Washington DC’s Attorney General has sued Mark Zuckerberg, trying to hold the Facebook co-founder personally responsible for his alleged role in allowing political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to collect the personal information of millions of Americans during the 2016 election cycle.
The lawsuit, filed in the capital by District Attorney General Karl Racine, alleges that Zuckerberg directly participated in policies that allowed Cambridge Analytica to unknowingly collect the personal information of US voters to assist Donald Trump’s campaign.
“This unprecedented security breach has 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 unlawful conduct,” Racine said in a press release.
“This lawsuit is not only justified, it is necessary and sends the message that company leaders, including CEOs, will be held accountable for their actions.”
Racine has previously sued Facebook’s parent company, Meta, under the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The law holds individuals responsible for violations if they knew about it at the time.
The lawsuit against Zuckerberg is based on hundreds of thousands of documents, including statements from employees and whistleblowers, collected as part of the ongoing litigation against Meta.
“Since we filed our landmark lawsuit against Facebook, my office has fought tooth and nail against the company’s characteristic efforts to resist production of documents and otherwise thwart our lawsuit. We continue to insist and have followed the evidence all the way to Mr. Zuckerberg,” Racine said.
Racine claims that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the result of Zuckerberg’s desire to open Facebook to third-party developers.
The lawsuit alleges that Zuckerberg was aware of the risks of data leakage associated with the strategy. In an email addressing state leakage, Zuckerberg noted that according to the lawsuit, “there is a clear risk on the part of advertisers.”
The lawsuit notes that Zuckerberg has been Facebook’s CEO since 2012 and controls about 60% of the voting shares.
“At all times relevant to the lawsuit, evidence showed Mr. Zuckerberg was responsible for the day-to-day operations of Facebook and had the clear ability to control him,” Racine’s office said in a statement.
As the Guardian revealed in 2018, Cambridge Analytica, hired by Trump’s 2016 campaign team, gained access to the private data of 50 million Facebook users. The company claimed the information could be used to identify different types of voters and influence their behavior.
In 2019, Facebook was fined a record $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violating consumer privacy. Critics of the fine said it did too little to change the company’s behavior and charged that a lawsuit should have been launched against Zuckerberg.
On Monday, Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.