September 8, 2022
Two Facebook engineers admitted in newly released transcripts of a hearing related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which granted access to the personal data of 80 million users, that they have no idea where Facebook stores user data.
This emerged during a hearing with Daniel Garrie, a court-appointed special master. Garrie asked the two engineers if they knew where Facebook stores personal information about its users. The engineers denied this and provoked mixed reactions. One is reassuring to those concerned about the company’s management of data, while another inquires the quantity of information it has on its users and how it can be accessed.
Eugene Zarashaw, a Facebook engineering director, said he doesn’t think there is a single person who can answer the question of where Facebook stores data because it would require a significant amount of teamwork.
The investigation took place as part of a Facebook lawsuit to protect users “privacy, which was first launched in 2018. The judge required Facebook to disclose the data it had about the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Facebook obeyed but provided only the data that any user could get through the app’s”Download Your Information”tool, claiming that all data outside of that tool was not covered by the lawsuit.
Meta spokeswoman Dina El-Kassaby said that the inability of an individual engineer to know where user data was stored was no surprise. Meta was committed to protecting user data and continues to invest heavily in meeting data protection obligations and obligations, such as extensive data controls.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheIntercept.
