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By Saphora Smith and Olivia Solon
LONDON – British lawmakers have obtained documents that could be "extremely relevant" for a parliamentary inquiry that investigates Facebook's reaction to misinformation, a spokesman for NBC News told NBC News Sunday.
The documents would have revelations Facebook fought to stay out of the public domain regarding the company's data and privacy policies that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, The Observer newspaper reported in London on Saturday.
The Observer said the files, which included correspondence from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had been seized from the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, which had filed a lawsuit against the giant technology.
NBC News could not confirm the details of the report, but a spokesman for the Department's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee confirmed to NBC News that it had "used a parliamentary order to obtain documents that could be very relevant to the investigation. "
A Facebook spokesman told NBC News Saturday that "documents obtained by the DCMS committee are subject to a San Mateo Superior Court protection order limiting their disclosure."
Six4Three filed a lawsuit against Facebook in the San Matteo County Superior Court in California in 2015. According to court documents, the company accuses Zuckerberg of "deliberately" wanting to mislead thousands of software companies by "developing applications generating substantial user growth and revenue for Facebook. "
NBC News has contacted Six4Three representatives for comments.
For two years, Facebook has been shaken by crises involving secret Russian propaganda, mishandling the personal information of millions of users and hiring a public relations firm with what a former employee had called a "Store false information internally".
Sources told NBC News that Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg felt that Facebook's negative image was a public relations problem stemming from a distorted press strategy and sensational media coverage. – and not structural or philosophical gaps requiring a global correction.
The documentary seizure by the British parliament comes after Zuckerberg refused to appear before an international coalition of elected officials investigating misinformation and electoral interference, which is due to meet in London on Tuesday.
Representatives from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore and Latvia invited Zuckerberg to testify at a meeting at the House of Parliament, but Zuckerberg declined the invitation.
British lawmaker Damian Collins, chairman of the DCMS committee charged with investigating misinformation and assembling the international coalition, told NBC News that Zuckerberg was "afraid to be exposed."
Speaking in his office in Westminster last week, Collins said that "the very big question" that he wanted to ask Zuckerberg was: "What did he know about concerns about data privacy?"
Collins brought together the "Great International Committee" in part to respond to Zuckerberg's insistence that he was too busy to visit individual national parliaments in order to answer any other questions regarding Facebook's efforts. to suppress the misuse of its platform.
Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which triggered a general review of Facebook's data-gathering practices, Zuckerberg only twice responded to lawmakers in public: before the Congress in April and the European Parliament in May.
Facebook has offered Richard Allan, vice president of political solutions, to attend next week's hearing in place of Zuckerberg.
"It looks like he's got something to hide and he's worried we'll have information and questions to ask him that could put him in a difficult situation," Collins said.
"He deliberately avoids this kind of examination."
Kate Brannelly contributed.
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