Two Facebook engineers testified in court as part of a consumer privacy lawsuit following the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. The answers given by the engineers who went to court in March were revealed when the minutes of the hearing were made public.
Facebook employees believe that it is not possible to access user data
Two longtime Meta engineers were asked about how the company stores and tracks user data. The inquiry was led by a court-appointed technical expert who sought to determine exactly what information Facebook was keeping about users and where it was held.
One of the engineers, according to his LinkedIn profile, is Eugene Zarashaw, who is director of engineering at Meta and has worked there for almost nine years. According to his LinkedIn profile, the other engineer was identified as Steven Elia, who spent 11 years at Facebook and is a software engineer manager.
The court had previously investigated what information Facebook held about users. Facebook, on the other hand, presented the “Download Your Information” feature to the court as a response to this. However, it was determined that this feature offered by Facebook did not contain all the information that the court wanted to examine.
When asked questions in court, the engineers replied that it was not possible for anyone in the company to compile all the data for a single user. When asked about where the user and their information are stored, Zarashaw, one of the engineers, used the following statements:
“I don’t believe there is a single person who can answer this question. Even answering this question requires significant teamwork.”
The issue of whether user data and activity was stored in advertising systems was another matter of the court. Just like Zarashaw’s answer to where user data is stored, Steven Elia did not give a clear answer to the court:
“I don’t think there’s a single person who can know all this or be familiar enough with all of it.”
A Meta spokesperson also made a statement in the direction of the engineers. The spokesperson said it was not surprising that individual engineers were unable to determine where all the data for a single user was stored on company systems. Meta spokesperson stated that they attach great importance to user data and used the following statements:
“We have made and continue to make significant investments, including comprehensive data controls, to meet our privacy commitments and obligations”
Do you think Facebook benefits from this by using your information? You can share your views with us in the comments section.
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