Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The District of Columbia on Monday sued Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to hold him personally liable for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a privacy breach of millions of Facebook users' personal data that became a major corporate and political scandal.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed the civil lawsuit against Zuckerberg in D.C. Superior Court. The lawsuit maintains that Zuckerberg directly participated in important company decisions and was aware of the potential dangers of sharing users' data, such as occurred in the case involving data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica gathered details on as many as 87 million Facebook user s without their permission. Their data is alleged to have been used to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.
Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook and has headed its board since 2012, controls more than 50 per cent of Facebook's voting shares and "maintains an unparalleled level of control over the operations of Facebook as it has grown into the largest social media company in the world," the lawsuit says. The social network giant has nearly 3 billion users worldwide. Meta has a market value of over US$500 billion.
Racine is seeking damages and penalties from Zuckerberg as may be determined in a trial.
Meta Platforms spokesman Andy Stone declined to comment. Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is based in Menlo Park, California.
Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple have been targeted in legal actions in recent years by federal regulators and state attorneys general of both parties accusing the tech behemoths of market dominance and abuse. But Racine's suit brought the rare action of a regulator specifically aiming at a Big Tech CEO.
Zuckerberg directly participated in decision-making that allowed the massive data breach, while Facebook misled users with claims of privacy protection, the suit alleges.
Racine tried last year to add Zuckerberg as a defendant in his ongoing suit against Facebook over Cambridge Analytica from 2018. But a D.C. Superior Court judge thwarted that attempt in March, saying that Racine had waited too long to add him. "What value does it add to name him? There's no more relief for the consumers of the District" of Columbia, Judge Maurice Ross said.
Now, Racine is asserting that thousands of documents he has since gained access to in the case establish Zuckerberg's direct participation in decision-making on Cambridge Analytica, and he is therefore suing Zuckerberg directly.
A year ago, Racine sued Amazon, accusing the online retail giant of anticompetitive practices in its treatment of sellers on its platform. The practices have raised prices for consumers and stifled innovation and choice in the online retail market, he alleged. Amazon rejected the allegations.
That suit was dismissed by the court and Racine has asked for it to be reconsidered.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.