Silicon Valley rep. congratulates Facebook, promises to keep pressure up on privacy

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who represents the district just north of Facebook's headquarters, congratulated the social media giant after it filed papers to begin publicly selling its stocks on Wednesday.

"It's going to make real estate in my district much more valuable and expensive," she joked. "lt's going to make a lot of instant millionaires."

Facebook aims to raise $5 billion in its initial public offering. CEO Mark Zuckerberg's share in the company could be worth as much as $28 billion, according to some estimates.

"It's very exciting when a young entrepreneur shows that the American dream continues to be one that we can all attain," Speier told The Hill Wednesday evening on Capitol Hill. "So more power to him and to all those great Facebook employees."

But she added that she plans to continue scrutinizing the company's privacy policies.

"I still have issues on privacy — I still want them to work on their privacy policies," she said.

In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook acknowledged that government regulation of privacy, data protection and intellectual property could hurt its business.

Speier was one of several lawmakers who sent a letter to Google last week, grilling the company on recent changes to its privacy policy.

She told The Hill that her main concern with social media companies is whether they sell detailed dossiers of user information to other companies.

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