Cook County, Illinois, has joined the parade of lawsuits filed against Facebook in the wake of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal—the county is believed to be the first public entity to sue the social media giant and its former London-based business partner.
The case, which was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County on Friday, March 23, lays out similar allegations to the six other cases currently pending in federal court. Cook County argues that Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and the SCL Group, its corporate parent, violated users' privacy en masse when they violated Illinois laws against fraud.
Just over a week ago, The New York Times and The Observer, a British newspaper, broke the story that the British data analytics contractor, which worked with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it. Facebook executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg have called Cambridge Analytica's actions a "breach of trust."
"This kind of mass data collection was not only allowed but encouraged by Facebook, which sought to keep developers building on its platform and provide companies with all the tools they need to influence and manipulate user behavior," Cook County lawyers wrote in the complaint. "That's because Facebook is not a social media company; it is the largest data-mining operation in existence."
Cook County, which includes Chicago, is the second-largest county by population in the United States, behind Los Angeles County.
Meanwhile, Cambridge Analytica, which had its London offices raided by British investigators also on March 23, has denied any wrongdoing.
The County is being represented by Edelson PC, a Chicago law firm known for bringing privacy-related lawsuits against tech companies. In 2015, the firm represented a Chicago man who claimed that Facebook had violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
Facebook did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment late last Friday evening.
Previously, when Ars asked Facebook to comment on the first two lawsuits filed earlier this week, it declined to do so.
The company has refused to answer Ars' questions or to provide many further details beyond public statements by its top executives and lawyers. Facebook will not say precisely what data was shared or when. The social media giant has also not said how it will formally notify affected users.
The Washington Post reported on March 20 that the trove of data included "names, home towns, religious affiliations, and likes," among other data.
"We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information," Paul Grewal, Facebook's deputy general counsel, said in a March 17 statement. "We will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens."
