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Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation
- NN88 8y agoIS THIS WHY THE DATA SERVICE WAS DOWN ALL DAY? https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18264092/facebook-instagram-down-partially-post-messages-profile-loading https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18264092/facebook-instagr...
- drugme 8y agoNot directly. But employee burnout (and the nascent mass exodus of top talent we'll inevitably be hearing about shortly) may very well be.
- btmiller 8y agoPerhaps related: the frequency of FB Production Engineer recruiters reaching out to me has increased in the last couple months. I simply can't sell myself to an immoral organization where, I’m afraid, any concerns of mine would be drowned out, ignored, or silenced by the incumbent powers at Facebook that are dead set on their current path. There might be good engineers at Facebook trying desperately to change the culture, but I encourage others to resist fighting the (in my view futile) good fight.
- jacquesm 8y ago> I simply can't sell myself to an immoral organization where, I’m afraid, any concerns of mine would be drowned out, ignored, or silenced by the incumbent powers at Facebook that are dead set on their current path. Facebook is doing so many shady things that you would likely be able to verify that your fear would be proven correct, but many other companies do shady stuff too and you'd be none the wiser simply because they don't do enough of it to trip your alarm. The amount of stuff going on that can't stand the light of day is usually roughly proportional to company size, or, if the management is at all enlightened non-existent because they instruct their employees to not just follow the law but to do what is right. That's pretty rare though.
- vonmoltke 8y ago> Perhaps related: the frequency of FB Production Engineer recruiters reaching out to me has increased in the last couple months. As a further anecdote, I just had a FB recruiter contact me about an ML position three months after they rejected me and I told them never to contact me again.
- pageald 8y agoMy first thought after reading the headline was that they had been placed under some kind of litigation hold and had to immediately back up all of their data on US customers to comply. Just baseless speculation; I dont work for Facebook or have an inside source.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoThere has been a tremendous amount of grassroots lobbying, fundraising, and private investigation in New York over the past two years with respect to Facebook. It’s a serious area I feel Silicon Valley has abdicated its moral obligation to stand up to its own. Hoping we can develop the evidence that comes out of this case into criminal charges for individual engineers and senior officers.
- darawk 8y agoCriminal charges for what exactly? They shared their user data with other companies. Since when is that criminal?
- jacquesm 8y ago5th of May last year in many places and in every other place in the world where you manage to convince a judge that it is. It's easier when there are explicit laws on the books.
- darawk 8y agoWhich laws are those?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kenrose 8y agoI think he’s referring to GDPR.
- pilsetnieks 8y agoGDPR was 25th of May, and it's still not a criminal law.
- jparse 8y agoDid you read the article? Here is the excerpt: > Privacy advocates said the partnerships seemed to violate a 2011 consent agreement between Facebook and the F.T.C., stemming from allegations that the company had shared data in ways that deceived consumers. The deals also appeared to contradict statements by Mark Zuckerberg and other executives that Facebook had clamped down several years ago on sharing the data of users’ friends with outside developers.
- Despegar 8y agoIt's going to be great seeing all the years of HN commenters complaining that no bankers went to jail, insist that it's bad policy for software engineers to be held criminally liable.
- dvtrn 8y agoMeanwhile I hope this thread stays at the top of HN for the day to see how the thread summary reads over at n-gate
- Trill-I-Am 8y agon-gate?
- rrdharan 8y agohttp://n-gate.com/hackernews/ http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ Enjoy!
- Jach 8y agoDon't violate the prime directive.
- n1231231231234 8y agofor me, it's stuck on the security check - or is this the joke?
- 1000units 8y agoI think it only does that when linked from this website.
- n1231231231234 8y agoah, okay, it works now. I wondered about a broken captcha being the joke after seeing their about page: http://n-gate.com/about/ http://n-gate.com/about/
- mic47 8y agoOk, so those partnerships were basically allowing Samsung and others to build Facebook app on their phones (i.e. allowing alternative client). Would this means that it will be criminal to allow companies to create alternative clients? That is really interesting development.
- jxdxbx 8y agoIndividually negotiated confidential deals are not the same as open APIs and protocols which is where alternative clients normally come into play. And the “alternative client” stuff doesn’t even apply to Amazon, Bing etc
- makomk 8y agoIronically, the whole point of having individual deals rather than an API open to everyone seems to have been ensuring the companies didn't do anything dodgy with people's data. Then the New York Times spun Facebook's approval process as them giving those companies special access to users' data, even when that data never left the end user devices, and now this has apparently lead to a criminal investigation.
