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Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

mashable.com

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Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#151

Post by sriramk »

_debug_ wrote: post #124
nbarlow wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm the OP. It could be possible that someone knew how to get into her account and had just done a self disable/enable. Far fetched though.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#152

Post by excuse-me »

Karunamon wrote: post #148
excuse-me wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not a police-state where they are actively targeting dissidents. It's a TSA-state where there is a massive over-reaction to bureaucratic automated scanning of communications. Post some SMS/Tweet/facebook update with a quote that sounds to an automated script like a terrorist threat. (eg a line from Fightclub or a Clash lyric) and watch the reaction. Even if the police bursting down your door manage to not acc…

So some automated system somewhere screws up on one person out of roughly 300 million, (approx 0.000000319% for those keeping score), and this justifies a flight from the country. Allow me to be blunt. Your concerns are overstated.

Or 5000-20,000 on a no-fly list out of how many million passengers.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#153

Post by casemorton »

So, "cooperation with police" now entails creating their own criteria for crime and dragnetting the presumed private conversations of a billion people. I guess I better not confirm birthday parties or holidays with young relatives or friends kids on that site.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#155

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

sriramk wrote: post #151
_debug_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm the OP. It could be possible that someone knew how to get into her account and had just done a self disable/enable. Far fetched though.

Considering how dumb most people's passwords are, it's likely easier than you think.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#156

Post by nbm »

freemonoid wrote: post #114
nbm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What position did this Facebook employee hold at the company? In which office did they work? Is it possible they weren't really a Facebook employee? What sort of censorship are you talking about? I ask because I've never heard anything like that, despite working with the teams that build tools to fight spam, scams, fake accounts, and to assist the User Operations team to handle reports from people who encounter haras…

He was a recruiter from the Facebook MPK office (headquarters)

What position was he recruiting for, and roughly when (let's say, which quarter and year)? How likely was he a new recruiter?

I'm not sure I can express my skepticism about this enough - our security, safety, and site integrity teams are some of the most privacy-conscious people I know, and even a hint of something like this happening here would lead to very pointed questions asked at the weekly Q&A every week until it was resolved.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#157

Post by [deleted] »

freemonoid wrote: post #114
nbm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What position did this Facebook employee hold at the company? In which office did they work? Is it possible they weren't really a Facebook employee? What sort of censorship are you talking about? I ask because I've never heard anything like that, despite working with the teams that build tools to fight spam, scams, fake accounts, and to assist the User Operations team to handle reports from people who encounter haras…

He was a recruiter from the Facebook MPK office (headquarters)

[deleted]

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#158

Post by [deleted] »

freemonoid wrote: post #114
nbm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What position did this Facebook employee hold at the company? In which office did they work? Is it possible they weren't really a Facebook employee? What sort of censorship are you talking about? I ask because I've never heard anything like that, despite working with the teams that build tools to fight spam, scams, fake accounts, and to assist the User Operations team to handle reports from people who encounter haras…

He was a recruiter from the Facebook MPK office (headquarters)

[deleted]

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#159

Post by mitra »

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…

Not my encrypted messages.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#160

Post by einhverfr »

edj wrote: post #142
einhverfr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only small laws, in the eyes of the feds. I highly recommend reading Harvey Silverglate's (veteran of the EFF, ACLU and the FIRE) book "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent." He discusses the issues of vagueness in federal felony statutes. Think about it this way, the efforts to convict Jeff Skilling (yes, of Enron) of "Honest Services Fraud" would make reading HN from work a federal felony. Not…

>The internet is for marketing yourself, not expressing yourself. I'm just old enough to remember when the exact opposite was trued. Terribly saddening to see how that's changed.

So am I. But times change.
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