Facebook on Wednesday confirmed four Chinese device makers were among those that had broad access to customer data under a program spotlighted in a New York Times story last weekend. Among them was Huawei, which has close ties to the Chinese government and has been cited by U.S. officials as a national security threat.
The news is sure to rankle some in Washington. On Tuesday morning, top Senate Intelligence Committee Democrat Mark Warner raised worries at an Axios event that Facebook could have shared data with Chinese device makers. This evening Warner said in a statement that the "news that Facebook provided privileged access to Facebook’s API to Chinese device makers like Huawei and TCL raises legitimate concerns." Republican Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted that the data sharing arrangement with Huawei "could be a very big problem."
The phone makers had access to the Facebook data as part of a program that let them build Facebook interactions into their devices. There is no evidence the Chinese firms or any other companies misused that information, which Facebook says was governed by strict contracts. But Facebook's recent record of third-party data misuse, exemplified in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, has left it with less credibility in this new crisis.
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