- untog 8y ago> even when that data never left the end user devices Do we know that to be true? In any case, I'm pretty sure they don't bring criminal cases like this frivolously. There's obviously something here.
- makomk 8y agoYou see the scary descriptions and illustrations of how much information was shared with the Blackberry Hub app in the previous New York Times article about this at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...? Well, their reporters got that information by sniffing the network traffic from the app. They knew exactly where the data was going, and clearly they didn't see it going to Blackberry's servers or that'd be right in paragraph one of the article.
- BucketSort 8y agoCreate a culture that is so fixated on wealth above all else and this is what happens. When everyone around you is judging you based on what you have and on the successes you've achieved, what motivation does one have to behave morally? God died and the dollar took its place. I know we will one day look back on this in complete confusion as to how we just watched things so clearly destructive destabilize the country. It's always hard to understand how these things happen when looking at history without being in the contemporary madness of the times.
- gotduped 8y ago> God died and the dollar took its place 'God died' is such bull. The worst people in the world do what they do in his name.
- kweinber 8y agoIt is possible to act morally without God as motivation. God was a strong motivator in the Dark Ages- did people act more morally then? It is possible to be a capitalist and act morally. Rates of crime are at some of the lowest levels of all human history now.... is that a sign of immorality? Morality is about making responsible choices.... often tough ones. Abdicating responsibility to a deity or a monetary system is the opposite of what is needed for morally responsible decision making.
- sabujp 8y agoit's possible to be a "moral" capitalist but not without strong laws and punishments. There are countless # of instances where corporations have gotten away with either indirectly or directly knowingly doing harm.
- tabs_masterrace 8y ago> destructive destabilize the country I don't think Facebook is destabilizing the country. In fact I don't think anything bad at all is happening. Like please explain to me your negative repercussions from Facebook sharing some of their data with Amazon. How did that undermine the country? People have gotten so hysterical about this topic, it's a madness, and that is what's destabilizing the country IMHO. Like OP is calling to put some of the most brilliant minds in Silicon Valley in jail, which is ridiculous! But if anything like this should happen, I think you gonna see FAANG & Co seriously consider rebasing outside U.S. (well maybe not G)
- n8henry 8y agoOh wow, this is going to be huge.
- badfrog 8y agoNo indication of what the charges are? The closest thing in the article is: > the partnerships seemed to violate a 2011 consent agreement between Facebook and the F.T.C which doesn't seem like it would be criminal? Does the US actually have criminal laws regarding selling data? Any educated guesses on what's actually going on?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- otterley 8y agoAttorney here! Violation of a consent decree can result in criminal contempt-of-court charges. See 18 U.S.C. section 401 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/401 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/401). See also United States v. Schine, 125 F. Supp. 734 (W.D.N.Y. 1954).
- badfrog 8y agoInteresting, thanks! Who at the company could reasonably be jailed for such a thing?
- mancerayder 8y agoWhat do criminal charges risk for a company? I guess fines? How might this affect an FCC or breakup conversation?
- realodb 8y agoI would entertain a wire fraud argument.
- shhehebehdh 8y agoAt this point it is just an investigation. Nobody has been charged with anything. They have to find a law Facebook has broken first, and presumably establish enough evidence that they expect to succeed at a trial.
- badfrog 8y agoDoesn't a grand jury meet after charges have been filed? Or is federal different than state in that respect?
- iscrewyou 8y agoI thought grand jury meets before charges are filed so they can authorize access to documentation and such things?
- solomatov 8y agoIANAL, but grand juries do a lot of work before the charges are filled. For example, they check whether there's a probable cause for a search warrant.
- mehrdadn 8y agoDo you know how grand juries are selected? I find it weird that I've been selected for a trial jury a bunch of times but never a grand jury.
- solomatov 8y agoAFAIK, they are selected the same way as trial jury. I think the main problem is that there's less need for grand juries since they process information much more quickly than trial juries.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoGet a bigger hat, it's right there in the name.
- deleted 8y ago
- mudil 8y agoWholesale surveillance of individuals by internet companies has to stop. And that includes Google.
- luckycharms810 8y agoIt has always been the advertisers that are asking for the sort of tooling that can be taken advantage of during the election cycle. If you don’t think Russia should be able to manipulate the black voting populace then maybe it’s worth thinking about whether Unilever should be able to specifically target and market axe body spray in the same fashion. The tools only exist because advertisers are paying for them. Blaming Facebook is akin to being mad at a Martin Shkreli, both are playing within the rules of a bad system.
- mudil 8y agoOh, poor FB and Google! They are playing by rules of a bad system! Cmon, they are surveilling billions of people, selling, sharing, and using our data en mass. They monopolized internet, search and digital advertising. And I need to sympathetic to their situation? Since when is Google is the owner of the Internet?
