Facebook Scans Chats and Posts For Criminal Activity 483
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has added sleuthing to its array of data-mining capabilities, scanning your posts and chats for criminal activity. If the social-networking giant detects suspicious behavior, it flags the content and determines if further steps, such as informing the police, are required. Reuters provides an example of how the software was used in March: 'A man in his early 30s was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day. Facebook's extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police. Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day.'"
Facebook is a public place (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it so weird that they're doing this? If you went into a bar and talked to folks about having sex with the underage, and someone overheard you, there's a chance that you'd get your ass handed to you, as well as have the cops called to take you away. What's different about facebook doing it? And who the hell relinquishes such personal, and incriminating information on a public server? I know it's not a public server, but it works just like a public bar that's privately owned.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
it isn't the same logic at all. Facebook isn't even a common carrier.
In this case it isn't the government eavesdropping on your conversation, it is the company that owns the means of communication looking at their own stuff and voluntarily reporting it to the government. That is a significant distinction. In this scenario you'd be free to create your own Facebook and have conversations about illegal activities and no one would find out. If it were as you claim, the government would be monitoring the service you run as well.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
'company that owns the means of communication'
So Google has the right to monitor your chats and emails?
'the government would be monitoring the service you run as well'
Without a warrant?
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
If it goes through their servers - yes, they do. However the government can't obtain any such information without a warrant unless Google voluntarily gives said information up. But they could have every chat and email you send through their servers displayed on a big screen in their lunch rooms if they wanted. Legally.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Interesting)
So AT&T can listen to your phone conversations and read your text messages? It all goes through their "Servers" (infrastructure in this case).
Saying FaceBook is a public place means that their Privacy settings are irrelevant. Or does Private not mean Private anymore?
As much as men who molest 13 year girls should be castrated and hung, Facebook shouldn't be doing this unless they make clear in the Terms (and I'd say in big notifications when you sign up) that they will watch what you do and if anything looks suspicious, they'll report you.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Informative)
>So AT&T can listen to your phone conversations and read your text messages?
That's why UK's Big Brother criminalizes encryption [falkvinge.net]:
> the UK will send its citizens to jail for up to five years if they cannot produce the key to an encrypted data set.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Funny)
As much as men who molest 13 year girls should be castrated and hung
I think you meant 'hanged' but hey, maybe there are 13 year old girls who like it that way.
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AT&T is considered a common carrier. It has to provide service to the general public without discrimination. That gives it protection from any crimes committed using the telephones. If they start monitoring conversations, then they might lose that common carrier status. There are also wiretapping laws that apply even to AT&T.
Neither of those laws do not apply to Facebook. In time, we may expect internet service providers and social networking websites to become common carriers, and for communication
Age of consent: 10 years old (Score:3)
Interesting fact: the age of consent in the U.S. was originally 10 years old, following English common law. Many Americans alive today have great-grandmothers who were married at 12 years of age.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/02/16_going_on_17.html [slate.com]
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2007/09/the_mindbooty_problem.html [slate.com]
What about two 14-year-olds? (Score:3, Interesting)
The big problem that Facebook gets into when reporting sexual crimes is where to draw the line. It's a particular problem when you run into the irrational and hysterical laws and prosecutions on sex with young people.
This sounds like the old stories of photo processors who were required to report all photos with "suspicion" of child sex abuse to prosecutors. As you recall, professional photographers were arrested for taking nude pictures of their own children. Parents were arrested for taking bathtub pictur
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1. It reflects the mentality of a once 13 year old girl's father.
2. If you had, you should be prosecuted for statutory rape and then experience the flip side of the relationship with a large man named Tyrone while serving 10-20 years.
3. If you were so lucky, then she should also be sent to jail.
And if she were my daughter, then yes, I would condemn you to castration and death by hanging. But that's just a Dad speaking.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
1. It reflects the mentality of a once 13 year old girl's father.
Who are even less rational than 13 year old girls.
2. If you had, you should be prosecuted for statutory rape and then experience the flip side of the relationship with a large man named Tyrone while serving 10-20 years.
See above. You think forcible anal rape is a just consequence for a pleasurable activity the "victim" assented too? Even if she can't legally consent, her assent still means something. Statutory rape is not a violent crime.
And if she were my daughter, then yes, I would condemn you to castration and death by hanging. But that's just a Dad speaking.
And again, see above. Justice is supposed to be proportional. Something goes wrong in the head of parents that turns totally nice rational people into sick paranoid vengeful freaks. Shame on you, you're even more twisted than the man in the article.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the FBI [fbi.gov] doesn't consider statutory rape a violent crime:
the "desire to please an authority figure" (drilled into our children's heads from a very young age, as I'm sure you're well aware) supplied by that "authority" figure does factor into these types of relationships.
