Facebook Patented Making NSA Data Handoffs Easier 137
theodp writes "In June, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blasted 'outrageous press reports' about the PRISM surveillance program, denying that Facebook was ever 'part of any program to give the U.S. or any other government direct access to our servers.' What Zuckerberg didn't mention, and what the press overlooked, is that the USPTO granted Facebook a patent in May for its Automated Writ Response System. Like the NSA-enabling systems described by the NY Times on the same day Zuckerberg cried foul, the patent covers technical methods to more efficiently share the personal data of users with law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in response to lawful government requests via APIs and secured portals installed at company-controlled locations. 'While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement,' the Times noted, 'making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so.'"
What an asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
'nuf said
At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg ... (Score:2)
... and I am glad I never waste any of my time in fb
Re:At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg . (Score:5, Interesting)
... and I am glad I never waste any of my time in fb
Indeed - the ony thing more amazing than people putting personal shit up on a public website is people putting personal shit up on a public website that's owned and run by a known sociopath.
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Don't worry, you'll never make them realise that they're not the lead character in a conspiracy thriller. Sure there are "conspiracies" (though not exactly very surprising ones given the contents of the PATRIOT act), but most people are boring as hell. Even the ones that think they're interesting.
Re:At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg . (Score:4, Insightful)
most people are boring as hell. Even the ones that think they're interesting.
However, the ones who are interesting tend to be pretty important to society. Guys like MLK, presidential candidates, potential supreme court nominees. [latimes.com] Those sorts of people. When the government has access to their private communications it is just too easy to use that access to neuter any people who might challenge the current government.
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The site is a privacy nightmare.
It was a privacy nightmare in the early days. Now it's a privacy bad acid trip.
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i agree totally...and the irony is that the vast majority of users want MORE of this sort of thing on FB, not less!
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Facebook even creates "ghost profiles" for people who don't even sign up for an account, so without you ever giving consent, any interaction you have with those who do have account is logged. The site is a privacy nightmare.
Facebook takes your name, address, phone number and email address from your friends phones using the FB app. Your co-workers too -- you did give HR your 'emergency contact number' right? You can bet those are programmed into a phone contact list so HR can send a group message.
I'm sure you could be jobless and friendless living in a cave, but that's about the only way to avoid it now.
I suggest poisoning the database. Add false contacts to your phone, use one to sign up for store discount cards and fake G
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Surely databases have some way to flag bogus data. Here, perhaps anything that doesn't confirm as referenced by more than one user could be flagged as bad data.
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If only it were that simple. Even if you choose not to share any information, your friends can tag you in photos,
No. They cannot. You control if you want to let your friends tag you, approve tags, or flat out block tags.
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If only it were that simple. Even if you choose not to share any information, your friends can tag you in photos, letting Big Brother know you were in a certain place at a certain time with certain people.
I have no friends, phew!
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How does one avoid them? Go off the grid? Is that even possible?
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Tags that you do not consent to do not become public. However, Facebook still has the information that someone tried to apply the tag.
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What's that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of all these Like buttons trying to track me from every webpage in existence, even resorting to plain-HTML tracking if all else fails. GA stops working if you disable JS.
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lucky there's ghostery available that stops such tracking.
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lucky there's ghostery available that stops such tracking.
IIRC ghostery was acquired by a marketing firm, which should make you at least question the product.
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From ghostery web page:
"© 2013 Ghostery, a service of Evidon, Inc."
From google, searching for "Evidon"
"""
Evidon: Home | Online Marketing Intelligence, Web Analytics, Privacy
www.evidon.com/ - Cached - Similar
Evidon grows businesses by delivering new and accurate intelligence on how
the digital marketplace really works.
"""
I'm glad I never got round to trying it out, I was initially tempted.
Re:At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg . (Score:5, Insightful)
... and I am glad I never waste any of my time in fb
Don't worry -- at least half a dozen of your friends are working hard to make sure you are not forgotten (posting and tagging fotos, marking "I know this person from..." questions, etc.)
Solution (Score:2)
Solution : don't have friend ;).
Re:Solution (Score:4, Funny)
Solution : don't have friend ;).
Faraway cage?
To me, yes, it was ,,, (Score:3, Insightful)
At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg
This is a surprise to you... ?!
