Facebook and Twitter defend Chinese partnerships amid US probe into foreign efforts to influence politics
Senators questioned the US social networking giants about partnerships with Chinese companies, saying they could pose security threats to America
US senators on Wednesday questioned US social networking giants Facebook and Twitter about their partnerships with Chinese companies, saying they could pose security threats to America.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey are testifying in Washington before the Senate Intelligence Committee about their companies’ responses to foreign use of social media to influence US politics. It is the first time that either executive has testified on Capitol Hill.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon asked Facebook’s Sandberg to “make public [the] portion of Facebook’s partnership with smartphone companies, such as Huawei and ZTE”.
“Protecting data privacy has to be a higher-tier issue in terms of national security,” Wyden said. “The prospect of data that is shared with shady businesses, hackers and foreign governments is a massive privacy and a national security concern.”
Sandberg responded that the company “can’t commit to make [details of the relationship] public because a lot of it has sensitive information”. But she said Facebook “will prioritise the request” and get back to the lawmakers “as quickly as possible”.
When Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said he worried that technology companies in the US were kowtowing to authoritarian regimes globally to access their markets, Sandberg replied that the tech firm “would only operate in a country where we can do so in keeping with our values” and “that will apply to China as well”.