The documents portray company executives plotting how to convince the public they were serious about improving privacy protections even while their real goal was to snuff out competition.

The state says it demanded information from the social media giant in June for an investigation launched last year and that the company’s response has been “patently deficient.”

Advances in artificial intelligence “have opened up new possibilities for automated mass surveillance,” said Adrian Shahbaz, Freedom House’s research director for technology and democracy.

Facebook said that for the past 18 months some third-party developers who used Facebook’s Groups API could access private user information, including the names and profile photos.

The social network giant has withdrawn its appeal of the fine levied last year, settling the case without any admission of guilt, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office said in a statement on Wednesday.

Employees said they discovered the company was creating a new tool that would automatically report staffers who create a calendar event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants.

Lawmakers made it clear that they are skeptical that Facebook should be trusted with the tremendous power it has amassed over 2.7 billion global users.

The software can scan footage including from closed-circuit television to automatically match faces and license plates to a police database and pick out suspects in a crowd.

The breach was done by “exploiting a vulnerability of one of our server providers, which hadn’t been disclosed to us,” according to the company’s statement.

Facebook said the “coordinated inauthentic behavior” took aim at the U.S., North Africa and Latin America and included “proactive work ahead of the U.S. elections.”