That's the real problem. We teach children not to stand up to authority. Teach children to question authority at every opportunity, and we'd have a much better world. We should be teaching that logic is logic, and if you have a good argument it doesn't matter what age anyone is. Deference to authority is one of the worst vices there is, and we encourage it in our children.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
13 year olds are impressionable and malleable to outside influences
So are most people.
unless you're one of the unlucky ones whose mental maturation process is prematurely halted and never gets to the "adult" stage.
So anyone who disagrees with you has something wrong with their brain and is wrong by definition? Do you have an argument that's not an ad hominem?
I'm not going to argue that it's a good thing for a 30 year old to hook up with a 13 year old, but for something that's supposed to be so obviously bad it's remarkable how weak the arguments against it are.
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>>13 year olds are impressionable and malleable to outside influences
>So are most people.
Not in the same way. We actually know something about the development of the brain and the frontal lobes thereof. Teens do not exhibit the same sort of ability to execute reasoned judgement that people over about 25yrs of age do.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
So now you want to raise the age of consent to 25?
Also, just because teenagers decision making process is different than that of a full grown adult doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, even if a grown adult would consider it worse by our criteria. What matters is whether they are happy with their decisions.
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So now you want to raise the age of consent to 25?
Also, just because teenagers decision making process is different than that of a full grown adult doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, even if a grown adult would consider it worse by our criteria. What matters is whether they are happy with their decisions.
Dunno how to break it to you, but there are a lot more issues than just sexual congress here. But since you said it: the problem is that teenagers are far more likely than adults to *expect* to be ha
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Interesting)
Dunno how to break it to you, but there are a lot more issues than just sexual congress here.
I take it then that you want to raise the age for driving, alcohol use, joining the military, and everything else typically restricted by age to 25?
Or are we going to do the sensible thing and realize that young people have had adult responsibilities for millenia and dealt with it fine? The problem here isn't the brain of a young adult, they obviously work well enough or we wouldn't all be here. The problem is paranoid parents looking for ever more excuses to exert ever more control over their offspring.
But since you said it: the problem is that teenagers are far more likely than adults to *expect* to be happy with their decisions, and only afterwards find out they're not.
I've not actually seen data that shows that. I've seen data that shows that teenagers think harder (IOW, the decision making part of their brain uses more oxygen) about risky situations, and are more likely to make choices adults wouldn't. Is there data about how satisfied they are with their decisions?
But whether teenagers make better decisions for themselves than the decisions adults make for themselves is irrelevant. What's important is whether teenagers make better decisions for teenagers than adults make for teenagers. I've seen no evidence that this is the case.
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Purely based on cognitive ability, the age of consent would sit right about 16
That's nice in theory, but what about in practice. What are the actual harms that come to a person if they are allowed to consent to sex before 16?
But, based on emotional and psychosocial standards, children mature much slower, and only develop to match the emotional maturity level of a "typical adult" by the time they're 22 or older. (This, in large part, helps to explain why teens & early-20's people are so prone to acciden
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Interesting)
Do yourself a favor and stop being deliberately fucking obtuse about this.
Provide some arguments not based on anecdote or threats and I will.
I'm like this because my mother, my wife, my wife's sister, my aunt, all have suffered abuse at the hands of older men they were supposed to be able to trust.
That's an awful thing, but what does this have to do with statutory rape?
The psychological damage that comes from rape is undeniable
Except that quite a lot of people have lost their virginity before the age of consent and deny that it has done them any harm. If anything, it's the unnecessary shame that people like you force on them that does the real harm.
If you are confused about this I strongly recommend you don't test your head-up-the-ass moral ambiguity out on the nearest teenage girl you can find,
My sexual needs are sated, thanks. But at 13, I would have loved to been "raped" by a 30 year old. I know there are other 13 year olds out there who would like that opportunity. I still don't see any reason to deny them that.
So, I repeat, do yourself a favor, and shut the fuck up before you really piss me off.
And just what are you going to do about it, a barrel roll?
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the ability to read posts and chats are required simply from a support perspective. How can any of their guys troubleshoot problems without seeing customer data?
Perhaps the issue is if they are held to some kind of confidentiality agreement lick Doctors and Lawyers.
Interesting.
But they are not. Barring federally-regulated information (HIPAA or SOX for example), I don't know whether FB (or Internet information/communication service providers in general) that provide their services for free should be held to the same type of legal standards. Maybe yes, maybe not. It is not something that people can go and say "ZOMG YES" simply because of their personal privacy as they exercise their own information sharing actions.
One thing for sure is that only fools get up angrily in arms because FB doesn't act like a phone carrier or a hospital with the information people put on their own free will after signing FB TOS.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Informative)
Could you explain to us how they target advertising next to your email on gmail... if they DON'T monitor your chats and emails?
In my inbox on gmail, I have two messages right now:
The first, from a recruiter I worked with a few years back, asking if I (or anybody I know) are interested in a particular software engineering job that he's trying to find candidates for. The ads displayed next to the email are for:
-- VMware Virtualization
-- Norwich Civil Engineering Masters program
-- Price Waterhouse Cooper consulting on "Succession Planning"
So... a job description with "virtualization" as a requirement; a discussion of "required education" and - generally speaking - a JOB description (for which "succession planning" might be an issue) are the ads.
