the russians were able to obtain data of americans that were used in some of the targeting for some of the ads on facebook and other social media. the question is how does this data accessed by the russian company, what happens to it? people we have talked to, former and current officials in the u.s. government, tell us that that is exactly how it works. that companies like mail.ru required to provide access to russian intelligence. and so, this is the question. what happened to that data? once it got to russia, we don t know the answer. evan, thank you very much. good reporting, as usual. more on this, the top democrat in the house intelligence committee of california adam schiff is joining us. thank you. good to be with you. do you believe this activity we reported on by the russians involving facebook is being directed directly by the kremlin? well, we don t know.
very interested. big data is the secret today to intelligence. and if the russians who are very good at this have access to a pot of big data, i wouldn t be surprised if they used it. reporter: mail.ru had access to american users personal information at a time when russia was launching its disinformation campaign through facebook and other social media. and began to meddle in the 2016 u.s. election. wolf, in a statement to cnn this afternoon, mail.ru is claiming user data was neither shared with nor made accessible to any government agency and also claims to have never harvested friends of users data. the company says as of last night, though, it is now cooperating with facebook on facebook s own internal investigation. wolf? drew, thank you. let s talk about this and more with senator ben cardin, top democrat on the foreign relations committee. senator, how were you going to protect americans from this kind of intrusion? well, wolf, it s good to be
step of fundamentally changing how the platform works. when mark zuckerberg told the congressional committee that facebook shut down apps that gathered user s personal information. did he not mention had this. 61 app developers that facebook now says were given an extension. the ability to keep gathering data from facebook users for up to an additional six months. among them, the russian internet giant, mail.ru, which ran hundreds of apps on facebook. what does that mean to you? michael carpenter is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense covering russia. what it means that all data that facebook users shared through this agreement with mail.ru is now available to the russian intelligence services. all of it. and that is incredibly troubling. the facebook data privacy breech that gave companies the ability to harvest, use and target your personal facebook
information and your friends, included a russian internet firm with links to vladimir putin and the kremlin. that means that if you were on facebook before 2015, your name, gender, birthday, location, photos and page likes were all available to the company s that ran the apps. mail.ru is controlled by usm holdings, a company founded by russian billionaire. the u.s. treasury department lists a having ties to the kremlin. mail.ru had the ability to use facebook to harvest u.s. data 32 apps and games, but the company has denied doing that. in a statement, the russian company said that 5% of the users are in the u.s. and we have not collected data on any facebook users. facebook told cnn, it s still investigating what mail.ru did
with its facebook apps and said, that it s one of the top five largest internet companies in the worl has built apps for the facebook platform and for other major platforms. including ios and android for years and we have found no indication of misuse with mail.ru. doesn t matter what the original intent was from the company, but once that data is in their possession, it s then under the per view of the russian intelligence services. erin in another blow to facebook, the british government is fining facebook, more than $650,000 for violating their data privacy laws. that in connection with the cambridge analytica breech. the commissioner s office said that facebook failed to safeguard people s information or even tell them how their data was being harvested.