Australian leader backs Zuckerberg’s grilling in Parliament

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he would welcome Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testifying to an Australian parliamentary committee on the social media giant’s sharing of data with Chinese phone maker Huawei.

Leaders of Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security on Thursday raised the prospect of the 34-year-old being invited to explain Facebook’s relationship with Huawei.

Huawei, a company flagged by U.S. intelligence officials as a national security threat, says it has never collected or stored Facebook user data, after Facebook acknowledged it shared such data with Huawei and other manufacturers.

It’s the latest privacy gaffe for Facebook since allegations emerged in March that a Trump-affiliated political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly harvested data of Facebook users in an effort to influence elections.