After the meeting in Switzerland, Maxine Waters said that there are still doubts about Facebook’s Libra project.
In fact, a delegation from the US House Committee on Financial Services, of which Waters is President, met the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Adrian Lobsiger. The meeting was supposed to clarify some doubts about the privacy and data processing of the Libra Association, which will manage the stablecoin planned by Facebook, except that the concerns were not clarified.
Lobsiger himself had already had the opportunity to say that he had not received enough answers from the Libra Association to obtain a complete picture of the situation, so it was unlikely that the meeting could have a positive outcome.
But the House Committee on Financial Services, and in particular its President Maxine Waters, really seem to be against the Facebook Libra project, therefore, beyond appearances, they may not be so dissatisfied with the outcome of this meeting.
The Libra Association is based in Geneva and is therefore subject to the supervision of the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner. This is more than enough to justify the meeting which has just taken place, although it was legitimate to expect a result similar to the final one.
In addition to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), the US delegation of six members of the Committee on Financial Services also met with officials from the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF) and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).
In the aftermath of the meeting, Maxine Waters stated that her doubts about Libra had not been clarified, in particular regarding the possibility that a large private company could create a privately controlled alternative global currency. However, Waters also added that the meeting was useful in understanding the status, complexity and scale of Facebook’s plans.