The second email is a notification from twitter about a message a friend (who I game with occasionally) sent to me, containing a link to a Diablo 3 resource that he thought was really cool. The ads displayed next to that email are for:
-- SproutSocial (the #1 Twitter Marketing Tool!)
-- some other "Twitter management" tool
-- And a list of links: "More on Diablo 2," "More on Diablo 3," and "More on Blizzard games."
So yeah... not only does Google have the "right" to monitor my chats and emails, they are *actively doing it,* because that's how they target their advertising.
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Most of Google's profit comes from their automated data-mining of everything you (in the extreme plural sense) do. Manual data mining is much too slow, but there is exactly nothing stopping them from having the automated miners flagging some content for manual view.
This is more what users should be aware of, that the technology to scan user communication and profile behavior and take action based on this information likely was not developed solely to "catch a predator" - that is just an added feature Facebook can plug in to their system "play ball" with the FBI as a bargaining chip to avoid random server seizures. Users should be aware that their communication is being scanned, profiled, and possibly read by people for the only goal that a corporation has, profit.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would Facebook spend money policing it's patrons and voluntarily reporting misdeeds? They are a "for profit" company, not a social service.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
So that when legislators start asking questions about their violations of user privacy, they can point at examples like this to show how it's really "for the children" and in support of our fine laws and all that drek, maybe?
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if they don't, things may become much more difficult for them. They really don't want local police or FBI pulling Megaupload on them and grabbing all their servers as evidence next time some crime is investigated.
Ok, so why stop at pedophilia / ephebophilia? Why not report people openly admitting to smoking marijuana, or underage persons talking about drinking, or people with active lifestyle pictures when they're claiming disability?
Facebook is pulling the opposite direction and it's eventually going to cost them. If they get in the business of being pro-active in stopping crime, they're only going to wind up beholden to being pro-active in stopping all crime. They open themselves to liability, too.
I can see it now, "I had a date and I looked at their Facebook profile but there was no indication they were a rapist, yet during discovery we found a message send 6 years ago about how this guy 'hates women'. Facebook knew this was a dangerous person and made no attempt to warn others."
This is why any sensible online service explicitly disclaims responsibility for monitoring user communications.
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Because if they don't, things may become much more difficult for them. They really don't want local police or FBI pulling Megaupload on them and grabbing all their servers as evidence next time some crime is investigated.
Ok, so why stop at pedophilia / ephebophilia? Why not report people openly admitting to smoking marijuana, or underage persons talking about drinking, or people with active lifestyle pictures when they're claiming disability?
Pedophilia is special case - mention adult trying to have sex with a kid and any trace of reason goes out of the window. Reporting marijuana smokers could attract some bad press while nobody sane will dare to publicly speak up against monitoring for suspected pedophiles.
Facebook is pulling the opposite direction and it's eventually going to cost them. If they get in the business of being pro-active in stopping crime, they're only going to wind up beholden to being pro-active in stopping all crime. They open themselves to liability, too.
Whatever they do, it is going to cost them. I guess they analysed the situation and decided that becoming voluntary source for law enforcement is going to be less costly than alternatives.
I can see it now, "I had a date and I looked at their Facebook profile but there was no indication they were a rapist, yet during discovery we found a message send 6 years ago about how this guy 'hates women'. Facebook knew this was a dangerous person and made no attempt to warn others."
This is why any sensible online service explicitly disclaims responsibility for monitoring user communications.
Look through Facebook ToS and I bet you find all usua
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Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Informative)
Next thing you know the US postal service will mandate that eveyone send their mail on postcards so it can be read. If you aren't doing anything wrong, why woudn't you mind anyone reading your messages? /sarcasm.
This was sarcasm, but it brings up a fundamental disastrous event back in the early days of the Internet. Some jackass at the FCC decided that, unlike the US Mail and the telephone, "the Internet" was not a communications system, and thus not subject to the same sort of privacy or access rights. And here we are now, with an Internet that is used more for communication than anything else.
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I fully agree, but there is a big but....
They own the means of communication, they store it etc. However, they also offer the illusion of privacy. There is no notice that all communication is being monitored.
A park if a public place...but if I am sitting with you in a park, and we glance around and see nobody nearby, and talk so that no normal person should hear our voices.... would you then say a person using a parabolic listening device to eavesdrop was doing nothing wrong to monitor us? Maybe if its his
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Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
In most civilized countries, a company can in fact not do "whatever they want" with your data even if you give it to them.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless of course if the ToS contradict current laws, then the ToS are ToSsed out.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Interesting)
This just reminds me of the whole 'freedom of speech' logic. I run some online fourms, and the whole 'expectation of privacy' fails the exact same way as 'freedom of speech' does. And it comes down to the fact that I, and Facebook, are not the government.
