How come every time there's a post about Facebook the usually intelligent HN crowd goes nuts? I can understand the concerns but this whole thread is filled with alarmists and looks like something taken from reddit (or even 4chan).
Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
121–130 of 164 posts
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#122This 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…
It sounds like your friend got trolled. We don't call users whom we suspect are criminals, and we certainly wouldn't call someone we suspect of being a terrorist. Especially on the grounds of a terrorism joke - believe it or not, we do have a sense of humor. I work for Facebook's User Operations team and, as the Reuters article says, this specific tool targets the (thankfully) rare cases of adults trying to use the s…
Speaking for the internet and most of humanity here - go fuck yourself and get a real job.
Anyone who argues that everyone should be spied upon in order to protect a minority is an idiot who does not understand the concept of freedom. Privacy is a right.
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they live in the real world where a zero false positive rate simply doesn't exist. And be serious. Getting asked a question from Facebook is hardly going to ruin someone's life is it now ?
OP said they aren't calling users but passing information on to law enforcement. Getting a call by Facebook for a bad joke is one thing. Getting the door busted in by police and subsequently shamed and fired from your job because of a bad joke you thought you made in private is another. in case of law enforcement, the only acceptable false positive rate is zero.
The only way to achieve this would be to have no law enforcement.
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#124This 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…
It sounds like your friend got trolled. We don't call users whom we suspect are criminals, and we certainly wouldn't call someone we suspect of being a terrorist. Especially on the grounds of a terrorism joke - believe it or not, we do have a sense of humor. I work for Facebook's User Operations team and, as the Reuters article says, this specific tool targets the (thankfully) rare cases of adults trying to use the s…
OP wrote in another message that "her account got temporarily disabled within a short time of her posting that comment". Is that possible for non-Facebook employees to effect somehow? If not, then it was one of your colleagues, not a troll.
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this privacy-invading-data-miners are using computers and mathematics they’ll surely find better and better ways of filtering the false positives. But before it even comes to that they’ll probably just scare people into submission by making examples of people who create false positives--probably by treating them as true positives.
there's a problem regarding false positives though. A portion of those may be guilty of other things. There was this interesting article on this idea of terahertz lasers in airports. I think these machines are great because they are programmable and specific. You can program them to look just for explosives and this reduces the search issues significantly. But what of the fact that they would mean the TSA might be Co…
That sounds more like a good way to show you are doing a bang up job of incarceration.
Berating the legislature to eliminate as many unenforceable laws as possible seems like a better way to make law enforcement look more effective.
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#126This 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…
Why didn't your friend just hang up on them? If someone is that stupid, don't give them the time of day. Though, I might ping my lawyer after laughing at them and hanging up just so someone knows if I suddenly disappear.
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#127This 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…
It sounds like your friend got trolled. We don't call users whom we suspect are criminals, and we certainly wouldn't call someone we suspect of being a terrorist. Especially on the grounds of a terrorism joke - believe it or not, we do have a sense of humor. I work for Facebook's User Operations team and, as the Reuters article says, this specific tool targets the (thankfully) rare cases of adults trying to use the s…
> I am so amazed every time we're able to help a child avert an absolute worst-case scenario. These cases are rare, but they do happen, and I'm grateful we have the tools necessary to keep the worst of the worst from unfolding in the real world.
Example? Because it sounds like justification bullshit.
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
You shouldn't be striving for a low false positive rate, but for a zero false positive rate. "Think of the children" doesn't rationalize even one wrongly accused person - especially in today's society where an accusation is enough to completely ruin ones life.
I'm very sure a lot of things have to happen before a weird private message thread ends up in an accusation that ruins someone's life. A false negative could ruin the child's life just as easily, so I suspect most parents might think that's more important. It's not necessary to choose either "privacy uber alles" or "think of the children". As with most things in life, there's likely a good balance somewhere between t…
>A false negative could ruin the child's life just as easily
For example? A child being preyed on by a pedophile? What would stop that from happening in real life? Maybe we should set up cameras every five feet since obviously if we could stop it (no matter how immoral we have to act to do so) we have an obligation to, right?
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly failure to properly notify will result in some sort of legislative slap on the wrist, but not for failing to prevent it. That isn't their responsibility.
But didn't they make it their responsibility the minute they began screening messages with the intent of reporting crimes? Selective enforcement whether by choice or mistake isn't an option they can choose here. And criminal legalities aside, I would be more concerned about the civil litigation from the victim or victim's family. Facebook pledged to prevent crime against its users, witnessed evidence that a crime wou…
Yes, and since they claim that nearly 1 out of every 7 people on the planet (900 million users!) are on facebook, I'd take the default position that if any crimes happen they probably failed to report it. :)
Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity
#130It seems like the correct approach is for Facebook to do only what's legally required of it, and nothing more. That would allow society to have a transparent debate about what, exactly, should be required, leaving FB policy out of it. As I understand it, FB is currently only required to respond to appropriately specific subpoenas and warrants. If the cops want more, they should petition for laws to require that and w…
Even better would be for them to set up the system in such a way that they couldn't provide this information if they wanted to. They should go as far as moving the actual data to servers that respect human rights and privacy better than the US government does.