California discloses probe on Facebook privacy practices

TALI ARBEL AP Technology Writer California's attorney general disclosed an ongoing probe into Facebook privacy practices Wednesday as investigators sought a court's help in getting documents and answers from Facebook. The California probe, one of many legal inquiries into Facebook, began as a response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and grew into an investigation into whether Facebook has misrepresented its privacy practices, deceived users and broken California law. Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm, gathered details on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission. The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion this summer for privacy violations in an investigation that also grew out of that scandal. On Wednesday, California Attorney General Xavier