US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, on Wednesday organized a hearing about Meta’s alleged work to develop custom censorship tools for China’s Communist Party (CCP) and share user data with China – which Meta denies.
Whistleblower and former Facebook Director Global Policy Sarah Wynn-Williams, who left the company at some point around 2018, presented her testimony during the hearing dubbed, “A Time for Truth: Oversight of Meta’s Foreign Relations and Representations to the United States Congress.”
Senator Josh Hawley, who chaired the meeting, showed internal Facebook documents that Wynn-Williams previously shared with Congress, that appeared to corroborate the whistleblower’s claims.
Wynn-Williams accused Meta executives of “repeatedly” undermining US national security and betraying American values as they allegedly set out to build “an $18 billion business in China” and work directly with the CCP, including censoring a Chinese dissident.
According to her testimony, Meta executives are guilty of lying to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public about the giant’s dealings with China, which she dubbed “illegal and dangerous,” dating back to 2015.
One of Wynn-Williams’ allegations is that Facebook’s “moderation” tools for the CCP allowed those using them to censor access to content in entire regions, or on particular dates, such as the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Wynn-Williams also claimed that Meta was willing to allow access to user data, including that of Americans, as it built a physical pipeline between the US and China, which the latter country could have used to intercept information.
“The only reason China does not currently have access to US user data through this pipeline is because Congress stepped in,” she told the committee.
Senator Hawley showed some of the documents handed over by Wynn-Williams, including notes from a meeting between CPP and Facebook representatives that appears to have led to the banning of Chinese dissident Guo Wengui on the social platform.
Hawley next presented what he said was a readout “of a group of Facebook engineers offering to create a censorship regime that will allow Facebook to block all traffic the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want, phase zero.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Wynn-Williams if it was true that Facebook was willing to give the Chinese government access to Hong Kong users’ data during protests against that government several years ago, and she confirmed that as true.
Meta reacted to the testimony by saying it was “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.”
Spokesperson Ryan Daniels told TechCrunch in a statement that the company today does not operate its services in China, although “Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago.”
