New Delhi: Facebook India policy head Ankhi Das appeared before a parliamentary panel on the issue of data security on Friday. Company’s business head Ajit Mohan accompanied her.
They were both grilled on data protection and asked some tough and searching questions by the members of the panel, sources said.
During the meeting, a member suggested that the social media giant should not draw inferences from the data of its users for commercial benefits of its advertisers.
Sources said Facebook, which has more than 300 million users in India, its biggest market, was asked how much revenue it generates and how much tax it pays.
The joint parliamentary committee has called Facebook, Twitter and Amazon to discuss data protection and privacy as it looks into the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 following concerns raised by opposition parties.
Twitter and Amazon were asked to appear before the committee on October 28. Amazon wrote to the committee today saying it cannot attend the hearing as “its experts are overseas” and cannot travel because of the pandemic.
Amazon’s refusal to appear amounts to “breach of privilege”, reported NDTV quoting parliament sources, adding that coercive action would be initiated if the company’s officials failed to show up.
While introducing the draft bill in parliament last year, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said it empowers the government to ask companies — Facebook, Google and others — for anonymous personal and non-personal data.
A section of legal experts say the proposed law could give the government unaccounted access to the personal data of users.
Ankhi Das, Facebook’s policy head, had faced criticism recently after a US news report alleged that she opposed applying hate-speech rules to a politician from the ruling BJP.
The panel has summoned officials of micro-blogging site Twitter on October 28, and Google and Paytm on October 29.