District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine has added Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data collection scandal.
Racine announced the addition on Twitter this morning, saying his research revealed that Zuckerberg "was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data."
The 2018 lawsuit accuses Facebook (and now Zuckerberg) of misinterpreting the company's policies to access third-party data, endangering users' privacy with lax protection measures.
The Attorney General's Office claims that Facebook has violated the law on consumer protection procedures and is seeking civil compensation for the crime. A judge allowed the case to proceed despite Facebook's efforts to stop it in 2019.
Racine said he added Zuckerberg after examining "hundreds of thousands of pages of court-generated documents and completing a wide range of testimonials, including former employees and plaintiffs."
He did not say what exact details led him to make that decision or how deeply Zuckerberg is said to be involved in the incident.
"We take our commitment to investigate violations very seriously - and Facebook should take its responsibility to protect users just as seriously," Racine wrote on Twitter.
BREAKING: I just added Mark Zuckerberg as the defendant in my lawsuit against Facebook.
Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's failure to protect user data.
— Archive: AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) October 20, 2021
The complaint focuses primarily on Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that worked with a researcher who used Facebook's developer platform to gain access to profile information for over 70 million US-resident users for the purpose of targeting them with political ads.
He claims that Facebook knew that the system was being used to collect data from users who did not agree. The complaint also alleges that Facebook did not take appropriate action when companies violated its rules.
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
