A set of documents Facebook has sought to keep private — and ordered by U.S. federal court to remained sealed — have been obtained by the British Parliament, CNN reported.
The documents, which had been turned over to Ted Kramer, the owner of Six4Three, a company suing Facebook for privacy data abuse, were shared with Kramer's lawyers through the legal process of discovery, where a party of a lawsuit can obtain evidence from the other.
The documents have been ordered sealed by the San Mateo Superior Court in California — "failure to comply will be considered an act of contempt," per the court — which kept Six4Three from releasing them, but Kramer had turned them over to British Parliament on a trip to London this week, according to CNN.
Six4Three has asked the Britons to "refrain from reviewing them and to return them to counsel or to Facebook," per the report.
Kramer reportedly was escorted to Parliament after a sergeant-at-arms appeared at Kramer's London hotel and was threatened with fines and possible imprisonment, according to The Guardian's The Observer.
Kramer's lawsuit alleges Facebook disregarded user privacy and its founder Mark Zuckerberg devised a scheme to put rivals out of business.
"We allege that Facebook itself is the biggest violator of data misuse in the history of the software industry," Kramer told CNN this summer.
". . . I think it's really important to understand that they have fought tooth and nail to prevent this evidence from becoming public which we believe the world should see. We believe everyone should see this evidence because they have the right to know the truth."