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Zuckerberg Expresses Frustration Over Surveillance
- lyime 13y agoDoes this mean that Facebook messages/inbox is encrypted?
- final_approach 13y agoHardly. It most probably means Zuckerberg is kind of concerned of the growing pressure to the point where speaking up is smarter than obeying.
- tibbon 13y agoIs it just me, or does this seem to be a sideways admittance/accusation that the US Government has been essentially 'attacking' Facebook attempting to extract data outside the normal channels of requests from law enforcement? Either way, this needs to change. We're not on a slippery slope of losing privacy- we're going downhill like an avalanche.
- rst 13y agoIt's already pretty much known, from the Snowden papers, that the government is doing man-in-the-middle attacks against internet services including Facebook. Here's a story from today's news which discusses one such mode of attack, and names Facebook specifically: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/03/quantum/ http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/03/quantum/ (Come to think of it, since this is today's news, it's possible that Zuck is responding to it...)
- subb 13y agoI... don't understand. I'm not a facebook user, so, is it possible to use Facebook completely privately? Without anybody else than your friend seeing your information, not even third parties?
- namenotrequired 13y agoWell, it's always accessible by Facebook itself, and those they're legally obliged to pass it on to.
- slig 13y agoNo, it's not possible. At least, your name, profile picture and cover picture will be shown to everybody. It was possible to hide yourself from the search, but that doesn't work anymore. You can hide your friend list as well, but there're some tricks that one can use to find out who are your friends.
- louiscipher 13y agoI don't think I've read anything about FB lobbying for stricter PII laws. Until that happens, I'll write up this little "rant" as a lip service and nothing more.
- AndrewKemendo 13y agoI've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. This is why I am leaving government. I am about the same age as Zuck and have been working in government at many levels for about 12 years now and I work with people who have been working policy for over 40 years. The president couldn't care less what most of us think think...but because Zuck has shitloads of money and manages this massive platform his voice apparently matters when it comes to national policy over people who do it on a daily basis. Don't misread this as a hit on Zuckerberg, it's not at all, it's just illuminating who the government listens to. Nothing new of course, but it does hit home over and over.
- johnnyg 13y agoHow should they do it? Do you listen to everyone equally? Can it even be done?
- AndrewKemendo 13y agoI have no idea how they should do it. It's just clear that if you have money, and a lot of it, you have a voice in shaping the world. If you don't have money regardless of what position you are in, you don't have a voice (extreme popular outliers excluded).
- Zikes 13y agoI'm pretty sure listening to everyone equally is the definition of democracy.
- droopybuns 13y agoIf only we lived in a democracy rather than a constitutional republic.
- aaron-lebo 13y agoHey now, if you are going to be pedantic make sure you get your facts straight. If I'm remembering right, prior to James Madison's writings, there wasn't a real distinction between democracy and republic, besides the fact that democracy was Greek and republic was Latin. Madison in the Federalist Papers made the distinction between democracy and republic that are your talking about, but it is pretty arbitrary. Now you are right that we don't live in a direct democracy (though states have features), but we are still a democracy and a republic. Now that I am being pedantic someone will probably point out where I am in error, but I just felt like posting some information for whoever may find it useful. :)
- zachrose 13y ago> When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government. Does it really matter who they're protecting us from?
- 37prime 13y agoIt is somehow ironic for Mark Zuckerberg to be frustraed over Government Surveilance.
- nathanvanfleet 13y agoIt's a little bit weird how a few years ago all those powerful tech company heads were meeting with the President. Then finally it came out that they all had made deals directly with the NSA and colluded to give them access to user's data. And now all of these companies seem to be working very hard to reverse all of it. It's a good thing that they are, and they seem to be genuinely doing it. But it's still seems a bit odd. Zuckerberg talks about the government needing to be more transparent, but FB and the like haven't explained the details of the previous deal they made with the government. I imagine because they are still somehow gagged. I wonder how many drafts of this message went through FB lawyers.
- arebop 13y ago[citation needed] about those deals between Facebook and NSA.
