U.K. To Fine Facebook For Information Harvesting.
NEWTON: Facebook is facing the biggest fine the U.K. can give over failing to protect user data. British authorities say the company failed to tell tens of millions of users that Cambridge Analytica was harvesting their data for use in political campaigns. Samuel Burke joins -- Samuel Burke joins us now from London. And you've been following this for several months. The key word there is the largest fine possible. Wasn't very big, was it?</s>SAMUEL BURKE, CNN BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Not that big. Though I have to say, Paula, we've entered a new phase of the Cambridge Analytica scandal because this is the first time that Facebook is actually facing a fine, monetary damage for their role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. There are two conclusions that the U.K. government has from this report. Number one, that Facebook did not secure our information. Number two, that they didn't do enough to alert people, because, of course, they found out about this in 2015, and did not alert users about Cambridge Analytica until 2018, after some journalism happened, reports in papers on both sides of the Atlantic. What really interests me here, Paula, is that this information could be incredibly useful to the agencies, plural, back in the United States who are looking into Facebook's role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. I'm talking about the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission. There are a lot of people looking at Facebook. This information could be very useful to them, but I just want to get back to what you were talking about when it comes to this fine, Paula. If was can just put these numbers on the screen. The U.K. government has a preliminary fine for Facebook of about 500,000 pounds. Paula, you know, nobody tracks the pound closer than I do. That's $664,000. But just take a look at how much Facebook had in profits here in Europe in 2017, $16 billion. That's the big concern that I've had as I've looked at all the different bodies that are investigating Facebook is, what type of actual power do they have? Because you know better than I do, the only thing that really speaks to these publicly traded companies is money, and come on, 500,000 pounds, $664,000 is just a drop in the bucket for these tech -- these tech giants.</s>NEWTON: Absolutely. And we'll see if the threat of regulation gets them, if the fine actually can't in terms of its capacity to really be punitive. Our Samuel Burke spelling that out for us. Appreciate it. Now, as we were watching there, we continue to watch live pictures there from out NATO headquarters in Brussels. And we will have more of that straight ahead as President Trump goes head to head on U.S. allies on what's sure to be an incredibility NATO summit on going right now.