Lawyer says Facebook ‘held Australia hostage’

The lawyer representing the anonymous Facebook whistleblowers says his clients came forward to warn the Australian government about their employer’s egregious behaviour.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law hearing in 2020. Picture: Mandel Ngan/Pool/AFP)

The Washington DC lawyer ­representing the Facebook whistleblowers says his clients came forward to help warn the Australian government egregious conduct by the tech giant that almost certainly put lives in jeopardy.

Andrew Bakaj, a former intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, told The Australian that Facebook had ­effectively “held Australia hostage” when it banned hospitals, charities and vital health services from its platform over a five-day period last year, as part of ­allegedly deliberate negotiation tactics.

“These issues that we have brought forward are both egregious and unconscionable, and Facebook has directly put lives on the line,” Mr Bakaj said. “They may have shut down the ability for entities and organisations to push out information that could absolutely save lives.

Lawyer Andrew Bakaj. Source: Supplied

“They shut down for five days the ability for the government of Australia to push out information about Covid vaccinations, and that has an impact on every Australian in the nation. And cutting the ability for firefighting organisations to be able to push out critical information right in the middle of a bushfire season is just beyond reckless and simply is just a very low thing to do.

“Facebook knows that and what they have done is effectively held not just the government of Australia hostage, but the ­people of Australia hostage in order to further their business goals and aspirations.”

Mr Bakaj came to prominence in 2019 when he represented the whistleblower who filed a complaint that led to the Trump-Ukraine scandal, and the first impeachment of then US president Donald Trump. He said the Facebook whistleblowers were so outraged by their employer’s behaviour they felt compelled to come forward, despite the risks involved.

“I think it’s pretty clear that any rational human beings who saw and understood what was transpiring at the time were so troubled by it, that they felt they had to do something,” he said.

“And so the reason they came forward was to try and let the government entities know exactly what happened … we’re talking about a potential violation of various laws and the Australian government needs to know that so they can protect their citizens and protect their people.

“In the US we have something called ‘if you see something, say something’, and that’s exactly what this is.”

The disclosures, along with those made by one of Mr Bakaj‘s other clients, Frances Haugen, amounted to a culture that had ultimately gone astray at Facebook, the lawyer said.

“Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook as a dating website and over time it morphed into a place for friends and family to connect with one another, and those goals and aspirations were totally fine,” he said.

“Unfortunately, over time, they have lost their way and we have come to a point where there has to be a reckoning.

“I’m not gonna promise to know what those answers are, but we need to get back to that point where social media is no longer the conduit by which, for example, hate is spread, or that something is used as leverage against the government for their own parochial needs. We need to work out what our relationship is as a society and as a world is with social media.”