Russia wants Mark Zuckerberg to testify for them over privacy

In case anyone thought Facebook’s data breach scandal was over, it clearly isn’t as now Russia wants CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify for them over privacy concerns.

Russian senators have called on Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to provide expert testimony on privacy following the Cambridge Analytica controversy. Zuckerberg has already testified to the US and European lawmakers on regulating social networks, reported The Moscow Times.

Cambridge Analytica scandal led to data breach of almost 87 million users without their consent. During Wednesday’s session of the upper house of the Russian parliament, a senator suggested summoning Zuckerberg and to know his views on Russia’s efforts to ‘digitize the economy’.

As a response, speaker Valentina Matviyenko said that she would ‘issue an order’, and they would ‘organize his arrival’. The Russian senators want Zuckerberg to testify on topics like privacy, information security, and the ‘dissemination of harmful content’, wrote The Verge.

However, one senator objected to Zuckerberg’s visit since he was a ‘Russophobe’ (anti-Russia). To this, Speaker Matviyenko responded, “We have to meet with Russophobes too. Why shouldn’t the Federation Council enter into dialogue and ask him about his Russophobic statements?”

Also, Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has threatened to ban the social media site over its failure to comply with a 2015 law accounting for tech companies to store Russian citizens’ personal data on local servers.

During his testimony at the US and European parliament, Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook hadn’t done enough for preventing misuse of platform. “We didn’t take a broad view of our responsibility. That was a mistake and I am sorry for it,” exclaimed Zuckerberg.

He also admitted that while investing in security would drastically decrease Facebook’s profit margin, but ‘keeping people safe will always be more important than maximizing profits’.