- nradov 8y agoMartin Shkreli didn't play within the rules, which is why he's in prison today.
- jjulius 8y ago>Blaming Facebook is akin to being mad at a Martin Shkreli, both are playing within the rules of a bad system. That's such a poor excuse. Lead by example.
- 3327 8y agoFacebook is a criminal corp. And indeed when you are selling data to clients that resell or do with the data as they please (including mining them) they should be under criminal investigation. Thank God the FBI exists and counting for the day that criminal charges are brought against executives who broke the law.
- evolvedcleaning 8y agoConsidering they are accused of broad criminal activity, your statement should be considered a valid expression of public opinion on the matter, and should not be downvoted.
- vonmoltke 8y agoFirst, the post is sensationalist populism that only serves to pull the conversation down and cause shouting matches. Second, Facebook is not currently "accused of broad criminal activity". They are being investigated for breach of a consent decree, which may lead to criminal charges, which in turn may be broad.
- evolvedcleaning 8y agoExcuse me for being short, but common sense analysis by a technically inclined person results in the nearly undeniable conclusion that fb exceeded reasonable monopolistic boundaries long ago, and presumed itself to be, under Zuck’s leadership, to be so important as to be responsible, e.g. for “maintaining integrity of elections”. It’s no exaggeration that he fancies himself the leader of a sovereign nation, backed by an army of lawyers and special interest connections private and government. In public testimony, imo Zuck came across as a smug mob boss intent on accumulating power without bound. The recent pivoting, conspiracy theory rumors that shall remain nameless accusing Zuck of rogue cia cooperation, news releases about criminal shenanigans surrounding data sharing coinciding with the excessive global downtime yesterday, and now his consligere departing, all look suspicious. At the least, it’s an obvious monopoly controlling a significant cultural aspect of a global social graph. Now they are moving to undo the messaging unification. Last week they wanted gossipers to have more privacy so they can gossip and get away with it better. I admit to being biased, but given my direct research on how data moves around the Facebook world whether a member or not, whether you have blacklisted any fb domains using little snitch etc, disable all remote js, doesn’t matter, they keep tabs on you somehow. they are essentially their own intelligence community with unchecked power and reach The accusation from Voldemort is they had or have secret deals with telcom etc which if true is beyond insidious. Ianal but common sense wise if that’s true, they should be broken up and not simply by undoing messaging unification.
- thinkcomp 8y agoSee also, for the next likely criminal investigation: http://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/facebook.html http://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/facebook.html
- rhizome 8y agoThat page reads like a mishmash. Fake sites is it? "Plainsite not so plain," it would be helpful to provide some kind of flashlight.
- minimaxir 8y agoFB Response: https://twitter.com/fbnewsroom/status/1105993038671691776?s=21 https://twitter.com/fbnewsroom/status/1105993038671691776?s=... > It's already been reported that there are ongoing federal investigations, incl. by the Dept of Justice. As we’ve said, we're cooperating w/ investigators and take those probes seriously. We've provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged that we'll continue to do so
- mehrdadn 8y agoDoes anyone ever say they're not cooperating with investigators?
- ceejayoz 8y agoRoger Stone?
- mehrdadn 8y agoOkay let me amend that, does anyone except Roger Stone do that? :-) Like I obviously don't mean this 100% literally (obviously someone does this somewhere), but I'm trying to ask whether the statement really carries any weight not.
- ceejayoz 8y agoNah, snark aside, you're right. "We're cooperating with the investigation" is largely PR speak for "we're doing the absolute minimum that's legally required of us, and we're doing that as slowly as possible".
- staticautomatic 8y agoNo. When they don't cooperate they say something bullshit like "We've cooperated as much as possible" or "We're going to let the investigators do their work."
- vkou 8y agoElon Musk tends to continue posting foot-in-mouth tweets, when he's under investigation.
- poormystic 8y agoI suppose we’ll someday hear that many of the companies who got people’s data have themselves been hacked, and that privacy is ended for many people. Surely Facebook must have some responsibility in such cases. It can never be too late to benefit from proactive protection of one’s own data; isn’t that why people have been leaving Facebook?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bitxbit 8y agoWhen are all the revelations going to end? It's been every few months for the past five years.
- dd36 8y agoThey’re a regular Wells Fargo.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThen they'll be perfectly fine in the long run. Maybe Warren Buffett can even get in on some shares at a discount.
