The top Republicans on the House and Senate education committees are demanding answers from Education Secretary Miguel Cardona after the Department of Education admitted it was providing financial aid applicants' user data to Facebook.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) blasted Cardona in a letter on Tuesday for the agency's failure to brief lawmakers after a report in the blog the Markup revealed that a "meta pixel" code in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid was directly providing user data to Facebook, regardless of whether or not the applicant had an account.
"As your agency failed to provide a briefing to date on the extent of the data collected, we do not know the extent of the information shared, including whether income and social security numbers were shared," the lawmakers wrote. "This data collection and sharing happened without the consent or knowledge of individuals or their parents, and Facebook received the data regardless of whether an individual had a Facebook account."
Facebook sure like the concept of big government.
