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The government on Wednesday sent a set of notices to both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA), seeking more details and clarifications on the data breach issue, and asked them to send the responses by May 10.
It has asked Facebook to list out security architecture proposed to be created by the company, on an ‘urgent basis’, so that data concerning Indians are not pilfered or manipulated again for extraneous purposes including influencing the elections.
“If any such unauthorised use of data or manipulation is known, what steps Facebook proposes to take to stall it immediately,” the notice sent to Joel Kaplan, Vice-President, Facebook, said.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had sent the first notice to Facebook on March 28, to which the company had sent responses on April 5.
Taking a tough stance against Cambridge Analytica’s ‘unsatisfactory, cryptic and evasive’ response to its first notice, the latest government notice has also asked the company to ‘responding fully, adequately and transparently’ to the earlier queries with more details.
In addition, it has asked that what kind of data has been collected by the British data analytics company in India concerning Indians; what research instruments have been used on this data; and whether CA has harvested any data through any third party app and that it does not directly or indirectly access/ possess data from Facebook.
The MeitY notice sent to Sean Richardson, Head of Legal, CA, has also asked the names and details of the entities presently operating under the umbrella of CA including their constitution and the names and contact details of Director(s).
“While CA has denied (in the earlier response) having any Facebook data of Indian citizens, please confirm whether any such data was ever accessed by (or offered to) CA,” it said.
The MeitY had earlier questioned both the companies on the impact of the data breach, following which Facebook had admitted that nearly 5.62 lakh people in India were ‘potentially affected’ by the incident.
Information of over 80 million Facebook users was allegedly harvested by CA, leading to a global backlash against the Silicon Valley-based company.
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