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Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

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Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#81
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> EVERY single thing you type online is viewed by the NSAs terrorbots. Evidence? Did you program these NSA bots or something? > Anyone that thinks anything is private online is fooling themselves. No, they just don't know any better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy If you want your messages to be heard by limited parties, make it so. "My friends are too stupid to know how to use any form of encryptio…

Get a personal cert and you can use it natively in Apple Mail, not just for signing but also for encryption. We should be helping friends, family, and colleagues do this.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#82
post #49
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rest my case.

You might have lost some people when you said, "Monitoring is all fine..."

Maybe though given another post I had my doubts.

Thank you I appreciete the feedback. +1 to you for that

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#83
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's take it a step further: every item that you purchase with a credit card is recorded. It wouldn't surprise me if some retail stores use CCTV systems capable of facial recognition to identify cash purchases, too... It's time to create an underground data haven in Kinakuta--the Crypt.

[deleted]

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#84
post #68
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally Facebook would use public-key encryption for chats and allow each user to individually save the history with their own passphrase they input encrypting it client-side. But hey, auto-saving history without prompting you is worth it, right? (Also figuring out what to advertise to a user.)

It seems like you're describing something completely different from FB chat. anyway you could just encrypt the text, base64-encode it, and paste it into the chat box. still more convenient than email.

FB chat to me is basically real-time private messages rather than more traditional instant messaging, but everything I described except securely archiving the history could be done by FB transparently to the user. Of course you can do the work yourself, I just think it would be a nice gesture if FB provided the option to do the work for you, a way for the user to conveniently make sure FB keeps their parsers off the user's chat data. (It could also be extended to other data.) Also with how frequently Amazon prompts me for my password, I don't think users would be incredibly turned off by FB prompting for a password when they start chatting, and their browsers can be made to remember it anyway.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#85

It's been clear in my mind for some time now that Facebook is desperately doing anything possible to stay plugged into our internet lives. Their attempted take-over of email, which will probably lead to some success, only reinforces this. I think they see the writing on the wall -- that newer services will take over older ones -- and are doing anything they can to stay top dog. What we need is an abstraction layer on…

They have been evil for some time, as far as privacy goes. They, more than anyone else, have been behind the push to a post-privacy world. Adding law enforcement hooks is the natural extension of this.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#86
Never assume anything you send online is private. If the service isn't monitoring you, your friends are. And if not your friends, then the people who share your friends' computers, or anyone who comes into possssion of it, have he potential to expose your communications.

And while this has always been the case ever since letter writing, electronic communication is so much easier to parse and distribute and copy on bulk.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#87
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVERY single thing you type online is viewed by the NSAs terrorbots. Evidence? Did you program these NSA bots or something? > Anyone that thinks anything is private online is fooling themselves. No, they just don't know any better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy If you want your messages to be heard by limited parties, make it so. "My friends are too stupid to know how to use any form of encryptio…

I know the bidders who were seeking designing their new Utah Datacenter. I think I am perfectly well acquainted with what the NSA does.

Thanks to HN Notify (http://hnnotify.com/) I know what your post said before you edited. :P Knowing that, I'm sure you're aware of all kinds of crazy NSA crap others aren't, so thanks for flashing your credentials; as I said in another comment, I was pretty much just being pedantic about the "EVERYTHING".

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#88
post #43
post #5

So what happens if Facebook's system flags a message, it is reviewed by their staff and then dismissed as non-actionable, but turns out to be the precursor to a severe criminal act? Does the blame come back on Facebook for failing to prevent this crime?

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 would take place, and then failed to act. Tell me no one would go after Facebook's deep pockets in this situation given they could have reasonably prevented whatever crime took place, even if it meant reporting it to the proper authorities. It may just be professional paranoia talking, but I can't see how this doesn't release them from some sort of liability in a worst-case scenario.

Re: Report: Facebook Monitors Your Chats for Criminal Activity

#90
post #2

This 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…

we should have a day of protest doing exactly this to eachother......
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