Facebook had a privacy summit while Zuckerberg was away – CNET

Facebook hosted a privacy summit while Mark Zuckerberg was in Washington, DC.

James Martin/CNET

As Mark Zuckerberg was in Washington, DC to answer questions of how Facebook protected user privacy, Facebook was hosting a privacy summit.

The Facebook CEO endured nearly 10 hours of questioning over two days from senators and representatives on Tuesday and Wednesday, after facing political pressure to testify to Congress over the social network’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Multiple questions revolved around what Facebook was doing to protect user data and privacy on the social network. The concerns came after announcements that data on 87 million people were abused and sold.

For many questions, Zuckerberg deferred answers to his team back at Facebook. While he was on Capitol Hill, the Facebook team was hosting a privacy summit, according to a blog post from the company.

The summit started with a keynote talk from Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos, who talked about the “natural tensions of privacy versus preventing abuse.” The summit featured talks from Facebook’s researchers on privacy challenges, as well as ways they could protect user privacy.

The discussions included encrypted messaging, privacy usability in growing markets, and how Facebook used data during disaster responses. Researchers there also talked about how users perceive privacy and the social network’s usability.

“It was instructive learning more about the challenges that Facebook is facing in the areas of privacy and security,” Dan Boneh, a professor of Computer Science at the Applied Cryptography group at Stanford University, said in a statement.