- dd36 8y agoSeems likely. Probably a large, meaningless fine.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoI was personally involved in a leadership role in one of these key strategic deals while at a major handset maker. To be clear, we built the 'Facebook experience' for our device because only we really could. During this era, APIs were a disaster of a mess, moreover, the special API that made the device so special was not available to the public. Ironically it was our internal APIs that were making the special sauce! For this purpose, Facebook provided users of the app we designed access to their own profiles. Obviously, this is a fairly wide API and it had to be made available specially for users of our app. At no time did we ever have access to FB users private information. At no time did anyone even remotely suggest anything inappropriate or nefarious. There were simply no moral or legal discussions on this front because it was moot. The situation, net, was akin to Facebook having hired a 3rd party to design an app for them, giving that app the internal FB API necessary to function, and then distributing the app. This isn't an issue of 'times have changed' or 'looking back we'd have done something different' rather - I can affirm that there was simply no bad acting, no breach of individuals accounts, and no undue risk to individuals accounts. Obviously this situation is very specific, and that conditions will have varied. If FB was truly giving Bing special access without people's consent - this is a big problem. The Cambridge issue - well - this is a tricky one because Cambridge merely took advantage of the API's the entire world had access to. There was little if any discussion of the inherent problems with those APIs, and when it looked like maybe they were being abused, Facebook did the right thing and closed them. They even went ahead and investigated Cambridge to ensure the data was gone, and Cambridge presented them with evidence that it had been deleted. I think in this case Facebook was a responsible actor. Clearly there are more situations to consider, but we should be thoughtful in terms of how we approach newly released information and not get caught up with the mob. Personally, I loathe the koolaid mob that built Facebook up, but I'm equally loathe the hate mob wanting to take them down.
- artificial 8y agoAs far as the responsibility goes I’ll raise you a Zygna, and especially the Obama campaign which was lauded by the media and facilitated by the platform because after they noticed the abuse “they’re on the same side”. I doubt this would be such a pernicious issue if another candidate won.
- 8y ago
- calimac 8y agoThe idiocy of the echo chamber is entertaining. Facebook has been milking data piracy, harvesting and monetizing personal data for a decade. They thought nobody would ever challenge them.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoFacebook isn't doing anything worse than what Acxiom and other data brokers have been doing for decades. None of it is criminal without any general purpose data protection laws. This is just pitchfork populism.
- anonymfus 8y agoHow do you know it?
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoUnless Facebook is mishandling HIPAA data they can do no wrong in the US.
- dd36 8y agoOr they sign a consent decree. Or their customer agreements and disclosures say they don’t do something that they do.
- EB66 8y agoThat's not true. With the 2011 FTC consent agreement, there is plenty that Facebook can do with customer data that will land them on the wrong side of the law. Investigating and preventing unfair or deceptive acts/practices affecting commerce is a big part of what the FTC does: https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca....
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- LinuxBender 8y agoI used to think that as well. I've been monitoring the fallout of several labs that were recently hacked and basically mismanaged patient data for millions of people, most of whom have no idea their data was compromised. I have yet to see any of the labs punished. The most recent that I know of was LabCorp.
- xtat 8y agoprediction: record fines coming
- 3xblah 8y ago"It is not clear when the grand jury inquiry, overseen by prosecutors with the United States attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York, began or exactly what it is focusing on." What is NYT source for this story? A leak about the existence of an investigation? NYT journalist saw entries for grand jury subpoenas on PACER? How do they know the crime has to do with data deals? We must wait until complaint is filed before anyone can disclose the statute allegedly violated, correct?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago“according to two people who were familiar with the requests and who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential legal matters.” Yes, there is a lot (more) we would like to know. But this is as good a time as ever to do a little experiment regarding the practice of anonymous sources: at some point, we are likely to learn more about this investigation. Then, you can check if the information we have now was correct. Or, as the common accusation goes, it was a wholesale fabrication by the Times.
- 3xblah 8y agoThank you. Sadly, I missed that line. It sounds like a leak from within Facebook or another tech company on the receiving end of one of these requests. I always thought grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret. Maybe this explains the anonymity. I guess it is not unusual for the fact of the existence of proceedings to leak and for media to speculate? Does this have potential to negatively affect the outcome?
- ovi256 8y ago>NYT source for this story Most probably a US DA turning the screws on Facebook.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoAre you suggesting NYT is lying...? I mean, why they'd lie about it? Prosecutors use the media routinely to push their POV so it's not that strange... Not revealing sources is SOP
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 8bitsrule 8y agoIANAL. But this: "reports last June and December that Facebook had given business partners — including makers of smartphones, tablets and other devices — deep access to users’ personal information, letting some companies effectively override users’ privacy settings." suggests breach-of-contract. Just by creating those privacy settings, the company is 'saying' to (promising) the customer who elects to use them that it will protect that information. That's an (implied) contract. Subsequently allowing anyone else to access that information is a breach. It'd be interesting to see FB argue in court that breaking promises was okay as a form of restitution for the services they provide.
