Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus has sent a Facebook invitation to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the social networking megasite.
In this case, the invitation came in the form of a letter from Markey and co-chair Joe Barton (R-Texas) to the CEO requesting his presence at a Dec. 14 briefing on teens and online privacy.
"It is our hope that the briefing will be an open, frank and educational discussion about the tools needed to ensure online privacy safeguards for children and teens. We want to give Facebook an opportunity to discuss its policies for protecting the privacy of children and teens now and in the future. We look forward to an informational and engaging discussion with Facebook," said Reps. Markey and Barton. They asked for an answer by Dec. 12 and said they were looking for him or "a designee" to show up.
Markey and Barton are familiar faces to Facebook, which just this week settled Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by not living up to privacy assurances it gave its users. In September they asked the FTC to investigate it over the reports it had collected info on users even after they logged out, and followed that up with a request for info on its data-retention policies.
The pair has also introduced a bill that would establish a do-not-track regime for kids' personal info online.