Yes, to me, it was
I have heard of the name of Mark Zuckerberg, I know that kid got brains
But I was not aware that he is such a pathetic liar
Now, at least I, and many others, know
And this also teaches me a lesson --- never assume anything --- I was assuming that a brainy fella like Mark Zuckerberg would appreciate the value of liberty
How wrong I was !
Last, but not least, I need to thank Edward Snowden for starting the ball rolling ... If not for Mr. Snowden, we wouldn't have known so much --- NSA / PRISM / a
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Last, but not least, I need to thank Edward Snowden for starting the ball rolling ... If not for Mr. Snowden, we wouldn't have known so much --- NSA / PRISM / and the latest episode ... Mark Zuckerberg
Yeah this!
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Re:At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg . (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. Before this, no one knew that Mark Zuckerberg was a liar and not to be trusted. I'm sure glad this happened so we could finally see him for what he really is.
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Yeah. Before this, no one knew that Mark Zuckerberg was a liar and not to be trusted. I'm sure glad this happened so we could finally see him for what he really is.
Yep. How more obvious can you make it?
To answer my own rhetorical question: He could get a nice white Siamese cat and stroke it while giving interviews.
Re:At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg . (Score:5, Interesting)
At least now we know the real Mark Zuckerberg ...
We've known the real him for a while now:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Can't you see he's fighting for our freedoms? That patent is just the start, there are plenty more in the works. Eventually, they'll cover every way of handing the government information, and no one else will be able to do it. It's genius.
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I think you're being too lenient toward him..
in the future, everyone will still have to hand the government information, only now Fuckerberg will demand a licence payment each time.
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nah, this is great - patent all the methods for complying with illegal NSA spying to make sure that other companies can't do the same. It's an effective attack limiter to only one company per valid attack.
I'm pretending the NSA won't illegally coerce the companies into illegally violating the patents for the illegal surveillance they're coercing the companies into doing. Oh, sorry, that's the FBI, isn't it?
Re:What an asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget, this is the same guy who signed up for Google+ the day it launched and then closed his account because he "didn't want Google tracking him" or something like that.
He mocks the stupidity of the Average Joe right in front of their faces and they never catch on.
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>He mocks the stupidity of the Average Joe right in front of their faces and they never catch on.
You realize this supports his claim.
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FISABook?
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to avoid F***book.
I haven't heard that one... Farcebook, Facecrook... Fuck(erberg's)book, obfuscated with self-censorship?
Mark Fuckerberg's scheme is to collect billions of dollars worth of marks' PII, then pimp it all out to his customers (NSA, FBI, FSB, corporate propagandists, your worst enemy, etc.). The mark's cut of the money made from selling his or her PII amounts to some zero dollars and cents per year, plus inundation with targeted corporate propaganda meant to manipulate the mark's decisions/habits/behaviors, and
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I for one resolve the "***" to "aeces". Which is still an insult to honest fertilizer.
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Faustbook!
That'd work, excepting one small detail: Unlike Faust's trading of his soul in order to gain knowledge, Faustbook accepts souls* in order for Fuckerberg to gain complete knowledge over about his victims. Worse than a Faustian bargain, it is — just as I opined above — a straight-up sucker deal.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." —Cardinal Richelieu
* My secular interpretation of "souls" in this context:
Legitimate FISA request (Score:5, Insightful)
legitimate FISA request
By their very nature they fail to be legitimate in my eyes.
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There's also an interesting meaning of the word 'legal' of which I was previously unaware as being remotely legitimate.
Ok this just in (Score:5, Informative)
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He's the bastard son. As if Satan has any other kind.
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Satan? Seriously?
You equate the one character from the Bibble that had the balls to stand up against the divine tyranny to this Mark Zuckerberg? That's offensive to Satan.
In all seriousness, as an atheist I don't much care about the feelings of imaginary beings, but looking at the bibble as a story and comparing the characters, there is 1 divine "big brother", who watches everything you do and one guy who tells you to oppose such foolishness.
To quote great speech by Al Pacino ('John Milton'), whose in fact
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Doesn't matter - FB has entered a death spiral (Score:5, Interesting)
As go the teenagers, so goes the industry.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus [theguardian.com]
With all this social networking shit, perception is key: once FB is no longer consider cool or the "in-thing", it's fucked. Like Myspace fucked.
