Sen. Ron Wyden said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg should be punished with prison time over the social media giant’s privacy lapses.
“Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy. I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to — and let me underline this — the possibility of a prison term. Because he hurt a lot of people,” the Oregon Democrat told Willamette Week.
“And, by the way, there is a precedent for this: In financial services, if the CEO and the executives lie about the financials, they can be held personally accountable,” he said.
Wyden published a draft bill late last year that proposed a penalty of 10 to 20 years of imprisonment for executives who mishandle consumer data.
In April, he sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking for the agency to hold Zuckerberg “individually accountable” for “repeated violations of Americans’ privacy.”
Zuckerberg has said he’s open to more government regulation as Facebook faced a slew of scandals involving user data in recent years. Zuckerberg testified to Congress in April 2018 that Facebook doesn’t “sell data to anyone” and that users have control over how their data is used.
The New York Times later reported that Facebook has agreements with companies such as Netflix, Amazon, and Microsoft that gave them access to users’ timelines, private messages, and friend lists.
