Some Facebook documents have been seized in an unusually aggressive step by the UK parliament.
A number of internal documents belonging to the social media giant were taken using parliament’s legal powers as MPs continue to probe the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
The documents are reported to contain information on the company’s data and privacy controls before the massive breach was made public.
Damian Collins, chairman of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, told The Observer:
“We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented move but it’s an unprecedented situation. We’ve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.”
Damian Collins believes the documents contain details of ‘very high public interest’.
The documents were taken when the boss of a US software company – who are involved in court action against Facebook in the US – came to the UK on business, according to the newspaper.