U.S. Senators Request Facebook and Google to Attend a Hearing to Answer Platform Security Issues

Senior members of US Senate’s intelligence committee hope that CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter can attend public hearings to answer questions about platform security, including the relationship between these companies and Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.

Legislators in the United States and elsewhere in the world are closely examining large technology companies, especially how these companies collect and use personal data on a large scale. In recent days, Facebook disclosed that the company had data sharing cooperation with four Chinese consumer equipment manufacturers, and was subsequently criticized by some members of the United States Congress.

Mark Warner, a Virginia Democratic senator and deputy chairman of the Senate’s intelligence committee, wrote a letter to Google Thursday asking him to understand the company’s relationship with Huawei and Xiaomi, including whether user data is stored on a mobile phone or on a Chinese company’s server. And how data storage protocols are supervised and enforced. He also sent a similar email to Twitter.

Google did not promise to attend the testimony, but the company spokesperson said that Google is looking forward to “answering these questions.”

Google spokeswoman Colin Smith said that “We do not provide special access to Google user data as part of these agreements and our agreements include privacy and security protections for user data.”

Warner said on Thursday that he was happy that he did not attend the Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO’s hearing. Many senators’ questions at the time showed that they did not have much understanding of social media and did not know how technology companies Collect and save private data.

Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. congressmen have begun to investigate parts of the Google Android operating system and Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.

Source: Bloomberg