- hnnewguy 13y agoThat citation might be tough. But what do you honestly believe? Personally, at this point, with all the Snowden revelations, it should be up to Facebook to prove to me that they aren't sharing information with the government.
- Zigurd 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
- arebop 13y agoThe slides (as usual for slides) are pretty ambiguous, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Initial_public_statements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#In... says that the companies and Facebook in particular deny cooperation with PRISM, and the only quote from media sources that sounds skeptical about that is from WaPo wonkblog [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/12/heres-everything-we-know-about-prism-to-date/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/12/h...] which says that one of the slides talks about combining data provided by companies (with warrants, NSLs, and other legal orders) with data collected by adversarial means. So, no, that link does not support the claim that Facebook cooperated with PRISM.
- rayiner 13y agoTech companies are in a very awkward situation with regards to surveillance. It's hard to argue that individuals have an "expectation of privacy" in their Facebook content, when their thousand closest friends at Facebook are mining that information to sell them advertising. Indeed, you have the opposite of an expectation of privacy: you expect that your information will not be private.[1] The business model built on harvesting user data to sell advertising is just fundamentally at odds with the scope of the 4th amendment's protection of privacy. [1] You may expect that the government won't look at it, but that's not what "private" means for the purposes of the 4th amendment. It doesn't just mean anything you don't want the government to see. To analogize, your house is private: you may invite selected guests in, but not your thousand closest friends at Facebook.
- dllthomas 13y agoWhat I share with my 1000 friends at Facebook may be different from what I share with my 1000 friends at Google, which might be different than what I share with my 1000 friends at Amazon, my friends at Verizon, and my friends at PG&E. Things that can be inferred by combining all of these may well be things that I would expect to be private. http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/TMIA.png http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/TMIA.png
- SilasX 13y agoThis is what I like to call the "slut" defense. "Ah, come on, don't give me that line, you were showing your stuff all around, flaunting it, putting it out there, and now you're claiming you didn't want me to use it? lol"
- rayiner 13y agoYour analogy involves an escalation, using someone's showing off as an excuse to violate their bodily integrity. That would be like if the government asserted you had no privacy interest in the contents of your hard drive, just because you posted some pictures of facebook. But what we're talking about is data collection where the government doesn't have anything you didn't already share with your thousand closest friends at Google. It's more like distributing a picture of yourself smoking weed among your school, then getting mad when your parents got a hold of a copy.
- noja 13y agoWe'll judge you by your actions, Mr Zuckerberg.
- aSp1de 13y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbOwdjSodeU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbOwdjSodeU
- droopybuns 13y agoNo call to action. No clear guidance on what exactly the bad things are. Typical facebook post. </joke> I wish Zuckerberg would have taken on Schneier's meme: Make bulk mass surveilance prohibitively expensive. Everyone can understand what's involved in making that happen.
- jvagner 13y agoCheck our defense budgets. They don't go down. The NSA has massive data farms that are not constrained by budgets. That's not exactly the problem. The more outlandish the plots on Scandal and House of Cards, and the funnier Jon Stewart gets to be, the more and more awful the truth revealed in the real news seems to be. We get the truth we're willing to accept... what else will come?
- droopybuns 13y agoI so totally agree. But what's the alternative? We all quit? Since Schneier's crypto reputation is not in question, I think it's reasonable to believe that there is a possible statelmate end state. If everyone goes all in on certificate transparency, HSTS, and Cert Pinning, engineers can at least make life miserable on the Surveliance Industrial complex for a little while.
- aaron-lebo 13y agoI'm sorry, coming from Zuck, this statement means very little to me. I guess I'm old school, but Zuck has shown disdain for the privacy of users in the past, FB actively tracks the movement of users across the net (likely without many realizing), and I'm under the impression that this culture that emphasizes sharing every fucking thing is more dangerous to people than the US government trying to get at data that they probably already have. Don't get me wrong, I don't like that the US government is doing this, but I don't trust FB at all. Nothing to see here folks. Just the old tug of war between governments and corporations for power, while the actual citizens get trampled.
- Zikes 13y agoI suppose doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is something, at least.
