The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook Debacle: A Legal Primer

On March 17, the New York Times revealed that Cambridge Analytica, the British data analysis firm with ties to Robert Mercer and Stephen K. Bannon and that was hired by the Trump campaign, "harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission." This set off a firestorm in the U.S. and the U.K. as regulators announced they would get to the bottom of what went wrong. Sen. Ron Wyden asked Facebook a series of hard-hitting questions. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced an investigation into the matter, followed by the New York attorney general. And the U.K.'s information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said she would seek a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's computers. This in turn sent Facebook stock plunging-down nearly 7 percent by the market's close on Monday, March 19 and down nearly another two points on Tuesday, March 20. On Monday night, the New York Times revealed that Facebook's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, is stepping down after much internal disagreement with the way the firm handled concerns about misinformation in the 2016 elections.