I, as a private citizen, am not required to allow freedom of speech on my privately run forums. And while in generally, I allow people to say what they wish, there are certain discussions my moderators are going to shut down immediately. And I can do this because freedom of speech only guarantees that the GOVERNMENT can't stop you from saying something, not another individual if you happen to be saying it on their servers.
Similarly, the whole expectation of privacy is a government thing. There are indeed certain places that the government can't just gather whatever information it wants about you or spy on you without a court order (or at least can't use any information they gather in court), because you have an expectation of privacy. Private citizens however have no such restriction (except of course if they break another law to gather such information, like breaking into your house). Which means that if you voluntarily use THEIR servers to chat, you have NO expectation of privacy from them, as they are NOT a government either. This is completely besides the fact you agreed to their terms of service for the opportunity to use their servers in the first place. Which I'm sure contains some language about them being able to see and use any and all communications you put on their servers.
Why do people not understand that many of the freedoms in this country, are freedoms that protect us from our government ONLY, not each other?
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
What you creeping authoritarians don't understand is that when technology changes, it shouldn't result in an erosion by freedom, and hiding behind "constitution only protects us from the government"is douchey.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "should", but "could"... except that doing so was explicitly made illegal, so that's not a fair analogy.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's an invalid extrapolation. In the case of the phone, it's you talking to one, or perhaps a few other people in real time. No one who isn't there by invitation of one of the parties can hear the conversation (without a wiretap). In his forum, many people are there who weren't invited by the party making the post, and people can read that post days, weeks, or years later, out of context because it's not the same type of real-time interactive communication as a phone call.
The GP is correct. If it's m
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It's wrong because they are a "common carrier". You pay them for the connecting you to one other person, and you have an explicit expectation of privacy, one backed up by a law prohibiting them from monitoring except under court order (which, BTW, they have been ignoring since 9/11, most calls in the US now have some level of monitoring, whether it's just the date, time, calling, and callled numbers, or the actual audio, and that is done without a warrant).
FB provides a free service that is unregulated and
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Common carrier *should* extend to any communication with implied privacy between two parties. Which should include facebook chat, but not facebook wall posts. Unfortunately it doesn't. In no small part due to people like most of the responders to my original post. They don't want to extend the privacy of a phone call to new forms of 2-person communication that are analogous. It's sad how technology erodes peoples' will to be free. Shaking my head...
I don't jibe with the idea that "just because something new is shitty in the way something old wasn't, that it shouldn't be granted the same privacy protections as something old". It was originally legal to intercept telegraph communications as well. It's not moral, correct, or honest.
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I don't care whether you agree with it. I you keep ignoring all the relevant points about expectation of privacy, ToS, and the law, and keep trying to reframe the discussion in an attempt to make your point. The fact is you are incorrect, and your extrapolation is invalid, and illegal.
Like it or not, that's the way it is.
the logical fallacy of the slippery slope (Score:3, Interesting)
"gays should be allowed to marry"
"By your logic, necrophiliacs and bestiality practitioners should be allowed to marry"
"marijuana should be legal"
"By your logic, plutonium and ricin should be legal"
"private servers are not subject to free speech rules meant to prohibit the government's intrusive actions because private servers aren't the government"
"By your logic, cell phones should spy on you"
it's called the slippery slope, and when you engage in it, you lose an argument. because depending upon the slipper
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honestly, everything outside of walking and talking on a deserted beach where the sound of crashing surf drowns out telescope microphones, is an illusion of privacy
as for EXPECTATION of privacy, this is entirely dictated by laws. for example, i expect privacy in my own home, even if my kitchen window is open and passersbys overhear what i say. so we have illusion of privacy, expectation of privacy, perceived privacy, and actual privacy, and then we have the concept of who is privy to conversation they shoul
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Actual censorship would be noticeable pretty quickly but you may never know when you are being spied on. If I regarded it essential for the contents of my communication to remai
No, it is YOU that don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US claims to be the home of the free but it really isn't. But it has put the burden of censorship and control on private companies. Take sex, US TV has very little of it. Not because of any laws by the state, that would be censorship. But all the networks censor themselves instead... or... well... they don't want to find out what else, so they censor themselves far more then a state owned broadcaster like the BBC does. The BBC has nudity in family comedies. Unthinkable in the US. State censorship means supervision and control by the public. Private censorship means nobody ultimately is accountable.
In soviet russia, you are not allowed to say anything or the KGB will kill you.
In capitalist russia, you can say whatever you want, just nobody will print it or broadcast it. It is far more effective. Dead people become martyrs. Unpublished people are just nobodies.
It is an old trick of capatilist. You are free to protest but if you do, no mortage and job for you. It ain't government repression if the government isn't doing it.
Think about the app-store and iTunes and Amazon. They have censored material from you but it ain't "real" censorship because they ain't the state. Just an amazing coincedence that the powers that be and the private mega corps have the same ideas about what you should and should not be able to see, hear and think.
Now go and consume like a good little free slave.
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Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
What more do you think Facebook has to do to make it obvious that it isn't 'most peoples' facebook', it is 'facebook's facebook'?
