Jeff Horwitz

An effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to more aggressively monitor social media for possible threats could clash with Facebook's privacy policies and possibly its attempts to comply with a record $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The FBI is soliciting proposals from outside vendors for a contract to pull vast quantities of data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media “to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.” The request was posted in July 2019, weeks before a series of mass murders shook the coun

Apparently, Facebook uncovered emails that appear to connect Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to potentially problematic privacy practices at the company. Within the company, the unearthing of the emails in the process of responding to a continuing federal privacy investigation has raised concerns that they would be harmful to Facebook—at least from a public-relations standpoint—if they were to become public. The potential impact of the internal emails has been a factor in the tech giant’s desire to reach a speedy settlement of the investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.

A company run by former officials at Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm brought down by a scandal over how it obtained Facebook users’ private data, has quietly been working for President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort. At least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria, a new company specializing in voter and consumer targeting work similar to Cambridge Analytica’s efforts before its collapse.