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ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

arstechnica.com

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Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#41

Post by bogomipz »

nostrademons wrote: post #27
CoryG89 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies feel the need to sell our data because they are offered tons of money for it by other companies such as Geofeedia. I agree that the blame does not rest on Geofeedia alone, but they aren't innocent either. I don't know a good solution to this issue other than making it illegal to buy or sell information about users of public corporations' products.

The bigger issue is "why is it that companies can make more money selling personal data about consumers than selling products to consumers?" If companies had a viable business model that involved ordinary consumers paying money for services rendered, then their responsibility would be to the people paying them money, i.e. the consumer. This is a really complicated question, and probably results from a combination of:…

You made a lot of great points. In regards to:

"3.) Consumers having a poor understanding of the long-term consequences of putting data out there, and what it can be used for"

This is so true and unfortunately there are few resources for helping people understand the implication and consequences. I think at the very least we should be educating young people, perhaps in school.

There's a decent documentary that came out a few years ago called "Terms and Conditions May Apply", its an independent release and so lacks some polish in places but I think its worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPw_hx7OME

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#42

Post by cyphar »

geomark wrote: post #38
int_19h wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that police etc should not behave in such a way that many people immediately assume that an encounter would likely be antagonistic. Basically, if you're afraid to go ask a police officer for help (which, apparently, is fairly common among black people in US, for example), then something is very wrong about police, and needs to be fixed.

It's worse than that. Some prominent lawyers advise that everyone should never talk to the police.

Which is very good advice, but it's because of the fact that testimony given to a police officer can only ever be used against you (it's hearsay otherwise). Not to mention that if someone slips up and accidentally tells a lie in the middle of a testimony, that instills doubt in the entire testimony ("I didn't kill her, I've never killed anyone, I've never even used a gun, I wasn't in the area that night" sounds fine until the last part if it turns out you were in that suburb that night).

Basically, to a lawyer a client talking to the police is giving the prosecution ammunition. Not to mention that nobody (not even the supreme court) can claim to know every federal law that applies to a person at a particular time (there was a quote for that but I can't find it on my phone right now).

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#43

Post by cyphar »

throw2016 wrote: post #13
Pxtl wrote: post #5

If the data is public, why is it a problem? If they're sending private info to cops, that's different, but a reasonable person expects all public info to be visible to the last person you want to see it. Theyre just feeding the customers the same data users can see in a more condensed form aren't they?

This conflation is made too often. I think the problem with the assumption that if someone made something public willingly they don't care is if people knew they are under surveillance they may not speak their mind, or speak at all. If people who use the internet expect all their activities to be logged and mined for patterns that can potentially be used against them, they may behave very differently. Since we all ac…

> If people who use the internet expect all their activities to be logged and mined for patterns that can potentially be used against them, they may behave very differently.

Unfortunately you see this already. Though usually people are worried about adversaries taking screenshots of conversations out of context and then painting them in a negative light, not the government doing that. But ultimately it's the same issue, there's a chilling effect on speech which is caused by the overwhelming fear of mass surveillance.

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#44

Post by imh »

iamdave wrote: post #37
imh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Second, it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a benevolent actor. I totally disagree. Care to expand on that?

Can I ask why you disagree?

Sure. I think that law enforcement is necessarily there to keep us from doing things. That is enough for me to think it's not necessarily the same as benevolence. At the risk of flying my ultra-nerd flag, it's like the lawful-chaotic vs good-bad axes. To paraphrase the comment I was questioning, I think it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a lawful actor, but A) we aren't even there yet, and B) that is orthogonal to benevolence. The connection between lawfulness and benevolence is complicated by so much history and disagreement about what is actually "good" that I hesitate to just casually purpose them together like niftich's comment did.

It might even be worse, that we ought to expect law enforcement to be agents of order above all, and that just makes kinda me nervous. I'm not sure how rational those feelings of nervousness are. (both of those "ought to" statements are in the sense niftich used it in). Maybe law enforcement is fundamentally just a necessary evil, in that they're going to prevent someone from doing what they think is ok. Hence the orthogonal axes, where this is just a statement about order. I don't really know how I feel about this, hence the terse question. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyways, I didn't want to put my own opinion directly in my question because of the risk of sidetracking discussion towards my own opinion and away from my curiosity about why niftich felt that it was true enough to state without justification.

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#45

Post by niftich »

int_19h wrote: post #35
imh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Second, it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a benevolent actor. I totally disagree. Care to expand on that?

