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To be fair, at least at FB (I can't speak to Google or Apple or Amazon): 1. Accessing someone's data when it's not mission critical to your work means you're f

by esman1 9y ago

To be fair, at least at FB (I can't speak to Google or Apple or Amazon): 1. Accessing someone's data when it's not mission critical to your work means you're fired on the spot. This is drilled into new engineers over and over. 2. Privacy-related issues are escalated to the highest severity immediately (on par with data centers being down, etc.). I think the question in this whole debate is where you draw the line for this kind of issue, and what's an issue and what's a feature.

mehrdadn 9y ago
> Accessing someone's data when it's not mission critical to your work means you're fired on the spot. This is drilled into new engineers over and over. This means they are capable of doing it and are merely punished afterwards, right? Not to mention that I would imagine getting fired in exchange for viewing private data could be quite a worthwhile 'transaction' for some people in some cases.
tmuir 9y ago
You know what makes me think you're a bot? I literally laid out the case as to why arguing this point through the lens of disciplined human beings who we have no better alternative than to blindly trust actually helps build a map toward the attack surface instead of mitigating the area of the surface in the first place. And you replied to me with copied and pasted points you've made else where in this very thread. You've just eliminated all of the things bad actors could have had to blindly guess at in ignorance. Its like you come along and tell a crowd that automobiles are complex enough to be indistinguishable from magic. Then I take apart an internal combustion engine in front of this crowd. And as I do so, I explain to you, and everyone else, the chemical, physical, thermodynamic, magnetic, and electrical principles that allow this incredibly complex system of individual components to work in concert with each other, using each piece as the appropriate visual aid, delivering every single concept with relatable analogies and stories. And then after I've finished, you say "To be fair, automobiles are complex machines indistinguishable from magic."

by esman1 9y ago

mehrdadn 9y ago

> Accessing someone's data when it's not mission critical to your work means you're fired on the spot. This is drilled into new engineers over and over. This means they are capable of doing it and are merely punished afterwards, right? Not to mention that I would imagine getting fired in exchange for viewing private data could be quite a worthwhile 'transaction' for some people in some cases.

tmuir 9y ago

You know what makes me think you're a bot? I literally laid out the case as to why arguing this point through the lens of disciplined human beings who we have no better alternative than to blindly trust actually helps build a map toward the attack surface instead of mitigating the area of the surface in the first place. And you replied to me with copied and pasted points you've made else where in this very thread. You've just eliminated all of the things bad actors could have had to blindly guess at in ignorance. Its like you come along and tell a crowd that automobiles are complex enough to be indistinguishable from magic. Then I take apart an internal combustion engine in front of this crowd. And as I do so, I explain to you, and everyone else, the chemical, physical, thermodynamic, magnetic, and electrical principles that allow this incredibly complex system of individual components to work in concert with each other, using each piece as the appropriate visual aid, delivering every single concept with relatable analogies and stories. And then after I've finished, you say "To be fair, automobiles are complex machines indistinguishable from magic."