US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5

On March 21 2018 00:08 xDaunt wrote:
The thing that blows my mind about this Facebook scandal is that people actually seem to be surprised about what Facebook is and has been doing. All of this has been painfully obvious for a long time. If nothing else, the constant lying and obfuscating from Facebook execs regarding what they do with user data or how the Russians utilized Facebook to sell ads should have been the big tells.

And here's the larger conversation that needs to take place: Silicon Valley businesses really don't give two shits about infringing upon the rights of others. Whether it be Facebook selling user data without proper safeguards or Airbnb profiting from the unlawful sub-leasing of property, there clearly is a cultural problem with the tech business. I generally am not one to invite government regulation into private affairs, but this is one area where some degree government intervention is long overdue.

On March 21 2018 00:08 xDaunt wrote:
The thing that blows my mind about this Facebook scandal is that people actually seem to be surprised about what Facebook is and has been doing. All of this has been painfully obvious for a long time. If nothing else, the constant lying and obfuscating from Facebook execs regarding what they do with user data or how the Russians utilized Facebook to sell ads should have been the big tells.

And here's the larger conversation that needs to take place: Silicon Valley businesses really don't give two shits about infringing upon the rights of others. Whether it be Facebook selling user data without proper safeguards or Airbnb profiting from the unlawful sub-leasing of property, there clearly is a cultural problem with the tech business. I generally am not one to invite government regulation into private affairs, but this is one area where some degree government intervention is long overdue.

The majority of the country believes a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate national policy, according to a Monmouth Poll released Monday.

Of the 803 adults polled, 27 percent said they believe the unelected group known as the deep state definitely exists. An additional 47 percent said it probably exists. Sixteen percent said it probably does not exist and 5 percent said they believe it definitely does not exist.

In the past, President Donald Trump has railed against the deep state. Earlier this year, he tweeted that the Justice Department is part of it, posting: "Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, [sic] Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others."

Republicans and independents were more likely to respond that they believe in the existence of the deep state, with 31 percent and 33 percent respectively. Only 19 percent of Democrats said the deep state definitely exists.

Approximately 80 percent of those polled also indicated they believe the U.S. government is monitoring or spying on the actives of American citizens. Fifty-three percent said they believe the activity is widespread, and 29 percent said the monitoring is happening, but is not widespread. Only 14 percent said they believe there is no monitoring happening at all.

Few respondents, or 18 percent, said they believe government monitoring is usually justified. Fifty-three percent, however, said that government monitoring is only sometimes justified and an additional 28 percent said it is rarely or never justified.

The poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points and included a random sample of 803 adults. The survey was conducted in English via landline telephones and cellphones.

On March 21 2018 00:08 xDaunt wrote:
The thing that blows my mind about this Facebook scandal is that people actually seem to be surprised about what Facebook is and has been doing. All of this has been painfully obvious for a long time. If nothing else, the constant lying and obfuscating from Facebook execs regarding what they do with user data or how the Russians utilized Facebook to sell ads should have been the big tells.

And here's the larger conversation that needs to take place: Silicon Valley businesses really don't give two shits about infringing upon the rights of others. Whether it be Facebook selling user data without proper safeguards or Airbnb profiting from the unlawful sub-leasing of property, there clearly is a cultural problem with the tech business. I generally am not one to invite government regulation into private affairs, but this is one area where some degree government intervention is long overdue.

On March 21 2018 00:17 ChristianS wrote:

Weird to see xDaunt and P6 take basically the same position on something. I think I mostly agree.

On March 21 2018 00:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Who is supposedly part of this Deep State that is trying to delegitimize national policy and our government?

On March 21 2018 00:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I'm mostly willing to apply Hanlon's Razor to Facebook, Twitter, etc. They're not actively malicious or evil, but their compliance department/processes are a complete joke.

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower.

Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach.

“My concerns were that all of the data that left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored by Facebook, so we had no idea what developers were doing with the data,” he said.

