The District of Columbia attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, aiming to hold the Facebook co-founder personally liable for allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to gather the personal data of millions of Americans during the 2016 election season.
Image by Alexander Shatov
The lawsuit, filed in the capital by Attorney General Karl Racine of the District of Columbia, claims that Zuckerberg was actively involved in policies that allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect personal data on US voters without their consent in order to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
“This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,” Racine said in a news release.
Meta has declined to comment.
While we are used to hearing about the big tech giants such as google, amazon, and apple fulling under legal scrutiny, this is the first time a lawsuit has been filed against the CEO of one of the industry leaders.
Mr. Racine claims that hundreds of documents he has now obtained in the case prove Zuckerberg’s direct involvement in Cambridge Analytica’s decision-making, and he is thus suing Zuckerberg directly.
“Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident,”
