Leaked Documents Reveal Facebook's Global War On Data Privacy Laws (theguardian.com) 128
"Facebook threatened to pull investment projects from Europe and Canada if lobbying demands from COO Sheryl Sandberg were not met," reports Business Insider, adding "Canada buckled immediately."
And that's just the beginning. The Observer reports: Facebook has targeted politicians around the world -- including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne -- promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook's behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed. The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU...
The documents appear to emanate from a court case against Facebook by the app developer Six4Three in California, and reveal that Sandberg considered European data protection legislation a "critical" threat to the company. A memo written after the Davos economic summit in 2013 quotes Sandberg describing the "uphill battle" the company faced in Europe on the "data and privacy front" and its "critical" efforts to head off "overly prescriptive new laws...." John Naughton, a Cambridge academic and Observer writer who studies the democratic implications of digital technology, said the leak was "explosive" in the way it revealed the "vassalage" of the Irish state to the big tech companies. Ireland had welcomed the companies, he noted, but became "caught between a rock and a hard place... Its leading politicians apparently saw themselves as covert lobbyists for a data monster."
A spokesperson for Facebook said the documents were still under seal in a Californian court and it could not respond to them in any detail: "Like the other documents that were cherrypicked and released in violation of a court order last year, these by design tell one side of a story and omit important context."
And that's just the beginning. The Observer reports: Facebook has targeted politicians around the world -- including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne -- promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook's behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed. The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU...
The documents appear to emanate from a court case against Facebook by the app developer Six4Three in California, and reveal that Sandberg considered European data protection legislation a "critical" threat to the company. A memo written after the Davos economic summit in 2013 quotes Sandberg describing the "uphill battle" the company faced in Europe on the "data and privacy front" and its "critical" efforts to head off "overly prescriptive new laws...." John Naughton, a Cambridge academic and Observer writer who studies the democratic implications of digital technology, said the leak was "explosive" in the way it revealed the "vassalage" of the Irish state to the big tech companies. Ireland had welcomed the companies, he noted, but became "caught between a rock and a hard place... Its leading politicians apparently saw themselves as covert lobbyists for a data monster."
A spokesperson for Facebook said the documents were still under seal in a Californian court and it could not respond to them in any detail: "Like the other documents that were cherrypicked and released in violation of a court order last year, these by design tell one side of a story and omit important context."
Facebook=Good (Score:1, Funny)
Remember, the Facebook is good. The Facebook is love. The Facebook is life. The Facebook must grow. Walk without rhythm and you won't attract the Wyrm.
Re: Facebook=Good (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone has a Facebook account at this point they are a fucking moron.
I love the rationale of: "That is the only way I can stay in touch with family and friends".
Yeah, really, then you are an even bigger moron, and you deserve everything that comes from your stupidity.
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1960: s/a social media platform/TV shows/
1930: s/a social media platform/radio shows/
1880: s/a social media platform/newspapers/
1700: s/a social media platform/ye town crier/
'twas ever thus.
Aaaaand (picking a purely hypothetical example out of the air) British voters are so much more savvy, as they
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If someone has a Facebook account at this point they are a fucking moron.
Not having a Facebook account doesn't stop them from tracking you all over the internets. Noscript or ublock does that. I use both, plus a separate cookie mangler.
I use Facebook because that's where discussion groups I want to participate in are located. I don't share incriminating personal information there, I just talk about bus conversions and shit. The state already knows I drive a bus conversion.
I also block ads, so Facebook can only make money on me by what, selling my personality profile? So what, pe
Re: Facebook=Good (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a bit more than that. Facebook makes interfences about you based on similarities between the data it has on you and other people. That projection data profile is what it sells. If that assessment suggests to your insurer that you are a higher risk, there's nothing you can do about it, even if the alert is false.
This is where the privacy battle is going to be. If you have a smart meter, your high resolution consumption pattern may suggest that you're growing or manufacturing something illegal - so probable cause. The ensuing no-knock invasion could leave you dead due to a false positive. Without that smart meter, no suspicion, no probable cause, no warrant.
Re: Facebook=Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Without that smart meter, no suspicion, no probable cause, no warrant.
Wrong. Refusing the smart meter installation is itself suspicious. At minimum, you're untrusting and/or anti-authoritarian. Or maybe you're trying to hide your usage patterns. The same is true of a Facebook account. If you don't have one, many will take that as a suspicious sign. The fix isn't to refuse to use Facebook, it's to seek legislation to make it illegal to base decisions which will affect your life on Facebook metrics.
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Tomorrow's headline: Internet tough guy shot while resisting arrest.
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Yup. None of their business. Like most of my lifestyle details. There is a difference between 'privacy' and 'secrecy'.
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Yup. None of their business. Like most of my lifestyle details. There is a difference between 'privacy' and 'secrecy'.
Yeah? But what are you trying to hide? [time.com]
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It's why I have an (almost empty) facebook profile
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I didn't realize I had a choice when they upgraded my meter, but I don't have any objections to it either. They do provide nice detailed usage reports for me even correlating usage to weather.
