Ex-regulators say Facebook's steps won't stop federal investigations

Former Federal Trade Commission consumer protection enforcers say Facebook's response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal won't be enough to keep federal investigators at bay. "Just because they make changes moving forward doesn’t mean they can’t be investigated or sued for what they did before," said Jessica Rich, who stepped down as the head of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau in 2017. "No, these changes are salutary, helpful and long overdue, but I don’t think that they will deter the FTC from imposing a very substantial civil penalty on Facebook should the Commission find, as I expect it will, that Facebook violated the consent decree with the FTC," said David Vladeck, who led the Bureau when Facebook signed an agreement with the FTC. Rich is bullish, too, that something comes of the FTC's investigation. “Based on the multiple potential legal theories here for pursuing Facebook, I would put the odds high that there is some enforcement action that occurs by the FTC," she said. "And I would put the odds at virtually 100 percent that between the states and the European countries there’s some action against Facebook for this incident and the underlying practices that it reveals.”