- nostromo 13y agoI'm more afraid of government than private industry. Facebook will never have a Gitmo. It'll never send someone to a torture camp in Egypt. It'll never invade a country. It'll never confiscate property. It'll never put someone on the no-fly list. It'll never harass you at the border. Yes, we should be openly critical of powerful corporations. But the downsides of misguided governance are much worse than even the most powerful corporations can muster. So, I don't believe it's fair to compare what Facebook does to warrantless government spying. And I'm glad Zuck is publicly taking on this issue.
- chongli 13y agoFacebook will never have a Gitmo. It'll never send someone to a torture camp in Egypt. It'll never invade a country. It'll never confiscate property. It'll never put someone on the no-fly list. It'll never harass you at the border. It may not do those things directly but who's to say it won't tip the government off about you? Tell them where you live and flag you for a disgruntled post or an idle threat. There's a lot Facebook could do to help the government crack down on dissidents.
- cottonseed 13y ago
- adityab 13y agoWhen our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government. Why? Any company that cares about 'security' and controls such a massive amount of personal data would know that governments do not always behave morally/legally. This excuse should not work; we the public should expect better. Yahoo did not use https. Facebook scans your IMs and tracks your website visits for ads. When do we reach the point when plausible ignorance of governmental overreach and the need to 'monetize' are no longer considered valid excuses for compaines to be lax with the data they hold about you? As an aside: as far as I can tell these are just crododile tears - if Zuckerberg truly cared, Facebook would back off from generating ad revenue off IM and would enable OTR.
- byoogle 13y ago> That’s why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure. We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people’s services. I have to call “bs” here. It took Facebook nine years – nine years! (2004–2013) – to turn HTTPS on by default (http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/11/19/facebook-https-t-shirt/ http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/11/19/facebook-https-t-...). Beforehand, anybody on your network could trivially hijack your Facebook session to gain access to your account (I made a video two years ago about how easy this attack was [and is] if you don’t know what I mean: http://youtu.be/g5mFbgxMHqQ?t=1m33s http://youtu.be/g5mFbgxMHqQ?t=1m33s).
- RyJones 13y agoOf course, FireSheep automated this attack in 2010. http://codebutler.com/firesheep/ http://codebutler.com/firesheep/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- panarky 13y agoPot, kettle, black[0] From Facebook's current privacy policy[1]: We allow anyone with your contact information to find you through the Facebook search bar at the top of most pages, as well as other tools we provide, such as contact importers - even if you have not shared your contact information with them on Facebook Random news items from last few years[2] Facebook Removes Crucial Privacy Setting for Users’ Names Facebook is improperly altering its privacy policy without proper user consent Using names, images, and content of Facebook users for advertising without consent Senator Al Franken has called on Facebook to reconsider expansion of its facial recognition activity Facebook’s Beacon program disclosed personal information without user consent Instagram announced several changes to the terms of service that will allow the company to use pictures in advertisements without notifying or compensating users Instagram proposed that the parents of minors implicitly consent to the use of their childrens' images for advertising purposes Facebook removed a privacy control that allowed users to hide themselves from strangers through Facebook’s search function 88% of Facebook Users Oppose Changes to Privacy Policy and Voting Rights Facebook has proposed changes to its policies that would (1) end user voting, (2) remove spam blocking, and (3) share FB user data with affiliates without user consent Consumer Groups Ask FTC to Investigate Facebook-Datalogix Data-Matching Arrangement Facebook is under a 20 year consent decree from the FTC that requires express consent from users before disclosing personal information [0] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pot%20Calling%20the%20Kettle%20Black&defid=5909637 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pot%20Calling... [1] https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info-on-fb https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info-on-fb [2] http://epic.org/privacy/facebook/ http://epic.org/privacy/facebook/
- Zigurd 13y agoFacebook was listed as one of the companies participating in PRISM, with a specific start date. None of the denials or other announcements made by any of the companies the NSA seemed pretty sure were collaborating addressed why they appeared on that list. Until there is a good explanation for why the NSA thinks they were collaborating, denials ring pretty hollow.
