Govt sends second notice to FB, CA

The Centre on Wednesday sent notices for the second time to both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, seeking more details on the data breach issue.

The government asked both the companies to send their replies by May 10, a senior official in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) said here.

In the fresh notice, the Meity sought the companies reply for additional questions on potential misuse of data.

The government asked Facebook to list out security architecture proposed to be created by the company "so that data concerning Indians are not pilfered or manipulated again for extraneous purposes, including to influence the elections".

The government also asked Facebook about steps it plans to clamp down on any unauthorised use of data or manipulation and fixed May 10 as the deadline for responses.

Saying that the government is not satisfied with the CA reply, an official in the ministry said that it has asked the firm to answer fresh questions like what kind of date CA had collected in India concerning Indians, what research instruments have been used on this data, whether CA had harvested any data through any third party app and whether it directly or indirectly access/posses date from Facebook.

Earlier this month, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica had submitted their responses to the government notices, following which the government has now sought more details.

In its reply, Facebook had earlier admitted that nearly 5.62 lakh people in India were "potentially affected" by the incident.

It also said that UK-based data mining firm Cambridge Analytica used its data without consent.

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has already ordered a probe on whether social media data was used to influence the voters in India.

The minister also directed officials to take steps to prevent misuse of personal data of social media users.