Fresh trouble mounted for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday with the Indian government issuing a notice to the social media giant in the data leak controversy. The IT Ministry yesterday sought clarification from the California-based firm over reports of personal data of Indians voters being compromised by the controversial data-mining group Cambridge Analytica and others.
The government has asked Zuckerberg to file his response before April 7.
Through its notice, the ministry sought to know whether Facebook or agencies related to it in the past ever tried to manipulate the elections by harvesting users’ personal information. It also asked Facebook to explain the measures being taken by it to prevent data misuse by groups like CA and others. Besides, it questioned what specific steps have been taken by it in this regard after the controversy erupted.
The development comes a week after the IT Ministry issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica asking it to reveal entities that hired their services to allegedly use data of Indians from the breach in Facebook database. It had sought the firm’s response by Saturday.
Ever since the data breach row erupted, Facebook is facing ire from various world quarters for misusing personal information of its users’ without their knowledge. Earlier, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had warned Facebook of stern action if found interfering in the elections and said that the government won’t shy away from summoning Zuckerberg if required. He had said that Facebook is most welcome in the country but as far as data security is concerned, there shall be no compromise.
Interestingly, the Facebook founder had earlier apologised for the data debacle and promised to introduce effective measures to check the likeages.
