Government Data Requests To Facebook Up By 24% 42
davidshenba writes: Facebook has revealed that government requests for user data has increased by 24% to nearly 35,000 during the first six months of the year. Also content restrictions due to local laws increased by 19% in the same period. According to Facebook, they scrutinize every government request for legal sufficiency and "push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests." Already Facebook is fighting its largest ever legal battle against a U.S. court order to handover 400 users' data.
I don't care about the breadth of data requests... (Score:5, Interesting)
I care about requests not served with an appropriate judge-signed warrant.
You're "Secure in your effects" unless someone happens to ask a corporation that's too willing to comply. Then oops. There they go.
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Re:I don't care about the breadth of data requests (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. That's fine. I don't have one.
But... um... sympathy isn't the point. Universality of constitutional protections is the point.
Re:I don't care about the breadth of data requests (Score:5, Insightful)
But how long can we still be without one? Suuuure, nobody can force you to have one. But more and more companies rely on FB for more and more things. It used to be that you have to have some FB account to participate in some raffles. Ok, no biggie. I can do without winning something I never needed. But more and more rely on them for authentication. And that's when it starts to become inconvenient.
Or at the very least more expensive. Because companies that can cut corners by "outsourcing" some of their cost to FB will be able to offer their gadgets cheaper. And that in turn will mean that privacy will become more and more a luxury item, for people that can afford it.
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That is a point that bothers me. FB is kind enough to allow others to authenticate from them, and they have very good security... but if I were running a business and needed some way to ensure customers were properly authenticated, I'd rather have a commercial entity that could give me some assurance that measures (at least PCI-DSS3 standards) were being followed.
My preference would be smaller social networks with a standard of interlinking, so events, calenders, posts, and private messages could go from s
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I've never had an account there, nor twitter, etc.
I've found it hasn't impacted my life in any negative way.
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One tenant that should apply to FB: Don't put anything on there, be it in a private message, on a wall, on a group... anywhere that you don't want every LEO in the world to know, as well as your worst enemy.
If one needs to message in private, there are secured end to end ways to do this. Even AIM has point to point SSL. Of course, there is E-mail and PGP or S/MIME.
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Tenet. Seriously, the word is tenet.
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Thanks. I don't think we have people physically dwelling in something FB-owned yet.
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Pay attention to your elected officials. They determine the laws, and from their pool the powerful elected officials come from, who ultimately pick the judges that decide on these sorts of things.
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Pay attention to your elected officials.
I believe such things should be said before election day. Read the results and weep...
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I should add that between democrats and republican, it makes no difference. So please, save it for somebody who believes that shit. The only thing to lament is that there are NO independents in the House and only two in the senate, and that reelection rates remain steady.
Vengence (Score:1)
It's important to find out who the 'traitors' are that stole the ring and voted republican...
I will never have Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
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Friends don't let friends use Facebook.
It's for your protection. (Score:5, Insightful)
So how many of you have written your congress-critter and demanded they work to repeal the bad laws passed that are facilitating this?
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So how many of you have written your congress-critter and demanded they work to repeal the bad laws passed that are facilitating this?
vs how many have tried in the past only to get sympathetic responses that outline how they are still resolute to do the exact opposite?
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...and please make it a thoughtful and respectful hand written letter. From what I hear those actually get more attention. Then of course many politicians are actually starting to pay a lot of attention to Twitter.
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Which bad laws? Be specific.
Seriously, anyone who didn't see an increase in requests to Facebook coming has been living in a cave - and it has nothing to do with bad laws. It has everything to do with Facebook increasingly becoming a repository for people's lives, and those repositories have *always* been available to law enforcement. We want them to catch the bad guys, an
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Sure we want all that, when due process is followed. I.e., a judge must have signed a warrant for access to that information. It doesn't (or shouldn't) somehow change just because it's Facebook, or whatever other online entity. That's the issue...which you touched on in your second paragraph. Not sure who you're preaching to with the first paragraph...
Digital Landlord? (Score:2)
FTA
The ruling defined Facebook as a "digital landlord".
Last time I checked, landlords charge tenants money. Since Facebook users don't pay for the service in any recognized currency, (and somehow I doubt privacy is recognized as a barterable thing), how can Facebook be a landlord?
The attempt to treat Facebook servers as the equivalent of physical premises is disturbing. Judicial over-reach, much?
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I read that too with some surprise. I don't agree with your definition of landlord and tenants - that payment must exchanged from the customer. First - define who the customer is. A Landlord simply owns the property, who then rents or leases it - in this case the advertisers pay your rent. Although another way to look at it is like a grocery store where the advertisers pay for shelf space and "we" the public browse for content? Stores don't stock the food - the advertisers do. The shelves are rented -
I believe them (Score:3)
I'd also fight tooth and nail if I was to hand over for free what I usually sell for good money!
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http://fascistbook.com/ [fascistbook.com] is already taken, but there's no website on it as of this writing.
Why are you still using Facebook? (Score:1)
You're hurting the World.
I expect this will end in January (Score:1)
Now that the Republicans control both houses of congress, I feel certain they will set things right and shut this down.
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That's right... Everybody should just relax. The emperor has been castrated, and the rule of law will once again return to this great land of ours. We took back America! All Hail! Ted Cruz/Pat Robertson 2016!