Richard Blumenthal

Mr. Zuckerberg is failing to truly understand what a government truly is.

If indeed Facebook wishes to become a nation state, then first it must decide what kind of nation state it wishes to be.

I happen to believe that those sorts of standards are the minimum that we should be adopting.

Facebook is NOT a government. If it is, I don't want to be a 'citizen.'

A privacy bill of rights is a term, and we need to make it real in ways that are enforceable and, really, protective of consumers without unintended consequences.

Mr. Chairman, I take umbrage at that.

There may be grave consumer harms, not only in privacy, but, as you suggest, in monopolistic practices that antitrust law is designed to prevent.

The only question now is what should be done about it.

This must stop, and it must stop now.

For Facebook, consumers are the product, so to speak. Their information is monetized.

Consumer information is the new class of currency. In effect, we are the currency.

There's no question that Facebook's model is immensely powerful and unchecked right now.

Facebook, for years, was the best friend that data brokers could have.

I'm not advocating that we follow the GDPR simply because it's there. If we can improve on it, so much the better.

I would appreciate your doing so, because I, for one, will be strongly urging the FTC to go beyond the obligations of the consent decree.

The American public trusted Facebook with personal and intimate information, and it broke its trust.

I will be introducing a bill that will, in effect, provide a privacy bill of rights.

One of the central challenges of our time is becoming the potential threats posed by the Internet, such as data brokers, terrorist recruitment, Russia's continued interference in our elections.

I am interested in putting into place rules of the road for online privacy.

I'm concerned that the Federal agencies with a role... are not doing enough to protect our privacy and our democracy.

There's no question that Facebook knew about those terms of service.

Americans deserve no less privacy than European.

I have been frustrated by Facebook's apparent reluctance to be more transparent to the American public about what it knows, where it acquires information, and what it uses it for.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

One of our challenges is to reveal it fully and the way that it is using private confidential information--in fact, monetizing it--for its own self-purposes.