Facebook appoints ‘privacy committee’ on its board
REVEALED: Facebook’s new ‘great and good’ privacy committee created as part of $5B settlement with US government following Cambridge Analytica scandal
- Facebook formed a new privacy committee on its board of directors Wednesday
- Panel includes members Peggy Alford, Nancy Killefer, and Robert M. Kimmitt
- The company was required to create the committee under its deal with the FTC
- Comes a week after Facebook unveiled the first members of its new Oversight Board – which will decide how the social network moderates content
By Karen Ruiz For Dailymail.com
Published: 13:29 EDT, 14 May 2020 | Updated: 22:15 EDT, 14 May 2020
Facebook has created a ‘privacy committee’ on its board of directors as part of the company’s $5billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Members of the panel, which will be responsible for overseeing risks related to privacy and data use, were named in a financial filing on Wednesday, Business Insider reported.
Independent directors Peggy Alford and Robert Kimmitt will serve as committee members under chair Nancy Killefer, who joined the board in March.
Facebook’s new privacy committee will be led by Nancy Killefer (pictured in 2009) who was once nominated for the US Chief Performance Officer role under President Obama
Independent directors Peggy Alford (left) who was the senior vice president of Core Markets for PayPal, and former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under the George W. Bush, Robert M. Kimmitt (right) 72, are also part of the panel
‘In connection with the formation of our privacy committee, our board of directors has delegated to our privacy committee the responsibility for overseeing risks related to privacy and data use, including management’s periodic assessment of our Privacy Program and any related policies with respect to risk assessment and risk management,’ the SEC documents state.
‘Each member of this committee is an independent director under Nasdaq rules and also meets the other requirements set forth in the FTC Consent Order.’
Killefer, 67, who previously who worked for consulting firm McKinsey & Co, was once considered for the US Chief Performance Officer role under President Obama in 2009.
She later withdrew her nomination after it emerged she was hit with a $900 tax lien on her home for failing to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. She has also previously worked on the oversight board for the IRS.
Robert M. Kimmitt, 72, who was also appointed to the board in March, formerly served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for the George W. Bush administration between 2005 and 2009.
He was previously the chairman of the international advisory council of Time Warner Inc.
In a preliminary settlement filed on Friday in San Mateo Superior Court, Facebook agreed to compensate 11,250 current and former US-based moderators, with each receiving a minimum of $1,000, the Verge reported
Robert M. Kimmitt (far right) 72, formerly served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for the George W. Bush administration
Alford, who was the senior vice president of Core Markets for PayPal, was added to Facebook’s board of directors in 2019.
She has previous ties to Zuckerberg, having served as the chief financial officer and head of operations for Chan Zuckerberg charity.
Under a historic $5billion settlement announced last July, Facebook was required to ramp up privacy protections; provide detailed quarterly reports on compliance with the deal, and have an independent oversight board, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that allowed the hijacking of personal data of millions of users ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.
The social network has begun rolling out provisions of the deal after it became official with the approval of a federal judge on April 23.
FACEBOOK’S NEW PRIVACY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Robert Kimmitt
Robert M. Kimmitt, 72, served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under the George W. Bush administration between 2005 and 2009.
He was previously the chairman of the international advisory council of Time Warner Inc.
Kimmitt was initially appointed to Facebook’s board of directors in March as its lead independent director.
Nancy Killefer, 67, a government consultant who was once considered for the Chief Performance Officer role under President Obama in 2009.
Nancy Killefer
Killefer, who was working with consulting firm McKinsey & Co at the time, later withdrew her nomination after she was hit with a $900 tax lien on her home for failing to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help.
Peggy Alford
She has also previously worked on the oversight board for the IRS.
Peggy Alford, the senior vice president of Core Markets for PayPal. She has previous ties to Zuckerberg, previously serving as chief financial officer and head of operations for Chan Zuckerberg charity.
Last week, the company unveiled the first 20 members of its new Oversight Board – the independent body which will have the final say on content allowed on both Facebook and Instagram.
Former editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, was among the 20 board members to have been appointed.
First announced last year, the board will have the ability to overrule Facebook’s decisions on content moderation, and individuals who disagree with a Facebook content decision will also be able to appeal to the board.
The social network will also be able to directly refer significant and difficult cases to the independent body.
Promoting the diversity of its appointments as it announced its line-up, the Oversight Board said its four co-chairs of the board and 16 other members have between them lived in more than 27 countries, and speak about 29 languages.
