Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg's snub labelled 'absolutely astonishing' by MPs

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is set to appear before Congress but not Parliament, in a move that has outraged British MPs.

The Daily Telegraph understands that Mr Zuckerberg is likely to appear before at least one of the three US committees which have invited him to testify, if not a combination of the three.

Mr Zuckerberg’s decision is likely to force fellow technology chiefs including Google’s Sundar Pichai and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to also testify before the Senate Judicary Committee next month.

The move puts the US in the lead for the investigation of Silicon Valley’s privacy practices and handling of personal data.

The Facebook boss, who was last week summoned to give evidence on the growing controversy surrounding his company, on Tuesday offered one of two executives to instead appear in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee to answer questions about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Facebook said they had been “asked personally” by Mr Zuckerberg, but Damian Collins, the chair of the committee, labelled the snub “absolutely astonishing” and said he would press Mr Zuckerberg again to give evidence.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica | The story so far

It came as the committee heard that the personal information of 50m Facebook users obtained in 2013, which Cambridge Analytica then obtained and allegedly exploited to target voters while working for the Trump campaign, may have spread well beyond the British political consultant.

Christopher Wylie, the whistle-blower who worked at Cambridge Analytica, told the the DCMS committee that the data went “everywhere” including into the hands of Palantir, a secretive US data company that has carried out work for US and UK spy agencies.

The claim heaps more pressure on Facebook to come clean about the way it has protected users. Cambridge Analytica insists the user data, which was wrongly obtained by the firm, was deleted and not used.

Mr Collins wrote to Mr Zuckerberg last week asking for a “senior Facebook executive” to appear in front of the committee but added: “I hope this representative will be you.”

Facebook UK’s policy chief Rebecca Stimson replied on Tuesday offering to send either Mike Schroepfer, the company’s chief technology officer, or Chris Cox, its chief product officer.

"Facebook fully recognises the level of public and Parliamentary interest in these issues and support your belief that these issues must be addressed at the most senior levels of the company by those in an authoritative position to answer your questions," Ms Stimson wrote.

"As such Mr Zuckerberg has personally asked one of his deputies to make themselves available to give evidence in person to the Committee."

She wrote that Mr Schroepfer or Mr Cox both "have extensive expertise in these issues and are well placed to answer the Committee's questions on these complex subjects".

During a four-hour hearing in which the committee questioned Mr Wylie and Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a privacy activist, the committee heard the data taken from Facebook was used by a Cambridge Analytica affiliate to build a sophisticated advertising targeting tool, then used in both the US election and EU referendum of 2016. Facebook said on Tuesday that just 1pc of the 270,000 Facebook users whose accounts were exploited to gather data of 50m users were from inside the European Union.

Mr Collins said Mr Zuckerberg’s response was unacceptable. "Given the extraordinary evidence we have heard so far today… I think it is absolutely astonishing that Mark Zuckerberg is not prepared to submit himself for questioning in front of a Parliamentary or Congressional hearing given that these are questions of fundamental importance and concern to Facebook users and as well to our inquiry," Mr Collins said. “I think I would urge him to think again.”

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Mr Collins said he was prepared to hear evidence from Mr Cox but hoped that Mr Zuckerberg would change his mind and give evidence either in person or over video link.

The European Union’s justice commissioner, Vera Jourova, has meanwhile given the company two weeks to answer questions about how Europeans have been affected by the data leak.

In a letter to Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg she urged the company to "fully cooperate with the European data protection authorities in the context of their investigation".

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