- julespitt 13y agoIt's not clear from the slides that the companies were "participating" at all. Further Snowden leaks showed that the NSA was cracking large internet companies' internal systems communications. PRISM doesn't necessarily need their cooperation at all.
- Zigurd 13y agoThen why list specific companies and dates? Either the companies on the PRISM list are willingly collaborating, or NSA bribed one or more employees, or NSA attacked their infrastructure. If it wasn't willing cooperation, then the PRISM companies have a security breach to solve. None of them have said whether they have such a breach or not.
- julespitt 13y agoRight, I was just pointing out the possibility of your latter two options. There was also the possibility that PRISM was just a database of formal, court-ordered information. I wish we had even more technical details.
- Zigurd 13y agoThat's no excuse. Someone in senior management has been bribed? You have a serious security breach unreported, undiagnosed? That's a whopping shareholder lawsuit coming at you if you don't hunt it down and terminate it.
- rjd 13y agoWell now he knows what its like when Facebook does the same thing.
- dictum 13y agoThe cynical nitpicker in me would like to express frustration over Facebook tracking both people who use it and people who don't when they visit websites that have Facebook widgets.
- bestdayever 13y agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. It's funny how things change.
- piggyback 13y agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
- sehr 13y agoI'm not saying he deserves the benefit of the doubt, but if we were all judged by our actions at age 19 everyone's credibility would be hurt.
- glitchdout 13y agoWhich is why NSA's surveillance and storage of our communications is problematic. Some 19 year old kid today may be president in the future. Should he have something stupid he said today hanging over his head when he's president?
- sehr 13y agoI'm not really arguing against that point
- glitchdout 13y agoI'm not arguing either. Just adding to your point.
- chrisdone 13y agoWhen I was his age and trying to show off, I probably would've said the same kind of thing, if I were in the right mood. I don't know or care whether Zuckerberg has any integrity (I don't use his service), but do people grow up and change.
- puppetmaster3 13y agoHe supports Feinstein AFAIK. So..
- higherpurpose 13y agoEnough with these PR stunts, Mark. Put your money where your mouth is. Put your company where your mouth is. Add end to end encryption for your users chats, and encrypt everything as much as possible, to the highest security standards, and end-to-end wherever possible (like for FB chat and Whatsapp, where you could use the TextSecure ratchet). Until then, all of your "calls for privacy" are not worth the digital paper they are being written on.
- richardc12345 13y agoI cannot help but think Facebook, Google and such companies business model of monetizing logs of people's usage of the internet is used by governments to legitimise their spying. The argument would be, if it is okay for big business to record all activity and data mine it for profit then it is okay for governments to record all activity and data mine it to help govern the people.
- cottonseed 13y ago> The internet works because most people and companies [spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure.] By any metric of privacy, security or safety, I don't see how anyone could claim the internet works. Also, no amount of encryption or 2-factor authentication could turn Facebook into a part of the internet "I want to build." Which is why I deleted my Facebook account and got off (nearly all) Google services. I vote with my feet, and what I spend my time building.
- __mp 13y agoAs if Facebook was better with collecting data. This reminds me of the new Facebook Android app which I have refused to install so far: http://i.imgur.com/tDX8yrB.png http://i.imgur.com/tDX8yrB.png
- godgod 13y agoAs a person who hates facebook and their obvious cooperation with the NSA, let me just say #FUCKZUCK. He's gotten rich off playing ball with the surveillance state. He plays dumb but is all to aware that his company is being used to spy facebook users. Facebook CEO Admits To Calling Users 'Dumb Fucks'
- gremlinsinc 13y agoTo those naysaying Mark for selling out our privacy--sure he does that, for profit--but I'd rather a company sell my shopping and searching habits to another company than the government take something I say on Facebook out of context and put me on the no-fly list, or worse an enemy combatant---the more power the NSA has the further towards Nazi Germany and Gespacho / Secret police territory we go...so good for you mark--you could do a LOT more to ensure our privacy, and maybe you will -- hopefully this isn't just 'posturing' but as he's a 30 something techy geek who probably hangs out on hackernews as much as the rest of us, he may actually be sincere about it.