They changed emails without asking.
They change the page layout without asking.
They record everything you do when at the site and use those data to display specific advertisements.
They delete profiles without asking.
They delete contact data from your phone without asking.
They don't remove profile data, when asked.
They change privacy settings without asking.
They change their privacy policy without asking.
At this point if you are a Facebook user and you believe your activities there aren't exposed to a 3rd party (Facebook itself), you are unfathomably thick headed. Just like with all of the other web based / cloud based storage: the people who own those servers own your stuff. No amount of legal or PR mumbo jumbo changes that. At the top of your comments page here: "The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.", is an absolute demonstrable lie and anyone who believes they 'own' their comments in this page is delusional.
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
What more do you think Facebook has to do to make it obvious that it isn't 'most peoples' facebook', it is 'facebook's facebook'?
Or to be a little more pithy, you don't have a page on Facebook. Facebook has a page on you. Insert soviet reference if desired.
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What possible expectation of privacy do you have on Facebook? It's a data mining company, why would you hold any 'Private' conversation there?
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your analogy isn't a valid. In a chat application, there is an expectation of privacy because the members of the chat are explicitly listed as parties to the chat - your chat partner and yourself. if someone else was a party to the chat, you'd expect to see their name listed in the chat box somewhere.
In a bar, you don't expect the same level of privacy because you know there are people around you.
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If you really are dumb enough to groom a child over a fucking chat application, you deserve the prison rape coming your way. Ever seen 'To Catch a Predator'?
The problem I see isn't that (I agree with you in fact: if some does that sort of thing and discussed it via my servers and I somehow knew then damn right the police would find out).
The problem is false positives, and the fact that the system is probably pretty much automated (or what little human scrutiny each report might get is performed by a minimum wage worker who may not even have a great grasp of the language you are communicating in, or at least its local colloquialisms (especially in instances w
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll have to explain the relevance of that to me. The Congress referred to is the US legislature, is it not? Can you explain Facebook's affiliation to Congress? How has anybody's right to free speech been abridged by Facebook monitoring the said speech and reporting evidence of wrongdoing to the authorities?
I honestly don't know why anybody has any expectation of privacy on the Facebook site. It's a corporation whose only obligation is to its stockholders. It only has a privacy policy at all insofar as not having one will drive some people away from its site which will decrease its value in the eyes of its customers (the advertisers).
Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it so weird that they're doing this? If you went into a bar and talked to folks about having sex with the underage, and someone overheard you, there's a chance that you'd get your ass handed to you, as well as have the cops called to take you away. What's different about facebook doing it? And who the hell relinquishes such personal, and incriminating information on a public server? I know it's not a public server, but it works just like a public bar that's privately owned.
Remember this next time you chat to someone about how you got "so wasted" the other night at the bar and the cops show up an hour later to interrogate you on DUI suspicions.
Remember this the next time your 16-year son is simply chatting to someone about smoking pot, and next thing you know you are being served with a search warrant on your home, ransacking your house.
Not all cases of the police surveillance state are as blatantly obvious as a pedophile case. Use your head and understand exactly how this can (and likely will) be abused.
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Re:Facebook is a public place (Score:5, Insightful)
The main difference is the bar doesn't go out of it's way to implement technology to eavesdrop on its patrons. Seems like an awful business model for a bar (unless they are bounty hunters in disguise).
A patron overhearing you in a bar is not the same thing as somebody who works for the bar actively listening for criminal activity. The random person at the bar hearing your criminal activity is the same thing as the "report photo/story" feature in Facebook, which seems to be ok with most of us, but Facebook admins (or bots) crawling through chats isn't.
And people wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And people wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
There were stories detailing the moderation system there recently, and a lot of this "moderation" is taking place in other countries. This has led to a lot of cultural confusion.
I like cosplay girls (sue me) and this has been a constant problem with some of these girls. They post a bikini picture or something a bit too sexy, someone (usually attributed to the theoretical "jealous bitch"), and then a moderator somewhere throws it out saying it's pornographic.
I can easily see the same thing happening for "criminal activity," though you would hope that wouldn't survive the escalation process. But how far does the outsourcing go???
Re:And people wonder (Score:5, Funny)
why facebook has become unhip
Yeah, MySpace was never as cool after the pedos left.
Not surprising given what we read earlier.. (Score:3)
..on Facebook outsourcing moderation of content. Chat isn't such a stretch from this.
http://yro.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=worst+paid+job+on+facebook [slashdot.org]
Eh? (Score:2)
Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day.
What does this mean? As a typical /. user I skimmed the links.....
Re: (Score:2)
Are you familiar with Minority Report? [wikipedia.org]
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Informative)
1984 in real time (Score:5, Insightful)
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." -- George Orwell, "1984", chapter 5
Re:1984 in real time (Score:5, Funny)
So that's where Mark got his inspiration for a site name.
Welcome to the free world (Score:5, Insightful)
The only think that astonishes me about this story, is that anybody is surprised by it.
