Live data from Hacker News

Facebook taps lawyer who helped write Patriot Act as new general counsel

thehill.com

1–10 of 134 posts

Re: Facebook taps lawyer who helped write Patriot Act as new general counsel

#5
To those unsure as to why this is particularly relevant: the Patriot Act is notable for drastically expanding the surveillance powers of the US government [1]. I wonder what this lawyer will do at Facebook?

[1] https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-su...

Re: Facebook taps lawyer who helped write Patriot Act as new general counsel

#7

Someone tell these yahoos that optics is a thing. I expect the next statement to be about transparency and connecting communities. Just like the last one. And the one before.

for facebook optics is not a thing.

they know they have a stranglehold on people addicted to their products, and advertisers who pay through the nose to sell things to those addicts.

Honestly, why bother with optics? No one's going to like the company ever again except their employees, but no business or politician or organization is going to not take facebook's call.

Re: Facebook taps lawyer who helped write Patriot Act as new general counsel

#8
post #3

Facebook is the defense contractor that is building America's Great Firewall and social credit system, so it makes sense that there is a revolving door with the authoritarian regime.

I’m not familiar with either of those two projects. Perhaps the latter is the aggregation of numerous “good customer” scores, plus actual credit rating, plus the no-fly list. But I haven’t heard about an actual program that implements a social credit score that FB is implementing.

Re: Facebook taps lawyer who helped write Patriot Act as new general counsel

#9
"How can we possibly form a legal case that justifies mass surveillance?"

'I think I know just the guy...'

Edit: I was going to pre-emptively delete this as a joke/low-effort comment, but I think it's a tad useful in highlighting what Facebook "use case" this lawyer would be good for.

Re: Facebook taps lawyer who helped write Patriot Act as new general counsel

#10

Someone tell these yahoos that optics is a thing. I expect the next statement to be about transparency and connecting communities. Just like the last one. And the one before.

for facebook optics is not a thing. they know they have a stranglehold on people addicted to their products, and advertisers who pay through the nose to sell things to those addicts. Honestly, why bother with optics? No one's going to like the company ever again except their employees, but no business or politician or organization is going to not take facebook's call.

Why bother with optics? Well, for one thing, presumably they still need to recruit people once in a while (including people with lots and lots of options).
Post reply on HN