I think the point is that police etc should not behave in such a way that many people immediately assume that an encounter would likely be antagonistic. Basically, if you're afraid to go ask a police officer for help (which, apparently, is fairly common among black people in US, for example), then something is very wrong about police, and needs to be fixed.

Thank you, this is exactly what I meant in the ancestor post.

It's a difficult situation, because different people have different opinions on what the role of law enforcement should be in proactively addressing upcoming behavior that they believe may develop to be criminal. By engaging in targeted mass surveillance in ahead of a suspected protest, the police in this situation is literally preparing for a confrontation, contributing to an antagonistic relationship between (this slice of) the community and the police.

I don't believe this approach is productive, but I recognize some people hold a different opinion. However, when this approach causes knock-on chilling effects and reduces the likelihood that people needing help will call upon police [1], I believe it's a detriment to the health of society.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/police-v...

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#46

Post by imh »

solipsism wrote: post #39
imh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Second, it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a benevolent actor. I totally disagree. Care to expand on that?

I'm astonished at how lazy this comment is.

Sorry if that came across as lazy. I answered with my own opinion in more depth in another comment, but I didn't want to have niftich have to focus on details of my disagreeing point of view. I just wanted to know why they felt it was so plainly true that they stated it without justification, and I wanted to ask it without distracting the conversation. I was trying to respectfully say, "There are (hopefully) rational people out here who don't take that statement for granted. Can you explain?"

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#47

Post by niftich »

imh wrote: post #44
iamdave wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask why you disagree?

Sure. I think that law enforcement is necessarily there to keep us from doing things. That is enough for me to think it's not necessarily the same as benevolence. At the risk of flying my ultra-nerd flag, it's like the lawful-chaotic vs good-bad axes. To paraphrase the comment I was questioning, I think it ought to be a person's reasonable expectation that law enforcement is a lawful actor, but A) we aren't even ther…

You raise some good points and it's helpful for me to understand how you arrived at them.

I don't disagree with most of what you said, but I feel that law enforcement ought to be agents of societal order, where that benefit is to the good of society at large. They're the enforcers of a social contract -- one that we happen to write down and call 'laws' -- and only by willfully violating these laws would I incur the antagonism of the police.

My rationale for using the construction "... law enforcement is a benevolent actor" does reveal my view that certain types of proactive policing result in tactics indistinguishable from a malicious actor: stalking suspected future offenders, aggressively policing minor offenses that in other circumstances would be excused, and creating an environment where proper etiquette to not end up detained, injured, or deceased is getting exceedingly difficult.

See also, this comment [1] where I address the original question from the context of another reply.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12690543

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#48

Post by cinquemb »

aestetix wrote: post #40
niftich wrote: post #9

This is a very messy, multi-layered issue. First of all, a large part of a social network's utility is derived from sharing data about oneself. This data is public, for the benefit of other participants of the social network. Some of those participants may have agendas that are contrary to one's own: stalkers, adversaries, data aggregators -- it's impossible to know all of them ahead of time, and a granularity of per…

1. If the data in question were public, Facebook would not need to be the ones selling it. There would be a whole market of third party data aggregators. 2. If this were true, why would we need the Bill of Rights? The entire point of the Fourth Amendment, for example, is to protect citizens against unreasonable searches -- by law enforcement. 3. This would be true if the data were only shared on a need to know basis,…

re 1): as this situation stands now, facebook threatens via C&D or sues other companies that try this invoking us law.

However if you incorporate in countries that are actively hostile to companies like facebook/google (i.e. Indonesia, China), you can operate aggregators of such data more effectively. However that barrier is a bit different from jumping over this barrier in the due to Facebook incumbent status.

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#49

Post by rhizome »

CoryG89 wrote: post #28
nostrademons wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is "why is it that companies can make more money selling personal data about consumers than selling products to consumers?" If companies had a viable business model that involved ordinary consumers paying money for services rendered, then their responsibility would be to the people paying them money, i.e. the consumer. This is a really complicated question, and probably results from a combination of:…

I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think that banning the sale of user information is a problem for Google or similar business models. I may not have a problem with Google collecting information about me and using it to target ads. I do have a problem with Google turning around and selling that information to just anyone. I think there is a distinction there that makes a difference. I may trust Google an…

And frankly, if it's going to happen in a capitalist society, why aren't I getting my cut of the profits?

Re: ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for selling surveillance company user data

#50

Post by rhizome »

mjevans wrote: post #12

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/facebook-instagram-and... Instead of ArsTechnica, why not link to the ACLU's website?

That's nice that Twitter is able to keep this kind of thing at arm's length by allowing resales of the firehose.
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