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Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#71
post #57
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, 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.

> 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.

You 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/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.

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#73

FB Response: 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

Does anyone ever say they're not cooperating with investigators?

Roger Stone?

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#74
post #56

There 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.

So let's incriminate engineers for building a faulty airplane too.

When you hold yourself to the same legal and social standards as actual accredited engineers, of the type who build things like airplanes, you’ll be in a better position. Right now the software works wants the benefits of the unregulated Wild West, without the consequences. Such a scenario simply cannot last, and in the absence of self regulation and setting of standards, the legal system will step in. It’s slow, it’s clumsy, and it’s inevitable.

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#75

FB Response: 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

Is facebook still down or something? Why are they posting the responses on twitter?

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

n-gate?

http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ Enjoy!

That’s quite the hate-on someone has at that site. There’s some funny to be had, but it’s mostly very tryhard. The “coverage” of the Vitamin D thing was great, but when there isn’t low hanging fruit it just sort of defaults to generic noise. Without the anger and repetition it could be worth reading, but as it is there’s a lot of predictable 4channery.

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone ever say they're not cooperating with investigators?

Roger Stone?

Okay 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.

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#78

There 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.

There is a movement starting to put ownership of data back into the hands of the people who created it. https://hu-manity.co/ Feels like the right solution even if the task is monumental.

I was all 'pro' this link, until I read:

> Hu-manity.co has ... designed new intelligent contracts on blockchains which humans can use to negotiate new terms of consent and authorization with corporations so that inherent human data can be respected as legal property.

It's great that people are serious about this, but extreme care should be taken with the latest tech hype! Blockchains are (by design) are 'out there', which means that once consent it given, that consent is 'out there' for all time. Blockchain also rather public, so it would seem rather easy to 'harvest' who has consented to what...

... unless I missed something?

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for me, it's stuck on the security check - or is this the joke?

I think it only does that when linked from this website.

ah, okay, it works now. I wondered about a broken captcha being the joke after seeing their about page: http://n-gate.com/about/

Re: Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, 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.

Do 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.

AFAIK, 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.
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