Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

mashable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 164 posts

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#31

Post by rationalbeats »

schiffern wrote: post #26
rationalbeats wrote: post #12

I'm not a criminal, I am a a pretty mundane guy actually, but of course we live in a society that every single one of us breaks some small law every day. Which is why I stopped using Facebook. I also stopped using Twitter to tweet. I still use it to follow news sources, I just don't actively tweet. I did that after the NYPD won a court case to see all the private messages you send on Twitter. I also don't comment muc…

>I remember reading a story about a guy who posted a quote from fight club on his Facebook status and a few hours later in the middle of the night the NYPD was busting in his door and he spent 3 years in legal limbo over it. Act 1 here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/r...

Yes that is it. Thanks for pulling finding that.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#32

Post by sp332 »

mahyarm wrote: post #30
sp332 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider FB chats to be much less private because they actually get stored on a server somewhere by default. Also I can access them anywhere with an internet account. Neither of these things are true of SMS.

There is nothing preventing your SMSs being saved in a telco DB. I'm fairly certain they are.

Well sure it might be, but it doesn't have to. FB messages always get saved, no question.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#33

Post by personlurking »

sriramk wrote: post #2

This actually tripped up a friend of mine a couple of years ago. She left a comment on a photo of someone holding a toy gun saying "You look like " followed by a smiley. Within hours, she got a message and a phone call from someone claiming to be working for FB's security who asked her some basic questions on why she left that comment. The whole experience scared her from using FB for a long time. I thought the whole…

Reminds me of Apple sec. pretending to be police in order to track the missing iPhone.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#34

Post by joering2 »

zethraeus wrote: post #6

The Mashable article seems to be sources from a Reuters article. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/12/us-usa-internet-pr... The program does appear to focus on sexual predators. Mashable quotes Facebook as stating “where appropriate and to the extent required by law to ensure the safety of the people who use Facebook" Can anyone speak to whether or not proactive scanning could possible be required by law? It see…

the problem lays within who decide who is a "sexual predator", who is not. I can assure you if this is left without governance, it will be very easy to slip in you and me and label as as predators as well. For example, you hold a hand of your 6-year old nephew when walking back from school when picking him up, per your sister request. In Facebook standards, you may already be a "sexual predator".

I hope you see where I am going with this...

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#36

Post by personlurking »

cwe wrote: post #15
marshray wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sincere question: Why would you think Facebook chat would be "private communication"?

Do you consider SMS private communications? Your cellphone carrier is just as likely to eavesdrop on your SMS history as FB does your chats.

There's an illusion in online communication that makes the average user think any particular message they send is like physically handing a message to another person. Using Gmail as an example, sure, your email goes to the right person, but you first send it to/through Gmail. They just happen to pass it along to the recipient.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#37

Post by marshray »

cwe wrote: post #15
marshray wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sincere question: Why would you think Facebook chat would be "private communication"?

Do you consider SMS private communications? Your cellphone carrier is just as likely to eavesdrop on your SMS history as FB does your chats.

> Do you consider SMS private communications?

That question has a complex answer. In short: not really.

Unfortunately, I know a little too much about phone networks to have a representative answer. I know very little about Facebook, except that its users usually attribute to it more privacy than it really offers. Trying to understand why that is is the reason for my question.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#38

Post by tripzilch »

Zenst wrote: post #23

What if Facebook make a mistake, do they get done for wasting police time? Monitoring is all fine but it needs to be done independantly, anything else is a conflict of interest and something that FaceBook staff can abuse. You know it would not supprise me one bit if FaceBook had staff monitoring this modding down every post that holds them in true^H^H^H^HBAD light.

thought it was a pretty sensible question, actually.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#39

Post by bicknergseng »

samstave wrote: post #19
rationalbeats wrote: post #12

I'm not a criminal, I am a a pretty mundane guy actually, but of course we live in a society that every single one of us breaks some small law every day. Which is why I stopped using Facebook. I also stopped using Twitter to tweet. I still use it to follow news sources, I just don't actively tweet. I did that after the NYPD won a court case to see all the private messages you send on Twitter. I also don't comment muc…

I have never had a facebook account. Never have - never will. I distrust everything they do. And while we like to think that other sites are not as bad, I was recently censored on Quora for asking about why a post was censored on Reddit. They threw some "against policy" bullshit at me, and Marc Bodnick attempted to appear sympathetic and that his hands were tied and he didnt like the policy either - but it was a BS r…

I'd be curious to see that email exchange. Would you redact names/private info and post it somewhere?

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#40

Post by malandrew »

I'm of the opinion that once enough people get fed up with a surveillance state, or even a surveillance society since private entities are involved, that the best way to "fix" the problem is by collectively generating noise that makes it too expensive and time consuming to find a needle in a haystack. Right now they probably generate very few false positives, however if many people went out of their way to actively generate false positives on a regular basis, you've effectively disabled such a system and manufactured reasonable doubt.

Generating deliberate false-positive inducing noise in communications deemed to be private between two or more individuals who know one another should be protected as free speech. To argue otherwise would be the equivalent of prosecuting an individual for yelling "Fire" in their own home among friends and stating that such an act is a clear and present danger to the US.

IMHO automated cooperative manufactured reasonable doubt will probably be one of the last bastions of civil liberties in a surveillance society.

Post reply on HN