Mozilla, Sonos Suspend Advertising on Facebook
NEWTON: Investigators from Britain's data watchdog agency have entered the offices of Cambridge Analytica earlier Friday, a high court judge issued a search warrant for the company. Cnn senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin joins us now from London. Drew, good to have you there right now. You know, there's a lot of confusion because sometime earlier in the week, Facebook said they were going to try and do this audit and then the government basically said hold up, we want to have a look inside first.</s>DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Facebook actually had investigators at the headquarters of Cambridge Analytica, which is the company in question. But those investigators hired by Facebook were told to stand down until the information commissioner's office could enact their search warrant. They're executing that search warrant as we speak, Paula, and trying to determine at the heart of this is this Facebook data and the misuse or alleged misuse of it. Whether that may have been illegally acquired and used for Cambridge Analytica in its many different pursuits and political operations. So that investigation continues both here in the U.K. and several investigations continue in the United States involving this one firm.</s>NEWTON: You know, Drew, there's still a lot of people saying that, look, what Facebook did was a breach of trust, but was it illegal? The laws are going to be different on one side of the pond as there are on the other. It seems that here, the U.K. really wants to see as if their laws were broken, and yet this is several years now, none of this was done when Facebook first learned of this breach.</s>GRIFFIN: It's absolutely right because nobody knew if you believe Facebook story that the information was being used in this way that violated company rules. Facebook opened up its data files to a researcher and according to Facebook or Facebook story, is that researcher did not use it for research but set up his own company and began selling the personal information, the personal data on upwards of 50 million Facebook users to companies particularly Cambridge Analytica was then developed as psychological mapping, which was able to target voters in the United States. But not only in the United States, perhaps here in the U.K., in Africa, in South and Central America, pretty much all over the world. And what's been described to me, Paula, is kind of a targeted psychological operations being used in the political field.</s>NEWTON: And again, a bit startling to think that yes, that might have happened, yes, in some countries including the United States, it might not even have been illegal. Now, I know, Drew, this is difficult to parse, but I know if somebody -- anybody can do it, you can. There also alarmingly could be some connections to all of these -- all of these Russia investigations that they're going through -- going through. I mean, there are Russians involved here and Russian institutions.</s>NEWTON: What's interesting, Paula, is that these two groups, Cambridge Analytica and its political works and what the Russians were doing according to U.S. special prosecutor Robert Muller seem to be the same tactic. Fake news to be infiltrated among social networks to try to divide and sow unrest among a populace. There is no direct connection yet between the two companies -- countries, entities, but certainly many people are looking for that. These kind of psychological operations are very much prevalent in warfare. These are weapons of war and what Cambridge Analytica is accused of doing now is taking this mind operation, the psychological weapon of war and applying it to regular, democratic elections which startles many people and it's very interesting, that it is also in line with the kinds of activities that we now believe took place in Russia.</s>NEWTON: Yes, this is still going to take a lot more investigations, our Drew Griffin there following this investigations from London now, appreciate your update, Drew. Now, soaking a battle of the tech billionaire, as Elon Musk has deleted the Tesla and Space X Facebook pages, its part of a growing corporate backlash against Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the data scandal that's consuming the social network. Never short on snuck, Musk sent a tweet asking what's Facebook? When folks tweeted back and asked him to take his pages down, they were gone within minutes. Other companies are also hitting Facebook where it hurts. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox says it's going to stop advertising on Facebook until it quote, "takes stronger action and how it shares customer data." And Sonos, the smart speaker company is pulling ads from all of big tech, that's Facebook, Instagram, Google and Twitter. The company says it will go dark for one week, starting Monday. And Joy Howard is the Chief Marketing Officer at Sonos and she joins me here now in studio, thank you so much. Can you explain the thinking behind these actions and more importantly, what you hope to gain from this?