Judge to Facebook: Fess up about $5 billion privacy-violation settlement

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A federal judge in Washington has ordered Facebook to answer questions raised by the Electronic Privacy Information Center over a proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that would dismiss tens of thousands of privacy-violation complaints against the company.

EPIC said it has moved to intervene in the FTC case against Facebook.

"This court should not adopt the proposed Consent Decree because the parties have not established that it would be fair, adequate, reasonable, appropriate, or consistent with the public interest," EPIC charged.

Judge Timothy J. Kelly ordered that by Jan. 24, both sides must file a brief answering the arguments raised by EPIC.

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EPIC said the new settlement proposal over the alleged abuse of consumer information "largely mirrors the pre-existing Consent Order from 2012."

"There are few new obligations on the company that would limit the collection and use of personal data, nor will there be any significant changes in business practices."

EPIC said the commission "also seems entirely unconcerned by Facebook's planned integration of the personal data of WhatsApp users even though this would violate representations both firms previously made to the commission."

More than 29,000 complaints against Facebook have been filed with the FTC.

EPIC long has battled Facebook's profiting from private information.

The organization said the most recent complaints against Facebook it obtained followed the commission's proposed $5 billion settlement in July. Consumer groups and members of Congress are among those who filed complaints.

An EPIC representative said at a congressional the proposed $5 billion is insufficient.

"The FTC is simply ignoring thousands of consumer privacy complaints about Facebook's ongoing business practices," the EPIC said.

EPIC has suggested the committee support creation of a U.S. Data Protection Agency, because the FTC "may help consumers with broken toasters, but the FTC is not an effective data protection agency."

The complaints included the company's Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which users' private information ended up in the hands of a private company.

At the time, EPIC filed a motion to intervene in the case.

The privacy group has been seeking, for several years, orders that would "require Facebook to restore the privacy settings of users, give users access to all of the data that Facebook keeps about them, stop making facial recognition profiles without users' consent, make the results of the government privacy audits public, and stop secretly tracking users across the web."

The latest issues came about because Facebook changed its program code so that the personal information of users, such as the names of friends and private photos, were available to Facebook to use for its commercial benefit.

The move was followed by numerous other methods of monetizing user information.

Other complaints against Facebook followed.

Another privacy organization, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, previously said the settlement was "grossly inadequate to the task of protecting the privacy of technology users from Facebook's surveillance-based system of social networking."

The group noted the deal "does not limit how Facebook collects, uses, and shares the personal information of its users."

Additionally, WND reported a Facebook insider confirmed the social-media giant discriminates against conservatives through software manipulation, using "special features" to "deboost" traffic, especially near elections.

The former employee now works with James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, which released a video of her testimony.