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Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

theguardian.com

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Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#391

Post by Izkata »

anigbrowl wrote: post #365
24gttghh wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem: http://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-co... >1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. edit: this version is from 1992 . And I should point out my courses at least h…

Yeah and how many people adhere to this? Anyone can call themselves a software engineer, and many do despite never having been near an ethics course. Calling for mandatory ethics modules as part of a CS course has been an unpopular opinion here for years :-l

This is slowly changing. In Texas and Florida, for example, "software engineer" has similar requirements as plain "engineer".

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#392

Post by CodeSheikh »

verylittlemeat wrote: post #272
CodeSheikh wrote: post #240

I see a lot of Facebook sympathizers here. Is this what devs do at Facebook? Browse HN and defend the reputation of Facebook at any cost? Yes we all knew what we were in for when we signed up for Facebook and Instagram. Yes, they can sell our data to show us ads about what coals to buy for July 4th bbq party and we are OK with that. But not to turn blind eye to foreign entities which in return use it against us and j…

I don't work for facebook. I don't have a facebook. I don't like facebook. What I do like is honesty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_breach Look at this very robust list of data breaches and tell me how the CA/Facebook incident this week looks anything like any of them.

This data breach is different in nature. It is not same as Ashley Madison or Experian where someone got hold of root pwd or some other data storage (some form of hacking involved). This is about third party using Facebook's API to access user data and exploiting those API to retrieve hoards of information about a particular user. IN this case, Facebook most likely knew which third party developer was heavily hitting a certain API in a certain pattern but they decided to turn a blind eye.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#394

Post by checkyoursudo »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #390
checkyoursudo wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Words still mean things" is not an argument. This can be a 'breach' by many of these definitions.[0][1][2] You're basically saying, "Words only mean the things that I want them to mean, and if you try to use them a different way than I approve, then I will use this meme to try to shut you down." Words fluctuate in meaning all the time. This may very well be the beginning of a new definition for breach, i.e., a socia…

> Any of these old definitions contains sufficient meaningfulness to make "Facebook loses control of data to unauthorized breach" perfectly intelligble. Sure, but the point being made by the "it's not a breach" people is that Facebook didn't lose control of data to an unauthorized breach. They gave up data according to their own documented and expected procedures to people who were supposed to have it. "Facebook volu…

I guess then I'm confused about the narrative of the story so far.

Did Facebook have control over its (my? your?) data at Cambridge Analytica or not? I thought the extra 50 to 250 million profiles scraped were unauthorized access?

I could be entirely mistaken.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#395

Post by 1337biz »

rrauenza wrote: post #318
ams6110 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaig... ... the campaign literally knew every single wavering voter in the country that it needed to persuade to vote for Obama, by name, address, race, sex and income. ...the digital-analytics team, led by Rayid Ghani, a 35-year-old research scientist from Accenture Labs, developed an idea: Why not try sifting through self-described supporters’ Facebook pages i…

Quoting a conservative source: [1] How did Facebook react to the much larger data harvesting of the Obama campaign? The New York Times reported it out, in a feature hailing Obama’s digital masterminds: The campaign’s exhaustive use of Facebook triggered the site’s internal safeguards. “It was more like we blew through an alarm that their engineers hadn’t planned for or knew about,” said [Will] St. Clair, who had been…

Really brutal how unashamed they have become about their biases. No wonder people are getting so angry against the media and big tech while those still play the facade of a fair game.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#396

Post by arkh »

jjulius wrote: post #372
arkh wrote: post #17

How the fuck could people be surprised? Open a software job board. 50% of offers are by companies trying to optimize some data harvesting and analysis to better target some ads. Ads, the direct child of propaganda. So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software. I'd say you're worse because you can argue missiles can be used as deterrent.

>How the fuck could people be surprised? Really? You expect every user to understand the extent of FB's reach into their personal information? You expect every user to understand the extent of how companies obtain that data, whether through purchases or covert harvesting? You expect every user to then understand the myriad of ways their data can be used? We work in tech, but we're quick to forget that most users at b…

I expect people who dismissed the Cassandra of privacy to not act surprised.

10 years ago they dismissed people telling them about things like Google Analytics or other external scripts on website. They used the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" phrase. "You're paranoid no one want simple people's data".

Even better: doing it one week after complaining about how the GDPR and the Right to be Forgotten are bad EU laws.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#397

Post by arkh »

aylmao wrote: post #314
arkh wrote: post #17

How the fuck could people be surprised? Open a software job board. 50% of offers are by companies trying to optimize some data harvesting and analysis to better target some ads. Ads, the direct child of propaganda. So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software. I'd say you're worse because you can argue missiles can be used as deterrent.

> So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software. Yikes. I agree with your points, don't get me wrong! Spot on-- this optimized data harvesting is widespread and terrible, and ads are dangerous. Yet, I think your analogy is a little bit much and takes away from your argument. Missiles' purpose is to kill people, they tear apart families, bring ch…

Isn't the Pen mightier than the Sword? Aren't ideas immortal contrary to people?

If you agree with those tropes missiles are less dangerous than propaganda.

My comment may come as exagerated but I think you need some shock value if you want people to start really thinking. Cognitive dissonance is hard to break and rare are those who don't consider themselves good people.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#398

Post by harry8 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #8

Can we not let this become framed as a "breach"? No systems were compromised. Nothing of Facebook's was accessed that wasn't supposed to be accessed. This was data intentionally exposed by Facebook , just exfiltrated and given to an entity whom Facebook hadn't authorized. This is simply the extent to which we've permitted these Internet giants to collect information about us. It's business as usual. Edit: To clarify,…

No more or less a breach than any social engineering attack. No more or less than Chelsea Manning for that matter. "Our servers weren't compromised" is totally irrelevant.

Did the sensitive data end up someplace it shouldn't? Yes? Then your data security was breached. The end.

But hey let's argue over the technical definition of breach rather than how evil facebook are and how much power they have - both of which are vastly more interesting to consider. I'd like to see some support of the not very, not much school of thought.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#399

Post by [deleted] »

generalk wrote: post #149
jakelazaroff wrote: post #8

Can we not let this become framed as a "breach"? No systems were compromised. Nothing of Facebook's was accessed that wasn't supposed to be accessed. This was data intentionally exposed by Facebook , just exfiltrated and given to an entity whom Facebook hadn't authorized. This is simply the extent to which we've permitted these Internet giants to collect information about us. It's business as usual. Edit: To clarify,…

> Can we not let this become framed as a "breach"? No > systems were compromised. Nothing of Facebook's was > accessed that wasn't supposed to be accessed. This was > data intentionally exposed by Facebook, just exfiltrated > and given to an entity whom Facebook hadn't authorized. This is similar to a HIPAA "breach" where the word doesn't imply that a security system was compromised, but that protected data was acces…

[deleted]

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#400

Post by Angostura »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #182
Angostura wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... or not http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03...

Did you actually even read your own link? I don't think it says what you think it says. That story you linked is about how democrats in 2006 wanted to do more data collection but couldn't agree on whether it should be the DNC or a private firm that did the data collection. The one thing they could agree on was that data collection was something they should be doing.

The post I was commenting on claimed similar actions were, or would have been lauded if carried out by Democrats. I simply posted an article critical of similar moves.
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