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FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/aud

by esman1 9y ago

FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/audited/monitored (this includes DB reads from code, admin tools, etc.), but to access any data you have to explicitly request permission for that specific data.

mehrdadn 9y ago
> FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/audited/monitored (this includes DB reads from code, admin tools, etc.), but to access any data you have to explicitly request permission for that specific data. Really? So are stories like [1] complete lies? Or does someone inside just blindly grant these "explicitly requested permissions"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675503
- esman1 9y ago
  You request access, and justify it with something like "I need it to debug issue #123". Someone manually oks/disallows it, and there's asynchronous reviews of these requests to double check. My guess is the intern lied about what they're using it for. How else would you suggest to do privacy checks like these?
  - mehrdadn 9y ago
    > You request access, and justify it with something like "I need it to debug issue #123". Someone manually oks/disallows it, and there's asynchronous reviews of these requests to double check. My guess is the intern lied about what they're using it for. OK so an insider can just lie and access whatever they want. Heck, they can even tell the truth! Just find a bug that's exhibited in a particular profile and use that as an excuse to look at the profile. > How else would you suggest to do privacy checks like these? Whatever Google does. I don't know the details. But, for starters, my understanding is that their interns generally can't do what you just described, so fixing that would be one obvious step forward.
    - pbalau 9y ago
      So, you don't know how google handles this, but you are suggesting everybody should do what google does. Are you trolling?
      - tmuir 9y ago
        He is not trolling. His core point is that there is no sufficient amount of training, or expertise, or monitoring, or punishment, or trying harder the 17th time you've been caught. If you are leaving the decision up to enough/too many humans, then you are by definition providing inferior security. The real education from this story is far deeper than just Facebook. It is that Facebook employees, and Google employees, and all humans in general are susceptible to this very same "kompromat" concept, and are all susceptible to various forms of influence to greater degrees than our arrogance allows us to admit. Human beings are attack vectors. Human beings are too self centered to do much about this in any meaningful sense. They can laugh the very idea away too easily.
        spc476 9y ago
        Reminds me of an apocryphal story (can't find a reference but it appears to be reasonable): FCC was investigating the sale of illegal tv satellite descrambers when they confiscated a unit. Upon investigation, it was found to have been manufactured by IBM! Further investigation revealed it was manufactured at a secure IBM facility used for top-secret ("need-to-know", etc.) type projects. The manager responsible had split the work up such that no single employee there knew what they were building (because they didn't need to know---they just knew enough to do their bit). I know it's not the same, but this reminds me of that story.
        mehrdadn 9y ago
        [Edit: sorry, never mind. Thanks for the story!]
        spc476 9y ago
  - yulaow 9y ago
    Would not be better to have a tool which automatically creates a/some profile/s similar to that/those the dev needs for debug purposes BUT filling it with fake data? So the bug is reproducible but the users data of them is not accessible to the dev
    - esman1 9y ago
      There's a tool for that, and it's certainly the preferred way to debug. Along with all the telemetry you get, for the vast majority of cases you don't need to touch anyone's data.

by esman1 9y ago

mehrdadn 9y ago

> FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/audited/monitored (this includes DB reads from code, admin tools, etc.), but to access any data you have to explicitly request permission for that specific data. Really? So are stories like [1] complete lies? Or does someone inside just blindly grant these "explicitly requested permissions"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675503

esman1 9y ago
You request access, and justify it with something like "I need it to debug issue #123". Someone manually oks/disallows it, and there's asynchronous reviews of these requests to double check. My guess is the intern lied about what they're using it for. How else would you suggest to do privacy checks like these?
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  > You request access, and justify it with something like "I need it to debug issue #123". Someone manually oks/disallows it, and there's asynchronous reviews of these requests to double check. My guess is the intern lied about what they're using it for. OK so an insider can just lie and access whatever they want. Heck, they can even tell the truth! Just find a bug that's exhibited in a particular profile and use that as an excuse to look at the profile. > How else would you suggest to do privacy checks like these? Whatever Google does. I don't know the details. But, for starters, my understanding is that their interns generally can't do what you just described, so fixing that would be one obvious step forward.
  - pbalau 9y ago
    So, you don't know how google handles this, but you are suggesting everybody should do what google does. Are you trolling?
    - tmuir 9y ago
      He is not trolling. His core point is that there is no sufficient amount of training, or expertise, or monitoring, or punishment, or trying harder the 17th time you've been caught. If you are leaving the decision up to enough/too many humans, then you are by definition providing inferior security. The real education from this story is far deeper than just Facebook. It is that Facebook employees, and Google employees, and all humans in general are susceptible to this very same "kompromat" concept, and are all susceptible to various forms of influence to greater degrees than our arrogance allows us to admit. Human beings are attack vectors. Human beings are too self centered to do much about this in any meaningful sense. They can laugh the very idea away too easily.
      - spc476 9y ago
        Reminds me of an apocryphal story (can't find a reference but it appears to be reasonable): FCC was investigating the sale of illegal tv satellite descrambers when they confiscated a unit. Upon investigation, it was found to have been manufactured by IBM! Further investigation revealed it was manufactured at a secure IBM facility used for top-secret ("need-to-know", etc.) type projects. The manager responsible had split the work up such that no single employee there knew what they were building (because they didn't need to know---they just knew enough to do their bit). I know it's not the same, but this reminds me of that story.
        mehrdadn 9y ago
        [Edit: sorry, never mind. Thanks for the story!]
        spc476 9y ago
- yulaow 9y ago
  Would not be better to have a tool which automatically creates a/some profile/s similar to that/those the dev needs for debug purposes BUT filling it with fake data? So the bug is reproducible but the users data of them is not accessible to the dev
  - esman1 9y ago
    There's a tool for that, and it's certainly the preferred way to debug. Along with all the telemetry you get, for the vast majority of cases you don't need to touch anyone's data.