BOSTON: Massachusetts' top court on Wednesday reversed an order requiring Facebook Inc to turn over to state Attorney General Maura Healey records identifying apps the company suspected had misused customer data, but the justices said she ultimately could obtain some materials.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that while some of Facebook's records were protected from disclosure, Healey had demonstrated a"substantial need" for materials to investigate the social media company's privacy practices following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Healey, a Democrat, went to court in 2019 to enforce the civil equivalent of a subpoena after Facebook refused to disclose the identities of such apps. Justice Scott Kafker, writing for the 5-0 court, said a lower-court judge wrongly concluded Facebook's information did not qualify as attorney"work product" potentially protected from disclosure.
But Kafker said further lower-court proceedings would likely determine that a"significant amount of information" could be disclosed.Other states are conducting similar probes. The attorney general for Washington, D.C., sued Facebook in 2018 over the scandal. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay US$5 billion to resolve a Federal Trade Commission probe into its privacy practices.
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