The sweeping changes that took place post 9/11, and continue to take place, are delivering us inexorably into the stuff of fiction.
jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they consider the liability issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, every victim could potentially sue Facebook for not protecting them from predators. "We read news report about Facebook monitoring our chats and catching the criminals. It is all Facebook's fault I lied to my parents, played hookey with school and took a bus to Middle Ofnowhere from Gated Condos, Florida". And every false positive could end up with a suit against Facebook for slander, loss of reputation. And privacy advocates could sue Facebook for violation expectations of privacy. It looks like an all around lose-lose-lose proposition. Why are they doing it?
Of course the example is the best case scenario (Score:4, Interesting)
.
MSN Also Censors (Score:3)
http://writingjunkie.net/images/stlouis10-18-08/obama-cool-again.jpg [writingjunkie.net]
Yet another reason for ubiquitous crypto usage in IM. Use a libpurple-based client with OTR (Pidgin, Adium) and you can avoid much of this mess.
HTML5 Facebook Encryption Layer (Score:4, Interesting)
What's needed is a HTML5 Facebook access app that would layer on top of a Facebook session and encrypt everything typed into any chat or update fields. Enrcypted content would be recognized and decrypted automatically. Otherwise, it would be a transparent layer over Facebook.
You'd want some kind of key management and an easy option for posting without encryption.
Encryption would make conversations much more private, especially the ones you (rightly, IMHO) assume should be private, like messages and chat. A nice side bonus would be ensuring that the communication you were having is the person you think it is.
The fun bonus is that it would make Facebook batshit nuts to lose access to content, since they would not be able to encrypt it.
Re:HTML5 Facebook Encryption Layer (Score:4, Informative)
You just described Pidgin with OTR [cypherpunks.ca].
There appears* to be a Pidgin plugin [google.com] for Facebook. So, Pidgin+OTR, plus convincing whomever you're chatting with to install and enable the same thing, is the solution. Of course, as with most technological problems, the third part of that sequence---the human part---is going to be the hardest problem to solve. The tech exists, if only people would use it.
* I can't test any of this to see if it works because I don't have a Facebook account and never will.
Liability (Score:3)
I suspect this policy creates a liability problem for FaceBook. If I am the victim of a crime and discover that part of its planning was done via FaceBook but they failed to notice or report it, I could perhaps sue them for failing to stop it.
Re: (Score:3)
My phone company repeatedly allows the negotiations of market rigging and insider trading to go on. They fail to notice or report it. Where's their liability?
For a tiny fraction of the ill-gotten profits as a reward, they would be sitting on piles of cash. They wouldn't even have to listen in on the relevant conversations. Simple link mining of call records (which courts have ruled are the telecoms property and may be sold) would reveal many of these negotiations. So lets get with it, Ma Bell.
This will backfire long-term. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I'm all for catching pedophiles, this is bound to fail long term.
- Criminals now know that Facebook is watching, so they won't communicate on it.
- People talking about victimless "crimes", such as recreational drug usage, on Facebook, will now be suspect to having their lives destroyed because of the company trying to be a "goody two-shoes" and turning them in.
So basically, the value of Facebook as a medium to let loose and express yourself has gone down, with no real long term benefit to catching actual criminals who hurt people.
Please, let's leave criminal investigation to the appropriate authorities. Private companies should not be getting in on the act.
Facebook is in the business of mining data (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook mines data. As they mine data, they are looking to glean each and every bit of useful (read "sellable") data from a user's interactions. In the event that their slicing and dicing of data uncovers something like what we see here with the 30s vs. 13 scenario, I think they are morally accountable to report it to the authorities. It's no different than what everybody was upset at Penn State for with the Sandusky situation. If it ever came to light that Facebook had these details and knowingly chose to do nothing, then you'd have them smeared in the newspapers like Joe Paterno was.
I think it;s commendable for Facebook to "use their powers for good" in this situation. People need to realize that the data Facebook gathers and mines really is theirs (thanks to the EULA), and they can be free to slice and dice it as they please. The concern here is not that Facebook oversteps it's bounds, but rather we need to be cognizant of what data we share, and knowing that it WILL be mined for profit.
For those of you still thinking about buying stock in Facebook, think this through for a bit. They key to making a company profitable is to sell a "product" to a "consumer".
Facebook is interesting in this regard, because some people are not very clear on what the "product" is. Most believe the "product" is this cool social network concept, and that the users of the network are the "consumers". They live in the delusion that Facebook can pay it's bills and such from the abundance of goodwill their users give them each time the log into the site.
In reality, while to social network portion encourages sharing and provides links between people and data, the actual users of Facebook are the "product".
Users can join and use Facebook for free, so no profit for the company is made there. Profit is made for the company by selling user information ("product") to advertisers ("consumers"). As stockholders demand more and more profits, Facebook must come up with newer and more innovative and intrusive ways to gather information from users to sell.
