US: Sen.Blumenthal: Facebook, Google can’t police themselves

According to a report from Bloomberg, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said at a hearing on oversight of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on November 27 that big technology firms aren’t entitled to Americans’ trust and may be violating antitrust laws.

Blumenthal called for privacy legislation to protect consumers, and said the FTC has “fallen short” on protecting consumer privacy.

Separately, FTC Chairman Joe Simons saidys at the hearing that he needs more authority on privacy protection and supports legislation to address the issue.

In April of 2015, Facebook stopped allowing developers to access data about users’ friends. But in 2014, when Kogan’s app scraped the data, Facebook allowed developers to glean information about users’ friends, subject to their privacy settings. Facebook’s terms of service prohibited developers from sharing that information.

On Tuesday, November 27, Blumenthal also criticized Google for having waited more than seven months to notify people that Google+ exposed consumers’ data to outside parties.

“If we let Facebook and Google police themselves, set their own goalposts, make their own rules, they will always come up short,” he told the FTC commissioners. “We need a commitment from you to end the cycle of impunity.”