I don't know where you live, maybe they're using decent meters. PG&E isn't. The meters they have chosen a) are failure prone b) tend to read high and not low when they fail c) sometimes literally burst into flames. We had a combi lock on our gate, we shared the code with PG&E and they were to call before using it, and not share it with third parties. Then they shared it with the contractor they were using to do smart meter installs, so we changed the lock and didn't give them the code any more. We w
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electricity consumption (Score:2)
Meters read once a month don't tell a lot. Grow houses use electricity all day, all night - which a smart meter has the resolution to report.
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A typical school bus is 40' long, 8' wide, and the interior space is about 6' tall in the center. Some of them have a 6'6" ceiling, though. The walls are about 2" thick, the roof and ceiling are curved and the space between them is 2-3" thick. You may do the math and convert to tapes, and thus to LoCs.
This is the profit motive at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever it is more profitable for a company to invest in corrupting the political process instead of improving its services, it will invest in corrupting the political process.
This process is unstoppable when the added benefit of unequal cost/benefit distribution makes it expensive for the other players in the market to oppose such political "investment", and multiplies the profits of the corrupting entity many times over.
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It's known as the "Trump Effect," whereby Republicans know Trump is bad for America but can't do anything because an outgoing tide lowers all boats.
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BS. This process is trivial to stop. People just need to read the EULA and understand exactly what it is they're giving up when the agree to use a service like Facebook. Nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to use Facebook. It's completely voluntary.
So fundamentally, this isn't a problem with companies or profit o
Re:This is the profit motive at work (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to use Facebook. It's completely voluntary.
I'm finding it harder and harder to avoid Facebook, too many things happening on it or requiring it. Sure i can and do not get involved in my community because it now all happens on Facebook, can't even post a letter to the editor in the local paper because you need a Facebook login, and so on.
As the article hints at, at some point Facebook will succeed in lobbying the government to require Facebook to access government services, unless you're willing to travel a hundred miles and find the room in the basement with the sign about beware of leopards.
The other thing with Facebook is I have to actively avoid them more and more as they're everywhere. Hidden scripts and 1 px images on unrelated web pages for example. I never agreed to their tracking me but they sure try, probably have a shadow account of me with too much info on it as I doubt that I'm 100% avoiding them.
Re:This is the profit motive at work (Score:4, Insightful)
So fundamentally, this isn't a problem with companies or profit or a corrupt political process.
So, "fundamentally", how to you explain the hard facts in TFA about Facebook trying to bribe politicians into supporting anti-data harvesting legislation then? Since this is /., I will not ask if you've read TFA, but instead quote TFS for you:
FB has been promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook's behalf against data privacy legislation.
And it has not been a small thing either. It is a well-orchestrated worldwide operation: documents ... reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU
You think this isn't a problem? You think it is easy for the average voter to confront corporate subterfuge on this scale? You must be quite ignorant of how politics works, then, because it is happening everywhere and you, the average guy, have been sidelined from the political process by corporate long before you were born.
This process is trivial to stop.
You don't say. How easy is it to stop an operation like the one described above? Please elaborate, I'm very interested to hear about it. How do you learn about it, how do you get access to the likes of the UK prime minister or MPs on equal footing with Zuckerberg. How do you get your ass to Davos, mister, where Zuckerberg flies on his private jet with his army of manipulators? Show me how you've done it.
Please show me how "trivial" it is to stop a large international corporation, which business model is abusing the lack of global oversight, from shopping for politicians willing to sell out their constituency. Show me also how "trivial" it is to block Facebook from completely spying on you while you're using the Internet on all your devices if you're not a somewhat competent sysadmin.
Equating it to corporate behavior or corrupt politics is tantamount to admitting that people are too dumb
"Equating" what, my friend? The described facts about FB trying to influence the "race to the bottom" in privacy with various forms of bribery so that they can use their other manipulative technologies to spy on users does not show that users aren't "dumb" at all. It shows how insidious and ruthless the said corporation is.
Do you think that you are as clever as the whole technical and marketing machine that is FB? You have delusions of competence, my dear. You saying you can stand your ground alone against FB is tantamount to you admitting you have no idea how easy a target you are.
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Well, start counting. Wake me up when it is stopped. I won't be holding my breath.
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Call me a cynic, but look at history. I think it proves the point, doesn't it?
There are perhaps counterexamples - the American revolution, England getting rid of the monarchy, England restoring the monarchy - but I suspect the reason why we study them is precisely because they are so rare.
Naughty boys and girls (Score:2)
Naughty boys and girls. It's time for a Europe-wide ban on selling data without the users consent.
Politicians sold us out, sadly! (Score:3)
"Facebook threatened to pull investment projects from Europe and Canada if lobbying demands from COO Sheryl Sandberg were not met," reports Business Insider, adding "Canada buckled immediately."
If I had the means, I'd have asked FaceBook to take a hike.