</s>JOY HOWARD, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, SONOS: Yes, well, we believe that this Cambridge Analytica scandal raises important questions about whether big tech is doing enough to balance its own interests with its biggest responsibility which is safeguarding your privacy. It's also an important moment for brands like us to reflect on the role that we play in all of this. And for us, it's an important moment to elevate the voices of activists, academics and consumer rights groups, civil society groups who are working to defend consumer rights.</s>NEWTON: Now you're taking the money that you place on those ads and giving it to charity as well for a week. I think some people might say, look, Joy, it's a good marketing stunt, but at the end of the day it's a stunt because they might even look to you as a speaker company and say, hey, how do we know what that speaker is even doing in our household at this point in time? Is it a reflection in general for all of tech?</s>JOY: It's a reflection for all of tech for sure, and safeguarding your privacy is a critical importance to anyone who depends on the internet for their business. Facebook, Google, they're important partners to us and they're only as valuable to us and to you and to everyone as our trust in them is. So, we feel like you know, this is something that matters a lot to us, we've been working with our NGO partner Access(ph) for some time now, and elevating their voices and elevating the voices of activists felt like the right thing to do right now.</s>NEWTON: And is this a point of inclusion in the company to say that we are going to take a critical view at our options as well.</s>HOWARD: Absolutely, it's a moment to press pause for everyone to stop and reflect on what it means to work together and how we can partner to create a better social platform for each other.</s>NEWTON: What will determine whether or not it will last longer than a week?</s>HOWARD: I'd have to -- you know, we heard from Facebook right away today - -</s>NEWTON: Oh, you did?</s>HOWARD: Of course we did --</s>NEWTON: And what did they say?</s>HOWARD: They said they take it very seriously just like we do. And so I think you know, ultimately, the question is do companies like ours have a choice other than Facebook and Google? So more than 70 percent of the ad dollars and some of the markets are working as far higher than that or spent on these platforms. It's basically a duopoly, and so for companies like us who really now have no choice right now to read to our customers entering these platforms.</s>NEWTON: When they spoke to you, did they say, please don't do this or don't extend it or just -- what did they say?</s>HOWARD: I mean, they value our partnership and we value our partnership with them. And again the only reason we're working with partners is to make each other better. So I think what they're saying is, we -- it's critically important to us, to Google and Facebook and also the Sonos, that people trust the interactions that they're having on our platforms are safe and secured.</s>NEWTON: Do you think this is something more than a few weeks -- I heard some people complaining that, look, this is only going to last a few weeks and then we're all going to forget about it. Or is it a real reflection point for your kind of industry but also of course places like Google, Facebook and Twitter?</s>HOWARD: Well, we're absolutely in this for the long haul, we've been committed, you know, always to privacy for our consumers and we've worked increasingly over the last years, so with NGOs who care about defending your digital rights because we think it's important that they'd be protected.</s>NEWTON: What things have you guys done to audit your own behavior though? Because there are some concerns where you even speak</s>HOWARD: Yes, well, we take every step that we can, and safeguarding your privacy is of critical importance to us. We've also recently entered the smart speaker space as you referenced before. And so one of the features of our product that really matters to us is that we've hard-wired the microphones on our speakers. So if you want to turn the microphone off, you can clearly press the button that can't be hard - just -- it's hardwired to the microphone and you can simply turn it off. That's an example of the step that we're taking to make sure that you feel like you can trust us and that you know that when you want to turn the microphones off in your house, you can do it.</s>NEWTON: But to be clear, you are examining other steps as well.</s>HOWARD: Absolutely, we're going to continue to look at everything that we can do to safeguard your privacy.</s>NEWTON: And from your point of view, what have we learned in the last week about --</s>HOWARD: I mean, I think the most important thing that we've learned is that people will interact on these platforms with each other and with our brand only if they trust them. And so once big tech loses our trust, its value to us as human beings and to us as business partners is very limited. And that -- if we've learned anything, it stopped.</s>NEWTON: OK, but we'll see how things change going forward, thanks so much for being here --</s>HOWARD: Yes, thank you for having me, thanks a lot --</s>NEWTON: Really appreciate it. Now buying a pint of your favorite wine sounds rather vulgar these days, but after Britain leaves the EU, you'll be able to do just that. We'll pass the buck(ph) on that story in just a minute.