Germany's Justice Minister Katarina Barley said on Monday that Facebook needs "stricter" supervision and should increase transparency toward its users amid the recent big data leak scandal.
Following talks with Facebook representatives in Berlin, the official stated that the company's assurances that it had already taken the situation under control were "not enough."
"In future we will clearly have to monitor companies like Facebook more strictly and punish data protection violations severely and quickly," Barley said at a press conference.
A scandal over Facebook data privacy broke out last week when it became known that personal information of about 50 million Facebook users had been obtained without their consent or permission by data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Brexit campaign.
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The alleged goal of the data collection was to create a mechanism that would allow it to predict and influence voter behavior.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized for the "breach of trust," promising to make sure "this doesn't happen again."
