At Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) questioned Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams.
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00:00Senator Blumenthal, if you're ready, I'll turn it over to you.
00:03Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
00:09In order to operate in China, the Communist Party requires American companies to register
00:15with authorities and host servers inside the country, and I think it's pretty well known
00:23that Chinese law requires that security services are allowed access to any data hosted within
00:32the country.
00:34Did any of Facebook's security team or its engineers raise concerns to management about
00:44Americans' private information being exposed to Chinese spying?
00:48Yes, Senator, they did.
00:50How did they do that?
00:52They documented their concern in a number of ways.
00:57They noted that this would happen, that the Chinese would get access to the data, and they
01:04also noted their concern in other discussions and other documentation, saying, you know,
01:12my red line as a security engineer is to not be comfortable with this, but my red line is
01:19not Mark Zuckerberg's red line.
01:23Maybe you can explain what you mean by that.
01:25The engineer was saying that they were not comfortable with the way the China project was structured,
01:36that would allow the Chinese Communist Party to potentially access American citizens' data.
01:44But in saying that, they noted that, you know, that's a red line for me as a security engineer, that's not Mark Zuckerberg's red line.
01:51Did you sense he had any red line?
01:54I did not.
01:55If he did, you don't know what it was?
01:56I don't.
01:57If you have more information related to these spying risks, would you be willing to share it with the committee?
02:08I would, Senator.
02:09And Mark Zuckerberg was knowledgeable about the planning, and do you know whether he was knowledgeable about the risks as well?
02:21My understanding is that the risk is the hardest part of the plan, so it's unthinkable that he was not aware of the risk.
02:30Nothing happened here without his approval and knowledge.
02:35This was a project unlike any other project I worked on during my time at Meta, in that it was so centrally led by Mark Zuckerberg,
02:45and he was so personally invested in this project, he learnt Mandarin, he travelled to China more than any other country.
02:57He had weekly Mandarin sessions with employees.
03:02It's hard to overstate how different this project was to any other project I experienced in my many years at the company.
03:12So there would be no credibility to his denying that he knew about the risks, he knew about the concerns raised by his engineers and his China team,
03:25and he was intimately involved in not only the planning and the engineering, but also in taking those risks.
03:36Senator, he was travelling to Beijing.
03:39In the documents submitted to the subcommittee, Facebook appears to have been willing to provide the data of users in Hong Kong to the Chinese government,
03:52at a time when pro-democracy protesters were opposing Beijing's crackdown.
03:58Is that impression correct?
04:01And how did Facebook treat Taiwan or Hong Kong?
04:08So that impression is correct.
04:11One of the more surprising things is that as part of the censorship tool that was developed,
04:20there were virality counters.
04:24So any time a piece of content got over 10,000 views,
04:30that would automatically trigger it being reviewed by what they called the chief editor.
04:35And what was particularly surprising is that the virality counters were not just installed,
04:44but activated in Hong Kong and also in Taiwan.
04:52Let me ask you, I raised in my remarks, and I know that a number of other colleagues did as well,
05:02the record of misrepresentation and deceit.
05:08One of our former colleagues, Senator Leahy, asked Mark Zuckerberg in 2018 whether Facebook would comply with Chinese censorship and surveillance demand.
05:18He even asked if Facebook had built censorship tools to enter the Chinese market.
05:25And Zuckerberg responded, I'm quoting, because Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009,
05:31we are not in a position to know exactly how the government would seek to apply its laws and regulations on content were we permitted to offer our service to Chinese users.
05:45Ms. Williams, was that accurate?
05:48That is not accurate.
05:50You know, hundreds of decisions had been made, and by 2018, they'd been in dialogue directly with the Chinese Communist Party for four years.
06:01The fact is, by 2018, Facebook built, it even turned on censorship and surveillance tools that it developed.
06:15It developed for Chinese security officials, correct?
06:20It developed, and those Chinese Communist Party officials tested the censorship tool and would give feedback and say,
06:27this needs to change, or we need this, or we need confidence that you can capture images and filter images we don't want seeing it.
06:36You know, we talk a lot about 1984.
06:41Facebook developed a virility counter tool that directed any posts of over 10,000 views to be reviewed by an Orwellian named, quote unquote, chief editor.
06:57Is that correct?
06:58That's correct.
06:59And was the chief editor's geographic reach limited to mainland China, or did they plan to cover other locations?
07:07They planned to cover Hong Kong and Taiwan is my understanding.
07:11So their surveillance operation was directed at Taiwan?
07:18That's my understanding, Senator.
07:20And Hong Kong?
07:21That's my understanding.
07:23Was the editor-in-chief's, or the chief editor's power, limited to reviewing viral posts?
07:29Oh, no.
07:30It was extensive power.
07:32The chief editor would be able to turn off the entire service in specific regions, for example, Xinjiang, or would also be able to turn off or manage the service on significant anniversaries,
07:52like the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
07:55So the chief editor, a creation of Facebook, was an Orwellian censor that applied to locations outside mainland China, to Taiwan and Hong Kong, to people not within the legal jurisdiction of China,
08:21but also obviously the Chinese themselves.
08:25And it was designed and implemented by Mehta and Mark Zuckerberg.
08:30Correct, Senator.
08:31Even though its very existence was denied before this committee in 2018.
08:40That's correct, Senator.
08:42Silicon Valley companies are famous, as you know, for their moonshot programs, such as Google X. In recent years, Mark Zuckerberg spent billions of dollars on the metaverse and AI.
09:01He even named or renamed the company as part of a pivot to focus on that technology.
09:08Did Facebook engage in any moonshot efforts in China?
09:14And were these efforts walled off or protected from the Communist Party?
09:19They did, Senator, and I'd be happy to follow up with the committee on this point.
09:26You'd prefer to follow up privately?
09:29Yeah.
09:30Just one last question.
09:33I'm interested in how much of a national champion Mehta actually is for the United States.
09:39Did Facebook share information about its facial recognition, artificial intelligence models, and other sensitive technologies to Chinese security officials?
09:49In other words, did it share that significant technology regarding facial recognition and other surveillance methods?
10:00Look, the greatest trick Mark Zuckerberg ever pulled was wrapping the American flag around himself and calling himself a patriot and saying he didn't offer services in China while he spent the last decade building an $18 billion business there.
10:16And he wrapped the flag around himself, even as he disclosed sensitive technologies that enabled the Chinese to gain the upper hand on surveilling its citizens, but also the upper hand in engaging with us.
10:33And he continues to wrap the flag around himself as we move into the next era of artificial intelligence.
10:38Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
10:40Thank you, Senator.
10:41Senator Blackburn.
10:42Thank you, Mr. Chairman.