The District of Columbia said on Monday that it has sued Mark Zuckerberg for his reported role in the data breach that allowed political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to target Facebook users during the 2016 presidential election.
A “sweeping investigation” revealed that Mr Zuckerberg, head of Meta Platforms, contributed to lax oversight of user data and the creation of misleading privacy agreements that resulted in Cambridge Analytica and other third parties gaining access to the personal information of 87 million people, DC Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement.
Cambridge Analytica was hired by then-candidate Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Mr Racine called it “the largest consumer privacy scandal in the nation’s history”.
The lawsuit mirrors an earlier suit Mr Racine filed against Facebook in 2018, though the judge overseeing that case rejected as “almost bad faith” the Democratic attorney general’s attempt to name Mr Zuckerberg in the case earlier this year.
“You want to change this from a case about Facebook to a case about Mr Zuckerberg,” DC Superior Court Judge Maurice Ross said at a March hearing. “What value does it add to name him? There’s no more relief for the consumers of the District.”
Mr Racine on Monday said it was important for his office to go after Mr Zuckerberg.
“We continue to persist and have followed the evidence right to Mr Zuckerberg,” Mr Racine said in the statement.
“The evidence shows Mr Zuckerberg was personally involved in Facebook’s failure to protect the privacy and data of its users leading directly to the Cambridge Analytica incident.”
Meta declined to comment.
The company has previously derided Mr Racine’s claims as “little more than a broadside against Facebook’s business model”.
Cambridge Analytica worked in support of the 2016 campaigns of Mr Trump, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, all Republicans. It was founded in 2013 by former Renaissance Technologies co-chief executive Robert Mercer, a major supporter of Mr Trump.
Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s former chief strategist, was one of the campaign’s liaisons to Cambridge Analytica, which collapsed after revelations about its harvesting and use of personal data.
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
