In a letter to British MP Damian Collins, Facebook chief of public policy Richard Allan asked Parliament to put internal documents that were seized by the body last week off limits until a judge addressed the matter, according to a copy of the letter shown to Business Insider. Internal Facebook documents that allegedly include communications from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and evidence that Facebook actively promoted the use of a privacy loophole exploited by Cambridge Analytica were reportedly seized by British Parliament last week, according to a report from
The Guardian.
The seizure comes after Zuckerberg
repeatedly refused to appear before Parliament to answer questions about the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. The documents were reportedly produced by Facebook as part of the legal discovery process in a lawsuit that app maker Six4Three brought against the company. The app maker created Pikinis, which allowed users to find pictures of their Facebook connections in bikinis. The company alleges Facebook destroyed its business when it changed its data use policies in 2015 to restrict third-parties from accessing data of their users' friends.
Six4Three reportedly alleges that the documents seized by Parliament include communications from Zuckerberg, along with evidence that Facebook knowingly created and promoted the privacy loophole that was eventually used by Cambridge Analytica. Through its lawsuit, Six4Three has made numerous other explosive allegations against Facebook, including
the claim that Facebook accessed and monitored the microphones of some Android users without their permission; that Facebook monitors the photo albums of iPhone users without explicit permission; and that Facebook remotely turned on users' Bluetooth without their permission to gain access to their location.