WASHINGTON — California’s attorney general on Wednesday said he was conducting an investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices and accused it of failing to cooperate with the inquiry, in the company’s latest fight over how it treats user information.
In a lawsuit filed by the attorney general, Xavier Becerra, the state said that over an 18-month period, Facebook had resisted or ignored dozens of questions and requests for documents, including email correspondence between executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s top two leaders. Mr. Becerra filed the lawsuit in the California Superior Court to obtain the communications.
The lawsuit was the first confirmation of an investigation by California into Facebook’s privacy practices.
“Today we make this information public because we have no choice,” said Mr. Becerra, who, unlike almost every other state attorney general, has been quiet about whether he was looking into any of the country’s biggest tech companies.
The California inquiry adds to the intense scrutiny of Facebook’s business in recent years, much of it set off by reports in The New York Times in spring 2018 that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested troves of Facebook data to compile voter profiles. The company has faced questions about whether its ad-targeting business model impinges on user privacy, how its platform was used to spread misinformation during the 2016 presidential election and how it may have acquired start-ups to eliminate potentially formidable competitors.
In July, Facebook reached a $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over its sharing of data with Cambridge Analytica and other privacy abuses. The attorney general of the District of Columbia has also sued Facebook, accusing it of privacy violations.
The company was also ensnared in a fight with the Massachusetts attorney general, who was investigating Facebook’s privacy practices, over whether to make internal documents public. In September, a judge unsealed many records, which showed that Facebook had suspended tens of thousands of apps for improperly sucking up users’ data.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.