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Enterprise
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Borneo Bulletin, Monday July 15, 2019
FACEBOOKmay be close to putting a Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) investigation behind it. But it
faces a variety of other probes in Europe and the
United States (US), some of which could present it
with even bigger headaches.
While the USD5 billion fine from the FTC, which
Facebook has been expecting, is by far the largest
the agency has levied on a technology company,
the real worries for Facebook — and its investors
and the companies that use it to advertise on its
service — are the other restrictions and government
oversight that might come with it.
This goes for the other investigations as well,
which span the globe from the European Union
(EU), Germany, and Belgium to New York, Canada
and elsewhere.
“This fine signals that regulators are ratcheting
up the pressure,” said Dimitri Sirota, CEO of BigID,
a business data privacy company, in an email.
He said that the FTC action, together with recent
European fines on British Airways and Marriott,
shows that regulators around the world are getting
bolder in cracking down on data privacy violations.
Facebook may think the fine is easily affordable, he
said, but it hurts its image and trustworthiness.
Beyond the regulatory investigations, Cowen
analyst John Blackledge noted that Facebook and
other big companies also face broader antitrust
concerns.
Facebook has enjoyed more than a decade of
unfettered growth as Silicon Valley’s golden child,
trusted to regulate itself and keep its 2.4 billion
users’ interests at heart.
Then came Russian meddling in the 2016
elections, fake news and the Cambridge
Analytica scandal, in which a political data mining
firm affiliated with the 2016 presidential campaign
of DonaldTrump improperly accessed thepersonal
data of as many as 87 million users.
Regulators, mainly in Europe but also in the US,
perked up. And now Facebook faces the prospect
of not only billions more in fines, but additional
restrictions on its business.
Irish Data Protection Commission
Ireland’s data regulator has launched an
investigation of Facebook over the Cambridge
Analytica data leak last year. At issue is whether
the company complied with strict European
regulations that went into effect in May 2018
covering data protection. Under the new rules,
companies could be hit with fines equal to four per
cent of annual global turnover for the most serious
violations.
The probe could potentially cost Facebook
more than USD2.3 billion in fines based on its 2018
revenue, or more if it makes more money this year,
which is all but certain. The commission, which
handles online data regulation for the EU, has
nearly a dozen open investigations on Facebook
that include its subsidiaries WhatsApp and
Instagram. Facebook said it is cooperating with the
investigations.
US Housing and Urban Development
The US government charged Facebook with
high-tech housing discrimination in March for
allegedly allowing landlords and real estate
brokers to systematically exclude groups including
immigrants and minorities from seeing ads for
houses and apartments.
The civil charges filed by the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could cost
the social network millions of dollars in penalties.
More importantly, they’re already affecting the
company’s business model — its ability to target
FTC fine doesn’t spell
closure for Facebook
ads with near-surgical precision.
By its nature, this sort of targetting
excludes some people and includes
others. And that’s not always legal.
The charges came despite changes
Facebook announced just a week
earlier to its ad targetting system.
The company had agreed to overhaul
its targetting system and abandon
some of the practices singled out by
HUD to prevent discrimination, not
just in housing listings but in credit
and employment ads as well. The
move was part of a settlement with
the American Civil Liberties Union
and other activists. But HUD did not
join the settlement. Facebook said
it continues to work with civil rights
experts on the issues.
Canada’s privacy czar
In more fallout from Cambridge
Analytica, Canada’s privacy head
announced in April that he is taking
Facebook to court after finding
that lax privacy practices allowed
personal information to be used for
political purposes.
A joint report from privacy
commissioner Daniel Therrien and
his British Columbia counterpart
said major shortcomings were
uncovered in Facebook’s procedures.
It called for stronger laws to protect
Canadians. Facebook said it is taking
the investigation seriously.
United Kingdom (UK),
Belgium, Germany
In October, British regulators
slapped Facebook with a fine of
500,000 pounds (USD644,000) —
the maximum possible — for failing
to protect the privacy of its users in
the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The company said it is appealing the
fine, so the matter is still, technically,
unresolved.
The Belgian Data Protection
Authority and Germany’s Federal
Cartel office are also looking into
Facebook’s data collection practices.
Washington DC,
State Attorneys General
If the federal investigations
were not enough, Facebook also
faces local government bodies.
Attorneys general for Washington,
DC, and California are looking into
Cambridge Analytica, while the New
York attorney general is investigating
the
company’s
unauthorised
collection of 1.5 million users’
contact lists. Facebook said that
it is working with the New York
attorney general’s office and that the
collection was unintentional. It also
said it is cooperating with the other
attorneys general in their probes.
FBI, SEC
Though the scope of their
involvement
with
the
FTC
investigation is unclear, Facebook
has confirmed that it has received
questions from the FBI and the
Securities andExchangeCommission
over Cambridge Analytica and that it
is cooperating with the inquiry.
- AP
Facebook logo on Nasdaq MarketSite screen, in New York’s Times Square
BEIJING (Xinhua) - China will
introduce more measures to address
the shortage of capital, land and
human resources in the development
of rural industries.
The decision was made at a
national meeting on rural industry
revitalisation held in Yangzhou, east
China’s Jiangsu Province.
The boom of industries in
rural areas is fundamental to
rural vitalisation, said China’s Vice
Agriculture andRural AffairsMinister
Yu Xinrong.
In 2018, operating revenue
of China’s agricultural product
processing industry reached CNY14.9
trillion (about USD2.17 trillion), while
rural tourism reported revenue of
over CNY800 billion.
Local authorities are required to
provide more support for land use
of rural industries when making
annual land utilisation plans, Yu
said.
Financial institutions at the county
level should promote local rural
industries with deposits received,
and are encouraged to set up rural
industrial development funds tomeet
the capital demand for industrial
development, according to Yu.
Farmer
training
should
be
strengthened and vocational colleges
are supported to expand enrollment
in rural areas, he added.
BEIJING (Xinhua) - China’s mobile
phone shipments decreased 6.3
per cent to 34.31 million units in
June, according to a report by the
China Academy of Information
and Communications Technology
(CAICT).
Total
shipments
during
the
January-June period reached 186
million units, down 5.1 per cent
from the same period last year, said
CAICT, a research institute under the
Ministry of Industry and Information
Technology.
The mobile phone market is now
in a transitional period from 4G to
5G, as the first 5G phone model was
launched in market last month, the
report said.
Shipment of 4G phones accounted
for 96.9per cent of the total shipments
in June at 33.26 million, down 5.2 per
cent year on year.
Meanwhile, smartphone shipments
dropped five per cent year on year
to 33.22 million units, accounting for
96.8 per cent of the gross shipments
last month, CAICT said.
China unveils measures to
boost rural industries resource
China’s mobile phone
shipment down 6.3pc in June
AP