DC Attorney General Sues Zuckerberg Over Cambridge Analytica Personal Data Leak

Facebook has been under fire for the Cambridge Analytica data breach ever since the news about personal data being gathered for political purposes broke out in 2018. The Federal Trade Commission fined the corporation $5 billion the following year for violating privacy laws as a result of the incident.

Washington, DC's Democrat Attorney General Karl Racine launched a lawsuit on Monday against Meta* CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging he actively participated in decision-making that led to the Cambridge Analytica data leak.

According to the lawsuit, Zuckerberg is more than "a figurehead at Facebook" as he "is personally involved in nearly every major decision the company makes." In that capacity, Zuckerberg was purportedly personally involved in choices that led to third-party Cambridge Analytica obtaining user data in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and Brexit in the UK that year.

"Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident," Racine wrote on Twitter.

The complaint follows Racine's continuing case against Facebook, now known as Meta, for the data breach, which was launched in 2018. Racine reportedly attempted to include Zuckerberg in the company's initial lawsuit, but a court denied the motion in March, claiming Racine had waited too long.

"This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary. Misleading consumers, exposing their data, and violating the law come with consequences, not only for companies that breach that trust, but also corporate executives," the attorney general said.

According to the statement, the decision to file the new lawsuit against Zuckerberg was made after a review of hundreds of thousands of documents produced during the ongoing case against Facebook, as well as depositions with Facebook's directors, former employees, and whistleblowers.

"The evidence shows Mr. Zuckerberg was personally involved in Facebook’s failure to protect the privacy and data of its users leading directly to the Cambridge Analytica incident," Racine underscored.

He then added that "this unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct."

According to the lawsuit, to Zuckerberg and his team at Meta, the ultimate goal of engaging the audience on Facebook is to "convince people to reveal the most granular details of who they are to Facebook—their religions, their work histories, their likes—so that it can be monetized, and Zuckerberg and his company can continue to grow even wealthier."

*Meta is banned in Russia over extremist activities.