Could this be considered a digital form of larceny? Larceny is defined as "the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another from his or her possession with intent to convert them to the taker's own use." Is Facebook not taking the details of every status, every "like", every chat, every picture & image you share online, and mining that data for themselves for a profit?
Now I'm not saying that Facebook is doing anything illegal here. Their Terms of Use clearly define what we, as voluntary users, agree to. However, this does shed some light onto why some decisions from Facebook management don't seem to have the user's best interest in mind. I believe that as more and more people realize that the profitability of the company rests solely on pillaging data from their users, fewer and fewer people will find themselves willing to subject their digital details to such a flogging.
I'm not advocating a boycott of Facebook or anything silly like that. While I enjoy the social aspects of Facebook, and don't mind sharing some of my details, I am also very cautious about what gets posted online.
As an investment choice, Facebook seems a bit risky to me because the amount of data to be mined can be severely impacted by things such as new legislation, one big data loss, password snafu, the emergence of another premier social network, or any other event that causes users to begin to abandon Facebook. Loss of data to be mined would equate to the loss of a product, and the company will begin to crumble under it's own weight.
Slippery slope evident (Score:3)
Of course you can't say anything bad because you would be condoning statutory rape.
But Facebook is special. They should be under stricter rules than a common carrier even, because they log you in everywhere and know so much about you.
How to catch a statutory rapist? Heavily scan all interactions between minors and adults (FB knows your age) and if any sex-related words hit the filter you have a potential crime. Have an employee read the log to be sure, or just outsource it. Maybe the church or young police trainees will do it for free.
You could write a smart filter to catch drug dealing, or to catch attempted suicide, and so on.
It should be trivial to write a smart filter for any given crime, such as drug dealing, suicide, or perhaps "not crime but against a corporation's interest". Call it facecrime.
For example it is probably trivial for FB to know your employer. Than heavily scan all interactions between competitors' employees. If any suspicious words, perhaps work-related terms appear then there is potential crime again. The RIAA would love this too.
This is such an endlessly useful and potentially lucrative area that I could see FB gaining an income stream from the kind of companies that currently are politicians' major income sources.
So what else are they spying on! (Score:4, Insightful)
If Syria, Egypt or libya did this, we'd be up in arms about it. This is nothing more than facebook monitoring users as proxy for the government. Its slightly unsettling. Its a violation of an expectation of privacy.
What happens when that law broken is simple drug use, the so called "unlawful assembly", or other minor crimes used to tar and feather or public humiliate dissedents. Who gets to decide what gets fowarded to the authorities.
Even better, what system is in place to prevent facebook employees using information for their own gain? what about personal gain? what about prying on secrets of competitors for sexual mates? What about revenge?
Duh (Score:3)
With all the news coverage that Facebook has gotten regarding privacy and the lack thereof, only the truly clueless and stupid could possibly think that there's some kind of expectation of privacy while using facebook in any capacity at all.
Hell, even my mother is nervous about using facebook, and if she was any less technically literate than she is already, she wouldn't have a computer at all.
There is no Privacy on the Internet. (Score:3)
Everything you do and say on the internet is subject to monitoring, for right or wrong or good or ill by commercial, government, and possibly criminals (other than "commercial" and "government").
Be smart about what you say and do.
Re: (Score:2)
The Muzzies are coming!
The Muzzies are coming!
Everyone keep calm
They're violent and they're evil,
And they mean to do us harm
This is on topic [google.co.uk] for once. I just hope that Facebook pay particular attention to conversations in Urdu.
Re: (Score:3)
[Bollywood dance number spontaneous erupts]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No it's not. Facebook isn't a telecommunications system. There is no legal expectation of privacy.
You will never get the Feds to call the Internet a common carrier like your telephone system. Never in a million years. They're power mad now.
It's not a wiretap (Score:4, Informative)
>This is private communication between two-parties over a telecommunications system,
The ECPA gives operators an "out" by letting them view traffic as a part of their duties as operators.
Without a stated privacy policy, an operator can only get in trouble by targeting specific people and literally going out of his way to view streams of live communication not related to getting the job done, but that's hard to prove. And if there is a policy saying that they have access to your data, well, expect no privacy. It's been this way for a long time, ever since the BBS days. Remember those blanket "expect no privacy" statements that suddenly appeared on login at Joe's single-line BBS at 1200bps in 1986? 26 long years.
From the Facebook private policy itself:
This here, also could be construed as protecting the right of a 13 year old to be free from online stalking.
That last bit is a catch-all for what they're doing. What they don't tell you is that if they see anything untoward, they will call the cops.But they don't have to. They just have to tell you that they can see your stuff. Joe, back in 1986 might have called the cops if he saw someone stalking a 13 year old on his BBS or maybe not. Maybe Joe wouldn't want the bullshit of dealing with the police that wouldn't even comprehend what he was doing, but he would have been within his rights to do so.
