You knew Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency would come under scrutiny as soon as it became official, and the United States government isn’t wasting any time. House financial Services Committee chairwoman Maxine Waters has issued a statement calling on Facebook to pause development of Libra until Congress and regulatory bodies have had a chance to review it. The social network has “repeatedly shown a disregard” for safeguarding user information, Waters said, suggesting that privacy problems could return to haunt this product.
The congresswoman also said that Facebook executives should testify concerning Libra
as a part of that
oversight.
We’ve asked Facebook for comment. As a part of the announcement,
though, it launched a Libra Association whose aim is to supervise the currency outside of
Facebook’s control.
Calibra, the digital wallet for
the new monetary format, is meant to share only limited information with
Facebook and have “strong protections” such as automated fraud
checks.
Those measures may not satisfy politicians. Various federal and state regulators are investigating Facebook’s behavior
in recent years and there’s no
doubt that the
internet giant has
been awash in privacy debacles
even after the
Cambridge Analytica scandal had seemingly wound
down. Waters and others just don’t have much of a historical basis to
trust what Facebook says, although it appears to be learning its
lessons.