Germany’s justice minister has written to Facebook  calling for the platform to implement an internal “control and sanction mechanism” to ensure third-party developers and other external providers are not able to misuse Facebook data — calling for it to both monitor third party compliance with its platform policies and apply “harsh penalties” for any violations.  

The letter, which has been published in full in local media, follows the privacy storm that has engulfed the company since mid March when fresh revelations were published by the Observer of London and the New York Times — detailing how Cambridge Analytica had obtained and used personal information on up to 87 million Facebook users for political ad targeting purposes.  

Writing to Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg,  justice minister Katarina Barley welcomes some recent changes the company has made around user privacy, describing its decision to limit collaboration with “data dealers” as “a good start”, for example.  

However she says the company needs to do more — setting out a series of what she describes as “core requirements” in the area of data and consumer protection.