At Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) questioned Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, former Director of Global Public Policy.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Let me just start with something that you referenced, Ms. Wynne-Williams, a moment ago.
00:05Facebook Meta issued a statement again last night saying that they don't do business in China.
00:11Now, is that true? Facebook Meta is not doing business in China? Is that accurate?
00:17That is not accurate, Chairman Hawley. Facebook has an $18.3 billion business in China.
00:27And to give just one example, in 2014, it launched Oculus in China with a strategy of playing dumb.
00:38And Oculus has continued to grow as a significant part of their business.
00:43In fact, they have, since 2014, 2015, they have launched multiple apps in China, often without, well, always without seeking authorization from this government,
00:53not informing their shareholders, not informing Congress, not informing the public.
00:59And now they have employees in China. Is that accurate?
01:01They have a partnership with Tencent in China. Is that accurate?
01:04Their Oculus VR business is in China. Is that accurate?
01:09So tell me this. Why has Facebook Meta been so obsessed, if I can use that word, with breaking into the Chinese market?
01:17What is this all about?
01:20It is incredibly valuable for Meta.
01:25Monetarily.
01:26Absolutely.
01:27So we're really, we're talking about profit at the end of the day.
01:30We are absolutely talking about profit.
01:32Profit and power. Let's talk about what Meta has been willing to do for profit and power.
01:37You said just a moment ago that Meta's dishonesty started with the betrayal of core American values.
01:42And you mentioned that Mark Zuckerberg has pledged himself as a free speech champion.
01:47I notice he talks a lot now in the American media about free speech.
01:50I notice he talks a lot when he goes to the White House about free speech and how Facebook won't censor and Facebook will protect the rights of all.
01:58Have you ever known Mark Zuckerberg to censor on behalf of China?
02:03Yes, Tim and Holly.
02:04Let's talk about a few specific instances.
02:07In 2017, the Chinese dissident Gua Wingy suddenly had his Facebook profile shut down.
02:14Now, Facebook at first said that this was a temporary glitch.
02:17Was that true to your knowledge?
02:20No, centrally.
02:22In fact, Facebook shut down this dissident's page.
02:26This dissident, as you pointed out a moment ago, was living on American soil at the time.
02:31Facebook shut down that page based on pressure from the Chinese Communist Party.
02:35Is that accurate?
02:36That's accurate.
02:36Let's just take a look here at the documents.
02:39Here's some meeting notes taken shortly after a conversation with a Mr. Chao, who's a Communist Chinese Party member, a government official.
02:48Here, Mr. Chao asks Facebook.
02:51It says to Facebook that they want Mr. Gua's Facebook page dealt with.
02:57The notes say that Chao wants Facebook in China, but there are others who don't, so we, Facebook, need to take measures and do more in such situations to demonstrate we can address mutual interests.
03:10And then they go on to list.
03:12Here's what we could do.
03:12We could do nothing.
03:13We could say we could do something, or we can do even more than expected, but we need to provide a response to the Chinese Communist Party on what we can do.
03:22So here we have evidence of high-level contacts between Chinese Communist Party officials and Facebook asking for this dissident's page to be taken down.
03:32Facebook acknowledging this pressure, saying we need to do something if we want to get the party's cooperation, the government's cooperation.
03:40And what happened next?
03:41Well, Senator Hawley, one thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics.
03:51I can say that from a personal experience.
03:53So I think they came to the right man.
03:58This led to a series of events where eventually this man on American soil was kicked off the platform.
04:04So in April of 2017, following these conversations, Facebook takes down the profile, bans it, of Mr. Gua.
04:13Then in September, they make that ban permanent.
04:15Now here's the really interesting thing.
04:18When Facebook's general counsel was asked about this directly under oath in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he sang a different tune.
04:27Senator Rubio asked him directly, was there any pressure from the Chinese government to block his account?
04:31Was there any pressure to block his account?
04:36The general counsel, Mr. Stretch, no senator.
04:39We reviewed a report on that account and analyzed it through regular channels using regular procedures.
04:47Was this truthful testimony, Elizabeth Williams?
04:51No, Senator.
04:51It's in fact an outright lie, is it not?
04:53It is, Senator.
04:54We just saw the documentation.
04:56Facebook received not just a request.
04:59Facebook received direct pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and bowed to it and discussed it internally and planned it and then lied about it to Congress.
