1. Explain the legality and the ethicality of Facebook in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical incident.

2. Explain the leagality and the ethicality of Cambridge in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical incident.

In mid-March 2018, The Guardian and the New York Times revealed a data scandal involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA) when they reported that CA had collected the personal information of 87 million Facebook users. The newspapers outlined how the data of these Facebook users were obtained by CA. The Guardian referred to the data misuse as a breach, but Facebook disagreed. A Facebook executive stated that no systems were infiltrated and that no passwords or information were stolen or hacked. The scandal involved the collection and subsequent use of personally identifiable information on 87 million Facebook users. The time line of the incident is useful in understanding what happened. In April 2010, Facebook deployed software called Open Graph, which enabled external developers to contact Facebook users and request permission to access their personal data and to access their Facebook friends' personal data as well. If the user accepted, these developers could access a user's name, gender, location, birthday, education, political preferences, relationship status, religious views, online chat status, and more. With additional permissions, external developers could access a user's private messages. In 2013, Cambridge University academician Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research developed a personality quiz app called "This Is Your Digital Life. The app prmpted users to answer questions for a psychological profile. Almost 300,000 Facebook users installed Kogan's app on their accounts. As with any Facebook developer at the time, Kogan could access personal data about those users and their Facebook friends (with appropriate permissions from users themselves). Furthermore, Kogan's app collected that personal information and loaded it into a private database instead of immediately deleting it. Kogan then provided that database, containing information about 87 million Facebook users to the voter-profiling company CA, which used the data to develop 30 million psychographic profiles about voters. In 2014, Facebook changed its rules to limit a developer's access to user data. This change was made to ensure that a third party could not access a user's friends' data without gaining permission first. However the rule changes were not retroactive, and Kogan did not delete the data thought to have been improperly acquired. In late 2015, reports suggested that Ted Cruz's presidential campaign was using paychological data based on research on millions of Facebook users. In response to the reporting, Facebook said that when it learned about the data leaks it tried to ban Kogan's app and legally pressured both Kogan and CA to remove the data they had improperly collected. Facebook claimed that both Kogan and CA certified that they had deleted the data. In 2016, Donald Trump's campaign invested heavily in Facebook ads helped by CA In August 2018 questions were still being liotly debated about Facebook's role in the 2016 elections Many questions have focused on Facebook's News Feed and the role it played in magnifying Russian propaganda and other hoaxes. Lawmakers have also criticized the company's lax sale of political advertisements that some buyers literally paid for with Russian rubles. Political ads are not regulated as closely online as they are on television or radio. After the Facebook-CA scandal was revealed, Facebook began instituting a series of changes to repair the damage. The company banned Canadian firm Aggregate and Italian firm Cuke You from the Facebook platform following indications that the two companies had improperly accessed user data. Facebook also restricted who could place political advertisements, or issue ads, on its platform to "authorized advertisers" who have had their identity and location confirmed by the platform. For authorization, advertisers had to provide Facebook with a government- issued ID and a physical mailing address. Furthermore, each issued ad had to be labeled with a marker identifying it as "Political Ad," with information displayed beside the ad that showed who paid for it. Facebook began working with outside groups to develop criteria for what is considered a political ad The move intended to prevent or limit "bad actors who try to interfere with foreign elections, likely in response to the discovery that 470 fake Russian Facebook accounts spent about $100,000 on roughly 3,000 ads on the platform during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In March 2018, the FTC announced that it was investigating Facebook for possible violations of the firm's 2011 agreement with the FTC. At that time, the FTC charged that Facebook had decerred consumers by telling them that they could keep their information on Facebook private and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The settlement required Facebook to provide consumers with clear and prominent notice and to obtain their express consent before their information was shared beyond the privacy settings that the consumers established. A single violation of Facebook's 2011 agreement with the FTC can carry a fine of up to $40,000. That figure means that the Facebook-CA scandal could cost Facebook up to $2 trillion. In March 2018, CA and its parent company, SCL Elections Ltd, instigated insolvency proceedings and closed. The question is: What happens with the data that the firms collected? In July 2013, the United Kingdom's information commissioner fined Facebook 500,000 for breaking data protection laws following an investigation into the scandal. The investigation found that Facebook had contravened UK. law by failing to protect people's data and that the company had also failed to be transparent about how personal data were being used by others. Facebook did have an opportunity to respond before a final decision was made. The scandal took place before the European Union's GDPR came into force on May 25, 2018, or Facebook would have faced a multi-million-dollar fine. In addition, the United Kingdom announced its intent to bring a criminal prosecution against SCL Elections for failing to adequately respond to an enforcement notice issued in May 2018. In an accompanying report, the UK data regulator made recommendations for how government can improve transparency around online campaigning and the political use of personal data. In August 2018, lawyers for a group of U K residents whose Facebook data were collected by CA filed the first step in a class-action suit against Facebook. Nearly 1.1 million British citizens could be eligible to join such a suit if it proceeds. Since 2007, Facebook has changed its rules about how much data apps can access. However, over that time, how many developers followed Facebook's rules? How many acted like Kogan did, storing the data and creating their own private databases? Where are those data now, and who has them? Is all that private user data are as powerful as CA has said they are, what have they been used to do? Facebook has faced a backlash from scandais involving the abuse of personal data, foreign interference in U.S. elections, and the spread of hateful or harassing content on the platform. A Pew Research Center (www.pew research.org) survey administered between May 29 and June 11, 2018, found that 74 percent of U.S. adult Facebook users had taken one of the following actions: changed their privacy settings, taken a break from the app or deleted it altogether. While the survey suggests that large numbers of Americans abandoned the platform or scaled back their usage, Facebook reported stable daily active user numbers in the second quarter of 2018. The social network stated that 185 million users are on the platform in the United States and Canada every day, a number unchanged from the first quarter of 2018