EPIC to Massachusetts Supreme Court: Facebook Needs to Disclose Apps that Violated User Privacy

EPIC has filed an amicus brief in Massachusetts Attorney General v. Facebook urging the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to require Facebook to disclose information about third-party apps that violated user privacy protections. The Attorney General requested the information as part of an investigation into the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. EPIC wrote that Facebook has been obligated to collect information about user privacy abuses for more than a decade but failed to do so in this case until threatened with litigation. As a consequence, EPIC argued, if the company is allowed to keep this information secret, "Facebook will continue to evade accountability and the harmful effects of Facebook's business practices could go undetected." EPIC argued that Facebook has had a long pattern of secrecy, and that Facebook now "knows a shocking amount about each of its users, but its users know shockingly little about Facebook." EPIC has long sought accountability for Facebook's broken privacy promises. EPIC filed the original FTC Complaint in 2009 that led to the FTC's 2012 Consent Order with the company, subsequently filed several complaints alleging violations of the Order, urged the FTC to investigate the Cambridge Analytica incident, and moved to intervene in and filed an amicus brief challenging the FTC's 2019 settlement with Facebook.