1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

I am writing to demand immediate congressional and criminal investigation into the recent discovery that Meta Platforms, Inc.—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—covertly bypassed Android system protections to track users’ web browsing activity without consent. This was not a technical oversight or a grey-area mistake. It was a deliberate, surreptitious act that experts say mirrors the tactics of malicious hackers. It is brazen, illegal, and wildly invasive. For months, Meta exploited a digital backdoor that circumvented platform-level security safeguards put in place by Google. It secretly harvested data from millions of individuals’ devices without their knowledge, regardless of whether they used Meta apps at all. The company only halted this behavior once it was publicly exposed by independent academic researchers. That is not compliance—it is damage control after the fact. Let me be blunt: this is not a matter for regulatory slap-on-the-wrist fines. This is a criminal act of mass surveillance conducted under the false pretense of a legitimate application. Human beings—corporate decision-makers—approved, developed, deployed, and maintained this spyware. They must be investigated, indicted, and tried for violating federal laws on wiretapping, data theft, and consumer protection. We cannot allow corporate actors to wage open war on public privacy with impunity. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission must initiate proceedings immediately. Furthermore, Congress must act to: • Subpoena all relevant internal Meta communications and development records; • Hold public hearings with Meta executives and the researchers who discovered the activity; • Enact enforceable criminal penalties—not civil fines—for executives who authorize or conceal unlawful data harvesting; • Mandate default privacy protections in operating systems that cannot be bypassed by corporate apps; • Require transparency reporting and independent audits for all data collection practices by large tech platforms. We have long passed the point where private-sector surveillance should be treated as a policy nuisance. It is a systemic and escalating threat to civil liberty and democracy. Meta’s conduct proves that voluntary compliance will never be enough. I expect your public support for full-scale legal and legislative action against those responsible—now and going forward.