Parakilas said Facebook had terms of service and settings that “people didn’t read or understand” and the company did not use its enforcement mechanisms, including audits of external developers, to ensure data was not being misused.

Parakilas, whose job it was to investigate data breaches by developers similar to the one later suspected of Global Science Research, which harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, said the slew of recent disclosures had left him disappointed with his superiors for not heeding his warnings.

“It has been painful watching,” he said. “Because I know that they could have prevented it.”

Asked what kind of control Facebook had over the data given to outside developers, he replied: “Zero. Absolutely none. Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on.”

Parakilas said he “always assumed there was something of a black market” for Facebook data that had been passed to external developers. However, he said that when he told other executives the company should proactively “audit developers directly and see what’s going on with the data” he was discouraged from the approach.

He said one Facebook executive advised him against looking too deeply at how the data was being used, warning him: “Do you really want to see what you’ll find?” Parakilas said he interpreted the comment to mean that “Facebook was in a stronger legal position if it didn’t know about the abuse that was happening”.

He added: “They felt that it was better not to know. I found that utterly shocking and horrifying.”

Parakilas first went public with his concerns about privacy at Facebook four months ago, but his direct experience policing Facebook data given to third parties throws new light on revelations over how such data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on the information supplied by Parakilas, but directed the Guardian to a November 2017 blogpost in which the company defended its data sharing practices, which it said had “significantly improved” over the last five years.

“While it’s fair to criticise how we enforced our developer policies more than five years ago, it’s untrue to suggest we didn’t or don’t care about privacy,” that statement said. “The facts tell a different story.”

Parakilas said he lobbied internally at Facebook for “a more rigorous approach” to enforcing data protection, but was offered little support. His warnings included a PowerPoint presentation he said he delivered to senior executives in mid-2012 “that included a map of the vulnerabilities for user data on Facebook’s platform”.

“I included the protective measures that we had tried to put in place, where we were exposed, and the kinds of bad actors who might do malicious things with the data,” he said. “On the list of bad actors I included foreign state actors and data brokers.”

Frustrated at the lack of action, Parakilas left Facebook in late 2012. “I didn’t feel that the company treated my concerns seriously. I didn’t speak out publicly for years out of self-interest, to be frank.”

That changed, Parakilas said, when he heard the congressional testimony given by Facebook lawyers to Senate and House investigators in late 2017 about Russia’s attempt to sway the presidential election. “They treated it like a PR exercise,” he said. “They seemed to be entirely focused on limiting their liability and exposure rather than helping the country address a national security issue.”

It was at that point that Parakilas decided to go public with his concerns, writing an opinion article in the New York Times that said Facebook could not be trusted to regulate itself. Since then, Parakilas has become an adviser to the Center for Humane Technology, which is run by Tristan Harris, a former Google employee turned whistleblower on the industry.

On March 21 2018 00:42 ticklishmusic wrote:
I'm mostly willing to apply Hanlon's Razor to Facebook, Twitter, etc. They're not actively malicious or evil, but their compliance department/processes are a complete joke.

On March 21 2018 00:46 Plansix wrote:

This is the company that collects data on people who don’t have facebook accounts. If they know someone has a non-facebook using roommate, they will go to other data firms to buy information on that roommate. Because that is how data hungry they are. That service is so big, and so data hungry I don’t think any at facebook really understands what is happening on the site. As far as I know, companies can still serve ads based on race and age for services where that is prohibited(real estate).

I strongly recommend this nice podcast on the subject of Facebook data profiles.

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying

An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.

Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers.

In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world. This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors.

In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”.

In another he said: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.”

On March 21 2018 01:27 Azuzu wrote:
There seems to be a general agreement in this thread that Facebook should be regulated to some degree. What do you guys propose as the regulations?

On March 21 2018 01:30 Mohdoo wrote:


Similar to patient confidentiality. Certain things you can and can not sell or give out.