The District of Columbia has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., for his claimed role in the data breach that allowed political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica to target Facebook users during the 2016 presidential election.
According to D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, a “sweeping investigation” revealed that Zuckerberg contributed to lax oversight of user data and the creation of misleading privacy agreements that allowed Cambridge Analytica and other third parties access to the personal information of 87 million Americans.
During his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, then-candidate Donald Trump employed Cambridge Analytica. “The largest consumer privacy scandal in the nation’s history,” Racine said.
The lawsuit is similar to one Racine brought against Facebook in 2018, however the judge in that case dismissed the Democratic attorney general’s effort to add Zuckerberg as a defendant earlier this year as “almost bad faith.”
At a March hearing, D.C. Superior Court Judge Maurice Ross stated, “You want to convert this from a lawsuit about Facebook to a case about Mr. Zuckerberg.” “What is the benefit of naming him?” There is no additional respite for the District’s consumers.”
Racine stated on Monday that going after Zuckerberg was critical for his office.
In a statement, Racine stated, “We continue to persist and have followed the facts directly to Mr. Zuckerberg.” “The evidence demonstrates that Mr. Zuckerberg was intimately involved in Facebook’s inability to protect its users’ privacy and data, which led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.”
Meta remained silent. Racine’s charges have previously been dismissed by Facebook as “little more than a broadside against Facebook’s economic model.”
Cambridge Analytica aided Trump, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson, all Republicans, in their 2016 campaigns. Former Renaissance Technologies co-CEO Robert Mercer, a big Trump supporter in 2016, created it in 2013. One of the campaign’s liaisons to Cambridge Analytica, which collapsed amid exposes about its collecting and exploitation of personal data, was Steve Bannon, Trump’s former senior strategist.