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50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

theguardian.com

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Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#81

Post by olivermarks »

r00fus wrote: post #72
ChicagoDave wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see a constitutional amendment barring psycho-graphic profiling from election advertising and intent. Not sure how it could be enforced because this is very technical. Even so, there is a significant difference between Coke trying to sell me a flavored soft drink and a firm tweaking my emotions to get me to abstain from voting with false information or to vote against my best interests with false information.…

You do it by making the activity costly. Mandatory opt-out for any persistence of data. Require regular re-enrollments for anyone who opted in.

European GDPR is going to help a lot when it kicks in this May

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#82

Post by _ptgt »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #61
olivermarks wrote: post #44

My problem with this 'outing' of CA is that Facebook explicitly commercially exists to harvest user data for Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity etc etc so they can profile us. A million dollars is chump change in the crazy US election game. This all seems overly selective - it's ok for some people to profile but not for others. I'm not in favor of any of it to be clear but there is a definite political bia…

I could see a constitutional amendment barring psycho-graphic profiling from election advertising and intent. Not sure how it could be enforced because this is very technical. Even so, there is a significant difference between Coke trying to sell me a flavored soft drink and a firm tweaking my emotions to get me to abstain from voting with false information or to vote against my best interests with false information.…

I don't think "false information" is the kicker here. Taking a cursory glance at Breitbart and Fox News, there isn't that much that is patently false. Furthermore, my observations of how propaganda works in general is that it doesn't usually rely information that is technically false. It relies on selective distribution of information, editorial spin, and other more subtle methods.

This makes "enforcement" basically impossible because you can't have a news outlet without editorial decisions. A better way to go about it would be to try incentivize media outlets to make a good faith effort at "both sides" journalism, but members of both political sides have been attacking the media for doing just that since the 2016 election season.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#83

Post by anonymouz »

jdavis703 wrote: post #30
anonymouz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically perhaps correct, but for the victims it seems rather irrelevant to me. In a data breach, someone would have used a technical vulnerability or some other (e.g. social engineering) vulnerability of Facebook to get illegitimate access to the data. In this case Facebook simply gave them access to the data and took their word that they won't misuse it. Now maybe the latter situation might not be a data breach…

Facebook isn't the victim here, it's voters who may have been specifically targeted at a "physchographic" level and had their opinions unduly influenced. Further, every person who's a member of a democracy that was targeted by Cambridge Anayltica and is now being run by corrupted politicians (or in the case of Brexit by misinformed voters) is a victim.

Yes, sorry, if that wasn't clear. By victims I mean the people whose data was harvested of course.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#87

Post by sambe »

734786710934 wrote: post #2

This wasn't a data breach, it was a misuse of data by a third party.

Yes, per https://mobile.twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975044091393187... this (headline) seems like quite a sensationalisation. Nonetheless good to repeatedly raise people’s awareness of what they agreed/are agreeing to.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#88

Post by matt4077 »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #78
mrtksn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This all seems overly selective - it's ok for some people to profile but not for others What's the issue here? Selective information distribution is rooted in the society, people are O.K. with some information to be known to some people while kept secret from others due to implication differences. I.E. I'm fine to be profiled for selling me chocolates but I'm not O.K. to be profiled to be manipulated to select publi…

Sadly, the downside of the consumer data culture in which we live is that you don’t really get to make that call. It seems like data is really an all or nothing game at this point, regardless of how society feels about it. Not sure how to change that, either, and I don’t personally think legislation is the answer.

It’s really easy: you pass laws.

Look at health records. HIPAA is rather successful at keeping your health data narrowly confined to those that need it. There is nothing that prevents similar laws to work for financial data, location data, etc.

The only roadblock is people saying they “don’t personally think legislation is the answer”. Because there is literally nothing but law that can have an effect.

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#89

Post by oh_sigh »

auntienomen wrote: post #73

So... If I were in Cambridge Analytica's position, employed to influence the US election, one of the first things I'd do is match this data with any data I could find on voting patterns. Which reminds me, didn't some of the Russian APTs hack into state voter databases?

You don't need to hack into voter databases - most people register for the party they vote for and that is public information(along with their home address, phone number, and whether they voted in past elections).

Re: 50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

#90

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #77
doubt_me wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's not an "outing". 2. Johnson & Johnson doesn't work for Putin. 3. United States elections aren't crazy. Entire parties of Congress being blackmailed into submission by foreign influence is crazy. 4. It's not overly selective. 5. I hope it has an extreme political bias. 6. Facebook commercially exists because the United States has shit privacy laws. 7. How much did Putin pay you to gas light articles? 8. A mill…

> How much did Putin pay you to gas light articles? That is an egregious violation of the guidelines and a bannable offense on HN. If the rest of the internet is losing its mind, that makes following HN's rules more important, not less. > Let's not forget about that one time you This also crosses into personal attack, which is not ok. Heated political arguments are bad enough without users trying to take each other o…

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