However, critics suggested that the Oversight Board is Facebook’s attempt to stall greater regulation being imposed on the company.
The four co-chairs are former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Catalina Botero Marino, a former special rapporteur for freedom of expression of the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights of the Organisation of American States, Columbia Law School professor Jamal Greene and Stanford Law professor Michael McConnell.
Their recruitment was led by Facebook, with the co-chairs then leading the selection of the rest of the members.
Other board members include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, digital rights and anti-censorship advocate Julie Owono – who leads Internet Sans Frontieres – and Emi Palmor, a former director-general of the Israeli ministry of justice.
However, Twitter users were quick to point out that many of the panel are left-wingers following the announcement.
Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski said: ‘It is important that any organisation, be it a global corporate or local government, benefits from a plurality of views which are reflective of the societies in which they operate.’
The whistleblower who exposed the Cambridge Analytica scandal says Facebook and other tech firms should be regulated just like the tobacco industry
The board is to be expanded to 40 members.
It remained unclear when the board would start hearing cases due to restrictions on gathering or travelling caused by the deadly coronavirus pandemic – or how much, exactly, they will be paid.
Five of the members are from the US – and 15 are from around the world including at least two with strong links to Britain.
Facebook will pay $130million over the next six years to establish their court and cover salaries for supreme court members and their personal staff, as well as office space.
Earlier this year, Facebook published a set of proposed bylaws for the board, which will need to be approved by its members.
They propose that the board will manage its own membership and publish all of its decisions on its website, and Facebook will implement the board’s binding content decisions within seven days, as well as publish its response, except in cases where it could violate the law.
What to know about Facebook’s content oversight board
WHAT WILL THE OVERSIGHT BOARD REVIEW?
The board, which some have dubbed Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court,’ will rule on whether some individual pieces of content should be displayed on the site. It can also recommend changes to Facebook’s content policy, based on a case decision or at the company’s request.
At first, the board will review posts, videos, photos and comments that the company has decided to remove from Facebook or its photo-sharing site Instagram, but eventually it will handle cases where content was left up.
This could be content involving issues such as nudity, violence or hate speech. Facebook has said the board’s remit will in future include ads, groups, pages, profiles and events, but has not given a time frame.
It will not deal with Instagram direct messages, Facebook’s messaging platforms WhatsApp, Messenger, its dating service or its Oculus virtual reality products.
Facebook expects the board will initially take on only ‘dozens’ of cases, a small percentage of the thousands it expects will eventually be brought to the board. In 2019, users appealed more than 10 million pieces of content that Facebook removed or took action on.
But Facebook’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told Reuters he thought the cases chosen would have a wider relevance to patterns of content disputes.
HOW WILL THE BOARD WORK?
The board will decide which cases it reviews, which can be referred either by a user who has exhausted Facebook’s normal appeals process or by Facebook itself for cases that might be ‘significant and difficult.’
Users who disagree with Facebook’s final decision on their content will have 15 days to submit a case to the board through the board’s website.
Each case will be reviewed by a panel of five members, with at least one from the same geographic region as the case originated. The panel can ask for subject matter experts to help make its decision, which then must be finalized by the whole board.
The board’s case decision – which is binding unless it could violate the law – must be made and implemented within 90 days, though Facebook can ask for a 30-day expedited review for exceptional cases, including those with ‘urgent real-world consequences.’
Users will be notified of the board’s ruling on their case and the board will publicly publish the decision.
When the board gives policy recommendations, Facebook will give public updates and publish a response on the guidance and follow-on action within 30 days.
For more details on the board’s operations, see Facebook’s proposed bylaws.
WHO IS ON THE OVERSIGHT BOARD?
The board will eventually have about 40 members.
Facebook chose the four co-chairs – former U.S. federal circuit judge Michael McConnell and constitutional law expert Jamal Greene from the United States, Colombian attorney Catalina Botero-Marino and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt – who then jointly selected the other 16 members named so far.
Some were sourced from the global consultations conducted by Facebook to obtain feedback on the oversight board.
The members, who will be part-time, so far include constitutional law experts, civil rights advocates, academics, journalists, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights.
The members will be paid by a trust that Facebook has created and will serve three-year terms for a maximum of nine years.
The trustees can remove a member before the end of their term for violating the board’s code of conduct, but not for content decisions.
Thomas Hughes, former executive director for freedom of expression rights group Article 19, has also been appointed to oversee the board’s full-time administrative staff.