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| Besides rampant attention whores without real friends, people incapable of extracting their noses from the person in fronts arserhole, people who believe anyone who doesn't have a fffacebook page must worship at the evil Google Altar, and, "intelligence" agencies.
Sounds like there will be customers for decades.
Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public. -- P.T. Barnum
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As go the teenagers, so goes the industry.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus [theguardian.com]
With all this social networking shit, perception is key: once FB is no longer consider cool or the "in-thing", it's fucked. Like Myspace fucked.
Unless the "old" people (30-50) really don't care about what those kids do, as long as they have a means of keeping in touch with the rest of the family. And if they do, the kids will complain, but will stay as well, although not as active.
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the trick is only active accounts generate ad revenue. without people Facebook has nothing to sell(you) to its customers(ad companies)
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The problem that Facebook faces is that much of its current stock price critically hinges on the belief that it is a "growth" stock. Look at some of the numbers ( http://www.thestreet.com/story/12043406/1/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-facebook.html [thestreet.com] ):
The stock is ridiculously priced at 208 times trailing earnings, 48 times 2014 consensus earnings estimates, more than 10 times book value, and 18 times revenue.
Once investors realize that FB is no longer growing - especially that young eyeballs and thumbs have moved elsewhere - they will also realize that it will never live up to its (admittedly unrealistic) future earnings estimates. At which point the stock price
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The Facebook Messenger app is much better than WhatsApp IMO.. it allows you to continue conversations uninterrupted either on your PC or mobile, plus it's free. Not sure why people get so interested in it. One person I knew said her phone had "free international texts" - which sounded like a pretty awesome deal - but then I found out she just meant using WhatsApp. Wtf?
But but but.. (Score:1)
Maybe they patented it so that nobody would use it?
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Maybe they patented it so that nobody would use it?
They patented it to EXTORT MONEY FROM OTHERS !!
Automated means unsupervised (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's automated, it means there's no way a person checked the warrant before giving access.
So whether its legal or not is moot, since Facebook are *trusting* the LEA's claim that its legal, regardless of whether it actually is.
I wonder if Microsoft provides a backdoor portal to Windows PCs? I bet they get far more demands, and they probably would automate it too. I know that telephone companies made telephone tapping automated. A law enforcement officer simply taps something on a screen and can tap any US phone from his desk anywhere in the country. That has the same problem, nobody checks that the court issued warrants limits are complied with, because nobody ever reads it.
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If it's automated, it means there's no way a person checked the warrant before giving access.
Rather large assumption there, but I'll go with it, given the history.
So whether its legal or not is moot, since Facebook are *trusting* the LEA's claim that its legal, regardless of whether it actually is.
Facebook is in no position to determine what is legal or not, unless they want to present an expert on Constitutional law. Zuckerberg is far from that, so don't even know why anyone asked the puppet-in-charge.
I wonder if Microsoft provides a backdoor portal to Windows PCs? I bet they get far more demands, and they probably would automate it too.
Uh, probably? They "probably" had to automate it, or budget for an additional 20 personnel to handle the requests.
I know that telephone companies made telephone tapping automated. A law enforcement officer simply taps something on a screen and can tap any US phone from his desk anywhere in the country. That has the same problem, nobody checks that the court issued warrants limits are complied with, because nobody ever reads it.
Nobody ever reads it because it's not their responsibility to.
Yes, you heard that right. Consider if you were to be
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Or more likely, the warrant is checked ..... against a list of "superwarrants" that were fought in the FISA court and lost. Any API request that cites that warrant has to be processed so automating it, though it looks bad, doesn't really change anything.
It's official (Score:1)
Facebook is evil.
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Misleading title (Score:5, Interesting)
Cooperating with the NSA to give unrestricted access to private data (aka PRISM) is completely different to complying with subpoenas. Facebook got a patent on the latter, but not the former as the headline suggests.
If you have a problem with FB giving over your data in response to legal requests then take it up with the agencies making the requests, because Facebook don't get a choice in the matter.
