we don't deserve to serve you."

He acknowledged that there is more the company needs to do.

"...But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it," he said.

Over the past several days, Facebook has been facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and calls for legislative testimonies in the US and Europe.

India's IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has warned social media companies such as Facebook of stringent actions if there was an attempt to influence the electoral process of any country.

Amidst a global outrage against Facebook, the Silicon Valley-based company, which currently has 2 billion monthly active users, has suffered a loss of USD 50 billion in market value.

In a damage control mode, Zuckerberg announced a slew of measures aimed to "secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward".

For this, the Facebook founder said, his company will take three steps to prevent the data misuse.

"We will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity," he said.

"We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps," he added.

Zuckerberg said that the second step is to restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse.

He cited an example for this: "It (Facebook) will remove developers' access to one's data if the app hasn't been used by the person in three months."

"We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days," Zuckerberg said.

In the last of the three steps, he said in the next month Facebook will show everyone a tool at the top of their News Feed with the apps they have used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to their data.

"We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg said that his company had already taken a series of steps in 2014.

Giving a timeline of the events, Zuckerberg said in 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data.

Given the way Facebook platform worked at the time, this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data, he said.

Zuckerberg said in order to prevent the "abusive apps", a series of measures were taken in 2014 to dramatically limit the data apps could access.

In 2015, Facebook learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against Facebook's policies for developers to share data without people's consent, he said, adding that he immediately banned Kogan's app from Facebook, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications.

Zuckerberg cited some media reports that suggested Cambridge may not have deleted the data as they had certified.

This, according to him, was not only a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge and Facebook but also between his company and its users.

"But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that," he said.

"In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people's information in this way. But there's more we need to do," Zuckerberg said.

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Agencies
July 7,2020

Washington, Jul 7: The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee will grill the CEOs of US tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon during an antitrust hearing on July 27.

Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Amazon's Jeff Bezos will testify before the antitrust panel that is working on proposals to reform and regulate the digital market.

The hearing would mark the first time all four top executives testify together in front of Congress, virtually or in-person depending on the panel's call in the COVID-19 pandemic times.

"Since last June, the Subcommittee has been investigating the dominance of a small number of digital platforms and the adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) said in a statement on Monday.

"Given the central role these corporations play in the lives of the American people, it is critical that their CEOs are forthcoming. As we have said from the start, their testimony is essential for us to complete this investigation.”

The House Judiciary Committee announced its antitrust probe into the four tech giants in June last year.

Last month, the committee sent letters to technology giants Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet (Google's parent company), asking them to confirm if their chief executives will testify as part of the committee's tech competition investigation.

Committee chair David Cicilline said the documents that the investigators sought were "essential" to the probe and that requests like this were part of the "appropriate process" to obtain them.

"The only CEO who has expressed reservation about appearing, through a representative, has been Amazon," Cicilline said. "No one in this country is above the law ... nobody is above answering a congressional subpoena".

The lawmakers want the tech giants to furnish documents that have been produced in relation to other competition probes and internal communications.

The letters that the committee sent also posed questions related to possible harms to competition in the market.

In addition to the antitrust probe, Apple's App Store policies are also facing scrutiny from the US Department of Justice.

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News Network
April 24,2020

Toronto, Apr 25: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday (local time) announced a new CAD 1.1 billion package supporting vaccine research and clinical trials as well as expanded testing capacity.

"We are putting in place an additional CAD 1.1 billion dollars for a national medical and research strategy to address COVID-19," Trudeau said during his daily novel coronavirus pandemic briefing on Thursday.

"This plan has three pillars -- research on vaccines and other treatments, support for clinical trials and expanding national testing and modelling," he added.

Trudeau pointed out that CAD 82 million of the total sum will be directed to the development of a vaccine and treatments against the virus, while CAD 471 million will go towards supporting clinical trials.

A further CAD 249 million is being allocated for expanding testing capacity and modelling, the Prime Minister added.

According to Trudeau, this funding will be allotted to a new "immunity task force" commissioned with conducting serology testing -- blood tests looking for the presence of antibodies indicative of exposure to the virus and subsequent immune response.

He said the taskforce, comprising the country's top medical experts, including Chief Public Health Officer Dr Theresa Tam, will test at least a million Canadians over the next two years.

The funding announced today comes in addition to the CAD 200 million committed for COVID-19-related research on March 11.

Trudeau has repeatedly stressed the daily constraints that much of the population is adhering to will be the new normal until a vaccine is developed.

As of Thursday, Canada has confirmed a total of 40,824 COVID-19 cases since the onset of the outbreak, out of which more than 2,000 have proven to be fatal, according to the latest figures from the country's public health agency.

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Agencies
February 26,2020

Islamabad, Feb 26: Islamabad on Tuesday declared former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif an absconder while simultaneously denying extending bail to him.

The federal cabinet presided over by Prime Minister Imran Khan, cited that Sharif failed to provide required medical reports and has violated the bail terms.

The government has also decided to freeze gas and electricity tariffs for the next four months, The Dawn reported.

"After Nawaz Sharif failed to submit his medical report of any hospital in London, the medical board rejected a medical certificate sent by him and [the government] declared him an absconder. From today, Nawaz Sharif is an absconder according to the law of land and if he does not return to the country he will be declared a proclaimed offender," said Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information, in a press conference.

She further asserted that the Punjab government, which was authorized by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to decide Sharif's case on medical grounds, had written several letters asking him to submit his medical report from any hospital in London. However, he failed to do so and only sent a certificate that was not accepted by the medical board.

"If he (Nawaz Sharif) is seriously ill then why a comprehensive medical report is not being submitted to the medical board," Firdous added.

Further, she said that the office of the opposition leader was also waiting for his younger brother and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, who was also staying in London for 'no reason'.

"He is getting a monthly salary and enjoying luxurious offices and other perks and privileges but not performing his duties required by his office and the people. Shahbaz Sahib, return to the country and justify your salary and other benefits being given from taxpayers' money," Firdous added.

On October 29 last year, the IHC granted bail for eight weeks to Sharif, who was convicted and disqualified in corruption cases, on medical grounds.

Sharif left Pakistan for London along with Shahbaz on November 19, 2019, for his medical treatments there.

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