- sixtram 8y agoIf it's for one user then it's a breach of contract, if you do that for 10 million, that's a deliberate act of breaching all contracts and that is usually criminal. scale matters on these issues as well. and if you are doing it as a big utility company (e.g. banks) then you are free to go :)
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThe bank I've long used is constantly reminding me that it shares data with its 'affiliates'. So I give it very little data to share.
- thefucnjosh 8y agoThis sounds like an absurdity, hiding your information from your bank?
- coding123 8y agoFake address is a good start... Like a PO box you own. Banks are the worst offenders in sharing data with... Data brokers.
- chris_engel 8y ago
- howiroll 8y agoFB seems to be the new Microsoft
- mtgx 8y agoThe fact that FB and all of its services were down at the same time can't really be a coincidence, can it? Is Facebook trying to delete incriminating evidence? It wouldn't surprise me one bit if they did that. I hope the prosecutors are smart enough to look for evidence of this, even though I'm sure FB's experts will try to leave as few traces as possible.
- subfay 8y agoOT: While I like how FB is recently struggling, I have to say that their open source contributions and the teams working on those are by far the best in this industry. I hope they keep up doing this great work despite all their problems.
- cat199 8y agoby far? redhat, ibm, (linux, java, etc) for starters...
- dralley 8y agoIntel (Linux, Mesa), Microsoft (VS Code, .Net core, Python, Language Server Protocol)
- Dahoon 8y agoLooking at code in Linux contributed by Googlers I don't see how what Facebook has made is better "by far". In my opinion it isn't better at all but that's just me.
- dustinmoris 8y ago> F.T.C. officials, who spent the past year investigating whether Facebook violated the 2011 agreement, are now weighing the sharing deals as they negotiate a possible multibillion-dollar fine. That would be the largest such penalty ever imposed by the trade regulator. A multibillion dollar fine? That's great, but even greater would be to put Facebook's exces behind bars. A CEO shouldn't walk away with a stuffed bank account after years of criminal offences, violating the privacy of millions of people all around the world and then not take any personal responsibility for it in front of our jurisdiction. The fine is attributed to Facebook, but there also needs to be a heft penalty for the people who ran Facebook and that is the executive team. Jail terms must be given. In the long term this will set an important precedent and detract possible future offenders!
- creaghpatr 8y agoWhich Facebook exec(s) would you put behind bars and for how long?
- Phlarp 8y agoZuck. 3-5 years at club fed.
- hodder 8y agoCharged with what specifically under what precedent? The USA is (supposedly) a nation of law. If Zuck broke an existing law with precedent for those kind of terms then that would make sense. If you are simply angry at legislators for not protecting you with adequate law, your issue is not with Zuck. You are simply angry at him. If you simply want him "made an example of", I hope you think of the repercussions to legal framework of the nation.
- drjesusphd 8y agoFacebook is an unprecedented company with unprecedented access to users' private information that committed an unprecedented breach of contract. There's no reason why a judge should rely on precedent.
- _underfl0w_ 8y agoDid anybody else catch this? > Apple was able to hide from Facebook users all indicators that its devices were even asking for data. I've seen a lot of discourse here seem to favor Apple over the big "G" but... this seems pretty shady. Anyone else know anything about this practice or what specifically they might've been referring to?
- vesinisa 8y agoApple fights the privacy battles on its users behalf only where it sees a PR benefit, like the high publicity FBI's iPhone encryption dispute a few years ago.
- flattone 8y agowprq: So which phone does a concerned person buy?
- gibspaulding 8y agoAn old android phone that supports Lineage OS with no G-Apps. You've still got a closed baseband and random hardware blobs, but I'd say it is the best option at the moment.
- dwighttk 8y agoiOS device with iOS 11 or newer (current devices are on iOS 12)... or don't log into Facebook on an older device. This isn't Apple cynically hiding selling your data behind your back. Back when they had Facebook integrated it was so that you could share stuff easier with your friends. Yes it was a security risk because of how Facebook used the information. That is part of the reason Apple removed the integration.
- rhn_mk1 8y ago> This isn't Apple cynically hiding selling your data behind your back. It's just both a grave security mistake and a breach of trust to treat Facebook preferentially without letting the user know. To me, it's indistinguishable from cynically handing over the user to Facebook.