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Re:Misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
If Facebook is getting so many writs for personal data that it has to automate the process, and the senders are creating so many that they need access via an API so they can send them programatically, I don't think you're talking about subpoenas in any more than the strictest technical sense.
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"then what?"
On your Facebook page you see; "Catfood LIKES his home foreclosure by FlagStar!"
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I found this "Oversight Kourt Coordinated Automated Response Daemon" (OK_CARD.asp) and when I poked it with a query, all it sent back was; "In answer to your query YES. And we've also Friended you."
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If the system is automated, how does the FB API knows there's a valid subpoena behind the request?
This is good news for other services (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing it is patented (Score:3)
Hey, Facebook, make sure that no one else can use these techniques. That's your duty as a patent holder.
Where have you put your brain ? (Score:1)
Hey, Facebook, make sure that no one else can use these techniques. That's your duty as a patent holder.
Excuse me, but where have you put your brain ?
Just in case you've missed it, please allow me to re-post the first sentence of TFA ...
"In June, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blasted 'outrageous press reports' about the PRISM surveillance program ....
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Well, that's wrong. You see, the Government reserves the right to option any patent for their use.
They wouldn't get to prevent anyone from using the patent even if they wanted to. Instead, when the NSA compels other companies to infringe related patent, Facebook gets to charge the zuckers license fees.
I have prior art .... (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry Facebook, I have prior art on the "automated writ response system", which I wrote 30 years ago:
10 PRINT "Fuck off"
20 GOTO 10
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Sorry Facebook, I have prior art on the "automated writ response system", which I wrote 30 years ago:
10 PRINT "Fuck off"
20 GOTO 10
15 GOTO FederalPrison
REN
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You mean: "I refer you to the reply given in Arkell and Pressdram [blogspot.co.uk]".
The more things change the more they stay the same (Score:3)
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
TFA is just evidence of SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.
Microsoft did the same. (Score:2)
Microsoft patented (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&p=1&S1=20110153809&OS=20110153809&RS=20110153809 [uspto.gov]) listening in on Skype calls for the same reasons.
It was a CIA project all the time (Score:2)
Facebook and the CIA (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not very surprising, Facebook's strong ties to the CIA are well-known. In its early days companies very close to the CIA invested heavily into Facebook and some people likewise close to teh CIA are - or at least were, last time I looked - on Facebook's board of directors.
Smart move! Go Facebook! (Score:1)
I’m serious. This prevents other companies from making it easy on the NSA. Facebook will never make any royalties from it, and they’ll likely never implement the whole system. I love it. It’s like the GPL: Using one kind of law (IP) against another.
Suprise, suprise. (Score:3)
Zuckerberg is a lying piece of shit, news at 11.
Makes business sense (Score:2)
making it easier for the government to get the information is not
If you have no choice but to hand over the data, wouldn't it make more sense to automate the process and save your own people some time and frustration?
It's patented - does this mean we cannot use it? (Score:2)
Facebook has made it easier. I hope they made the patent broad. Of course we don't want to end up in lawsuits, so we cannot use any of the technology - right? So in effect the rest of us has to make it harder!
What about Google? (Score:2)
Stupidest patent -ever- (Score:2)
In the surprisingly fierce competition for stupid patents, this one has a leg up on other candidates:
The patent has costs for filing and much larger but nebulous costs for customer relations.
The patent cannot be expected to bring in any revenue. Other who might licence the patent have no incentive to do so since they can bill the NSA for compliance costs. The NSA could direct these others to use the patent, which as an entity of the USGovt it can use royalty-free and so to subcontractors.
Many patents are
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"FB claims ownership of software facilitating NSA spying, seeks injunction on all non-FB wiretaps!
My patent ... (Score:2)
... is to extent FB's interface for law enforcement agencies to reply to all requests with a string "Guru Meditation" and a randomly generated number appended.
How is this a patent? (Score:1)
...which is why Twitter could decline to do so. (Score:1)
And it even fits in 140 chars!
Clarification from Facebook (Score:1)
The obvious message (Score:2)
If you've never used Facebook, don't start.
If you're using Facebook, stop it.
If you have friends that use Facebook, tell them to stop.
Don't worry about deleting stuff, the odds that deletes are actually not soft-deletes are probably nil.
Just quit it.