05:10Let's talk about what else they've been able to do and willing to do in order to get this access to the Chinese market.
05:17Let's look at some more meeting notes.
05:18Here's a reading, here's a readout of a group of Facebook engineers offering to create a censorship regime that will allow Facebook to block all traffic the Chinese Communist Party doesn't want.
05:35Phase zero.
05:36This is an internal chat.
05:38Phase zero.
05:38We identify all traffic that are currently blocked in China and we, Facebook, block them.
05:43This is a test for us to see whether we can actually identify all traffic from China.
05:51And then, the chat continues, yes, good way to build trust.
05:54And another conversant says, great stuff, guys, let's do it.
05:58Give us some context here, Ms. Wynne-Williams.
06:00What are they talking about doing here?
06:02When they say block all content that China wants, we, Facebook, do it for them, what are they talking about?
06:08They're talking about activating their censorship tools on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
06:14So, Facebook creates censorship tools that will allow them to assume the burden, if you like, of censorship, where they will do all of the censoring that the Chinese government was doing.
06:24Facebook would do it on their behalf.
06:26Is that right?
06:27That's my understanding, sir.
06:28And here you have Facebook employees celebrating it.
06:31Good way to build trust.
06:33They mean build trust with the Communist Chinese Party, right?
06:36Correct, Senator.
06:36And great stuff, guys, let's do it.
06:39Meaning they greenlit this and went forward to see if they could make it happen.
06:43Is that accurate?
06:44That's my understanding, Senator.
06:46All of this, let's be clear, for a murderous regime in China, the most barbaric, most evil regime on the face of the planet,
06:54and our free speech champion, Mark Zuckerberg, is here with his team of engineers actively working to make Facebook censor on their behalf.
07:04Let me ask you this.
07:05What about user data, Ms. Wynne-Williams?
07:09Facebook has said publicly many times, we would never compromise user data.
07:12It's a red line in the sand.
07:14We'd never do that.
07:16Never, never, never.
07:17Was Facebook ever willing to share user data with the Chinese Communist Party?
07:22Yes, Senator.
07:23In fact, they had a plan for that, didn't they?
07:25Here's some more documents, internal documents.
07:28Update, I spoke with the China team yesterday.
07:31They flagged a potential complication arising from our negotiations with the Chinese government.
07:37I emphasize, this is a Facebook document now.
07:39These are Facebook executives.
07:41In exchange for the ability to do operations in China, Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese user data.
07:49There it is in black and white.
07:52Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese user data, including Hong Kongese user data.
07:59And then they talk about they're going to have to get their Hong Kong citizens to re-agree to terms of service so they can slide this right by them.
08:07This is extraordinary.
08:08Can I just ask you, Ms. Wynne-Williams, was Americans' user data ever compromised?
08:13Do they ever plan to compromise American user data in any way?
08:16Do you know?
08:17One of the challenges with servicing a market as big as China was the Internet infrastructure that would underpin that.
08:25So I mentioned the cable that they joined between the U.S. and China, and that would be very helpful in servicing this market.
08:36But it would still mean that the service would be slow.
08:39So they contemplated using POP servers.
08:43And POP servers is a technical data set that brings the data closer to the end user.
08:51The challenge with POP servers is that you can't segregate data.
08:55It would have American data.
08:58It would have Chinese user data.
08:59And it would be on Chinese soil.
09:02So I want to just be clear about this.
09:04Here in this document, Facebook is talking about making Chinese user data available to the Chinese government because they're going to store that data in China.
09:13Is that correct?
09:14Correct.
09:14But when you store that data in China, Americans who exchange messages or other information with Chinese Facebook users, that would mean the Chinese government could get access to the American data as well.
09:26Is that correct?
09:27Through the POP servers, potentially, yes.
09:28And Facebook was willing to take that risk?
09:32Yes.
09:32There was a lot of discussion about this, and ultimately, yes.
09:37I mean, this is extraordinary.
09:39This is exactly contrary to what Facebook has represented for years.
09:44Here, they're willing to build data centers, store data in China.
09:47They are willing explicitly to give the Chinese government access to it.
09:51And if that means that American user data is also compromised, they're willing to do that, too.
09:55All for profits in China.
09:58There was virtually nothing they weren't willing to do.
10:03Chairman Grassley.
10:04And I'm only sitting over here because of your chart.
10:12I take very seriously adversaries.