I guess thy would have taken one anyway. A number of nations continue to survive [and thrive] without FaceBook. Besides, our youngsters would be more sane to a degree without it.
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They buckled immediately because they knew they could say anything and if it ever came down to it the courts would be the ones to decide jurisdiction not them. There was no downside to placating her.
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"Facebook threatened to pull investment projects from Europe and Canada if lobbying demands from COO Sheryl Sandberg were not met," reports Business Insider, adding "Canada buckled immediately."
If I had the means, I'd have asked FaceBook to take a hike.
Then you would have lost the means. These politicians got elected by claiming they gave people "stuff", which happened to be Facebook projects of different sorts. The politician that doesn't get "the jobs" doesn't get "the job". I'll go out on a limb here and make the prediction that AOC won't be re-elected, and the deciding factor, regardless of its merits, will be her stance on the Amazon deal.
It's sad, really (Score:5, Interesting)
This news should have people all over the world protesting in the streets against corporate interference in governance, and Facebook should wake up tomorrow to find at least 90% of their user base simply gone. If people had any sense, knew what was good for them, and had the will to act on the knowledge, Facebook would be a fucking ghost town within a month and entirely dead within a year.
What's almost certain to happen instead is two or three news cycles of feigned outrage on the part of governments, a similar period of feigned contrition on the part of Facebook, people swearing off Facebook for a week, and then... nothing. Business as usual will continue; what should be a brick wall that stops Mark Fuckerberg dead in his tracks, will be a minor speed bump on the road to complete abolition of personal privacy.
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Re: It's sad, really (Score:3)
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Well, at least now we know what Slashdot account Mark Zuckerberg uses.
Auto correct is trying to change Zuckerberg to rubbernecker. Even my browser knows he's watching me.
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Wow! Even when I assume that you're posting in good faith and not shilling, I still find it hard to know where to begin. Given your relatively low UID and the reasonably high coherence of your writing, it seems unlikely that you are unaware of the implications of all this data gathering. Facebook has already been outed for experimenting on its users by manipulating their news feeds and gauging their responses. Was this innocent psychological research in the name of furthering human knowledge? No, it was tes
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I deleted Facebook ... (Score:5, Informative)
... on Feb 7 of this year. It won't go into effect until Mar 9 and I must not log back in because the beast will escape the steely knife.
I used a program (FBP) to purge ALL of my Facebook data (it was time-consuming) and deleted leftover data manually.
Then I deleted ... not deactivated. I just know those motherfuckers didn't delete a goddam thing, but I can't control them.
I'm an amateur photographer, guitar player and singer, and a retired IT guy who can help other people.
Facebook was a good place to share my work and keep in touch with family, friends, and like-minded strangers.
I have no replacement. Other social media are not as high profile, but they are just as evil.
I know that my disengagement doesn't mean a goddam thing to Facebook, but it means something to me.
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I know that my disengagement doesn't mean a goddam thing to Facebook, but it means something to me.
I know what you mean but, really, this may be the only way successful social movements can really start.
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I thought I deleted it my account 2 years ago. Like, I specifically went through a process, according to some web site, that was supposed to delete it -- not just deactivate it. I recently found that I needed to recreate an account. Lo and behold, I couldn't use my same email address. I reset my password. Everything was still there.
We all understand that they never delete anything from their side, but, at this point, I'm not even sure they have removed the stuff you think you've deleted from your timeline f
The more we learn about Facebook... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heh. You're just NOW figuring this out?
I knew it from the start. Never had a Facebook, never will.
-Miser
"tell one side and omit important context" (Score:3)
sloppy reporting by the Guardian (Score:4, Interesting)
I normally like the Guardian, but I'm annoyed they didn't mention the names of the ministers in Malaysia and Canada who immediately buckled.
Missing context (Score:3)
Business Insider: "Facebook threatened to pull investment projects from Europe and Canada if lobbying demands from COO Sheryl Sandberg were not met," ...
Facebook: "Like the other documents that were ... released ... these by design tell one side of a story and omit important context."
Missing Context: Facebook also threatened the politician's families -- including their dogs.
GET OFF FACEBOOK (Score:2, Interesting)
Hosts (Score:1)
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.net
127.0.0.1 www.connect.facebook.net
127.0.0.1 apps.facebook.com
What did you expect? (Score:1)
"Dumb fucks" - Marc Zuckerberg on his first few 100 users.
Then he got filthy rich. To him his strategy and way to treat users obviously worked. Why change?
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Lobbying 28 states of the EU (Score:2)
You are the product (Score:2)
Whatsapp's ties to Facebook (Score:2)
A cousin of ours in Italy was almost screaming to my sister during a phone call the other day to use Whatsapp. She uses Whatsapp with other family members, but I am leery about getting involved with something that has ties with Facebook. She is not interested in using other programs like Hangouts or Signal that I was suggesting. I was thinking about getting a cheap mobile phone and a SIM with no other contacts on it to use Whatsapp exclusively with her. Anybody here have any experiences with Whatsapp to rel
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This is an example of why real democracy is (Score:2)