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Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#71

Post by mbrameld »

bickfordb wrote: post #44
spaceheretostay wrote: post #3

Isn't that just like 1 month's worth of revenue? That amounts to absolutely nothing in today's world, not even an incentive to reduce the bad behavior. Jail time for lawbreaking executives needs to happen . The financial penalties do not dissuade bad behavior or act as a deterrent, so the same crimes will continue to be committed. Are there any peer-reviewed studies looking at deterrence of financial/tech/privacy cri…

What crimes would they be jailed for?

Could they be prosecuted for violating the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act which makes it unlawful to "knowingly transfer[ring] or us[ing], without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law."

There's an element of intent that might be hard to prove. Intent is legally defined as "the decision to bring about a prohibited consequence." If you know your actions will result in prohibited consequences and take them anyway, you are deciding to bring about a prohibited consequence.

Conspiracy might fit, too. You've got 2 or more people intentionally agreeing to these practices that they know will result in identity theft and then taking action to put those practices into use.

I guess they'd have to start with somebody who provably had their identity stolen as a result of the practices, though.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#72

Post by munk-a »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #67
munk-a wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a small business - I get it, it's good to whitelist whatever information you're logging explicitly, but for smaller teams a hard to diagnose issue might lead the team to "log everything so we can sort it out later". Facebook is Facebook, whether this decision was the product of the corporation as a whole, a small dev team, or a highly paid consultant/third party, Facebook is a big enough company that they d…

Seems like a pretty trivial automated test for so many PHD's to miss: create_user('Bob', 'BobPassword123') assert "BobPassword123" not in logfile

Hrm, so you checked the apache access logs, or maybe an error log, what about the system logs? Does the login request spin up a bash script and pass the password to it?

I don't think it's trivial to guarantee non-existence.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#73

Post by throwaway2048 »

tschellenbach wrote: post #35
cm2012 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is a popular target right now and the subject is politically charged. That's it.

Doesn't seem great that fines are determined based on how hot/not some firm is politically. I'm pretty sure someone can make a list of 100 companies that deserve more fines than Facebook.

And all the connected criminals that got away ought to be punished first, I'm sure a judge will agree with the wisdom of this argument and let you go.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#75

Post by beat »

munk-a wrote: post #47
wnevets wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) Storing said passwords and others in plaintext. [2] in logs.

If you're a small business - I get it, it's good to whitelist whatever information you're logging explicitly, but for smaller teams a hard to diagnose issue might lead the team to "log everything so we can sort it out later". Facebook is Facebook, whether this decision was the product of the corporation as a whole, a small dev team, or a highly paid consultant/third party, Facebook is a big enough company that they d…

I've worked for multiple Fortune 25 companies, and that excuse does not fly. Not in banking or healthcare, where breaches of privacy/confidentiality are actually illegal, rather than merely distasteful. Small teams and careless devs doing that sort of bad logging will be caught and corrected by strict security oversight.

This is the sort of thing that leads the HN crowd to sneer at the old, slow ways of the enterprise world.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#76

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

Dangeranger wrote: post #4
minimaxir wrote: post #2

> Every insider I've spoken to said any FTC fine on Facebook under $10 billion would be seen as a massive win, showing firm won't face serious consequences for privacy violations. Wall St. seems to agree in response to news of $3-$5b settlement [$FB up 4% after hours] https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1121148735818358784

Agreed. This small of a fine comes off as a cost of doing business for a company as large as Facebook.

This isn't the future I wanted.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#77

Post by markdoubleyou »

"The Silicon Valley company and the F.T.C.'s consumer protection and enforcement staff have been in negotiations for months over a financial penalty"

Honest question: What gets negotiated in this kind of settlement? What leverage does Facebook have in this situation to say, "no, that fine is too high"?

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#78

Post by kortilla »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #67
munk-a wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a small business - I get it, it's good to whitelist whatever information you're logging explicitly, but for smaller teams a hard to diagnose issue might lead the team to "log everything so we can sort it out later". Facebook is Facebook, whether this decision was the product of the corporation as a whole, a small dev team, or a highly paid consultant/third party, Facebook is a big enough company that they d…

Seems like a pretty trivial automated test for so many PHD's to miss: create_user('Bob', 'BobPassword123') assert "BobPassword123" not in logfile

Seems like a useless test considering how many actual production systems don’t log to local disk.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#79

Post by beat »

artursapek wrote: post #74

Why doesn't Zuck just quit? He's so rich. I would have fucked off and retired so long ago.

Because he has one of the coolest toys in the world.

Really, isn't running one of the biggest companies ever created a better retirement hobby than collecting stamps?

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#80

Post by [deleted] »

goodfight wrote: post #70
cronix wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we need GDPR in the US. Make the fine like 5% of global annual profit (not sales). Something that will hurt and make them actually think it's not worth it and actively avoid it rather than just the cost of doing business and a snicker as they walk away.

No thanks, I don't want to bow down to the censorship of the EU

[deleted]
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