If you're going to communicate privately, Facebook is not the way to do it. It should be obvious by the fact that chat messages do not disappear into the aether, but rather get archived on your page. If you want your messages to disappear into the aether, use a service and protocol that is forgetful, like even something as simple as ytalk (fancy versions of this we call old style instant messaging like ICQ).
It's not Facebook's fault that people, through their ignorance (wilful or not), don't use the correct tools.
FFS, if i want to talk about something private, i take it to a server in Denmark or set up a chat on the localhost.
Here, set up a chat server on the localhost: http://unite.opera.com/application/182/ [opera.com]
And there you go. If you want privacy, you don't stand in the middle of the fucking Mall shouting your private friggin' business in real life. Why do it online?
>Where are the feds?
Being appreciative of Facebook's service and trolling /r/gonewild
--
BMO
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on the country. In Canada we have a law that states talking to a under-age person online in such a way that gains there trust and theoretically would put you in a good position to proposition them in the future is illegal (note: even if you had proof that you never planned to meet them in person, it still counts as illegal [and at least technically they do not need proof that you ever planed on doing anything beyond being nice]).
Re: (Score:3)
Please cite the criminal law section that says that.
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on the country. In Canada we have a law that states talking to a under-age person online in such a way that gains there trust and theoretically would put you in a good position to proposition them in the future is illegal (note: even if you had proof that you never planned to meet them in person, it still counts as illegal [and at least technically they do not need proof that you ever planed on doing anything beyond being nice]).
So Canada has banned sports coaching, youth clubs and activities, not to mention teaching children under 18?
And you can't talk to your friends' kids, either.
Wow.
Oh, yeah, and it's *their* trust in this context.
Re: (Score:3)
No, Canada has just made it so if you are online the judge can label you a paedophile completely at his discretion. The idea is that it can be used to arrest undesirables that do not break any other laws, because at least for now the government is afraid enough of the people to not be completely unjust.
It was made to close a "loophole" in previous laws that allowed this one man in particular to get off scot free when he proved that he never planed to meet the under-aged girl he was having internet sex with.
Re:Thought Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was he arrested for planning to have sex with her? Is that now illegal?
It's a matter of legal philosophy. Most Americans want the police to stop crimes from happening, not to just track down and arrest criminals after a crime is committed.
It's not just child abuse. You can be arrested for trying to buy drugs from an undercover police officer. You can be arrested for conspiring to murder someone. You can be arrested for planning to blow up a building.
Re:Thought Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a matter of legal philosophy. Most Americans want the police to stop crimes from happening
Most Americans are not self-aware enough to understand that if the police can arrest other people before they've even committed a crime, they can arrest you too, even if you haven't committed a crime because you might.
Re:Thought Crime (Score:5, Informative)
> Why was he arrested for planning to have sex with her? Is that now illegal?
In the US, as in most countries, it is not true that it's only a crime if you succeed. So yes, planning to have sex with a 13 year old girl is a real crime.
A "thoughtcrime" (one word, from the book 1984) is an unacceptable belief. No action is required for these bad thoughts to be a crime, just the idea is a crime. He didn't merely have the thoughts, he took actions. Contacting a minor and going to meet her far exceed mere thoughts.
You're free to fantasize about killing your boss, but if you buy a gun and hide in the bushes outside his house and fire the gun at him (but miss), you've still committed a real crime. If attempted murder can be a crime, I don't see why attempted statutory rape wouldn't a crime. In fact, I don't see why soliciting a minor (even if he/she says no) shouldn't be a crime (it is).
Thoughts, ideas and motivations have always been a part of the law. The distinction between first degree (premeditated) murder and second degree murder predates the United States by thousands of years. In order to distinguish accidental and intentional murder, a jury must speculate on the thoughts of the accused. These personal thoughts are revealed through actions. We don't call that "thoughtcrime".
Contacting a minor, making plans to have sex, and going to meet her are all actions that the man took and are obviously illegal.
None of this should be seen as a defense of Facebook for spying on private communications. I just want to clarify that attempting to commit a crime is still a crime.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a difference between thought crimes and real crimes.
Thinking about underage sex doesn't get you arrested.
Making active preparations - he'd arranged to meet her - does.
And the companies aren't helping by acting as judge jury and executioner.
hyperbolic and incorrect; they merely acted as informants.
Just because he talked about sex doesn't make him guilty. Unless he actually went to the school, convinced her and they had sex then should actually be prosecuted.
The most facebook should have done is alerted the parents and then have a heart to heart talk with the man.
If I ever come across a plot to kill you, Mr AC, I'll bear that in mind, and keep the information to myself until after the murder. It's what you would have wanted.
Re: (Score:3)
I like to pretend my wife is a high priced call girl and pick her up in a bar. With all the other guys she shot down as a bunch of low rent chumps looking on. I know she's not a call girl. She knows she's not a call girl. The onlookers might think they see something going on, but its not. Now, what if one of them is a cop?
Granted, the situation with a 13 year old girl is different, as a 13 yo is presumed not capable of consenting to a sexual relationship. But what if the girl in question wasn't really 13?