Slashdot Mirror
Patriot Act Bypasses Facebook Privacy
Geoffreyerffoeg writes "An article from the National Association of Colleges and Employers contains yet another horror story about a prospective hire's Facebook being checked — with a different twist. The interviewee had enabled privacy on his profile, '[b]ut, during the interview, something he was not prepared for happened. The interviewer began asking specific questions about the content on his Facebook.com listing and the situation became very awkward and uncomfortable. The son had thought only those he allowed to access his profile would be able to do so. But, the interviewer explained that as a state agency, recruiters accessed his Facebook account under the auspices of the Patriot Act.' How can a 'state agency' use the Patriot Act to subpoena a Facebook profile?"
I'm glad a good number of the so-called sunset provisions were recently extended indefinitly. I'm sure a lot of terrorists are plotting the next 9-11 over Facebook.com.
Yes, that was sarcasm.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Perhaps a more useful way of investigating this question would be to ask whether there's a single verifiable fact that could be found regarding this story of an unnamed student, an unnamed interviewer and an unnamed agency?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
From my experience, nothing is private. If you worry something will demean your character, don't post it at all; anywhere.
It's politics. People can find a way for anything to come back to haunt you.
Perhaps he doesn't want people he doesn't know having access to his information...
Perhaps he doesn't want his prospective employers (or people he doesn't know) seeing pictures of him drinking tequila and wearing a lampshade on his head.
There are perfectly good reasons to hide information. The "the innocent have nothing to hide" argument is a slippery slope I don't like going down. It's this kind of argument that can be used to do the following...
Police: "Open up. We want to make sure you're not doing anything illegal."
Guy: "You can't come in without a search warrant."
Police: "Why not? If you're innocent, you have nothing to hide!"
I was wondering when somebody would point that out.
Somebody's mother told somebody a story ("but it's TRUE" whines TFA) about something somebody might have said somewhere.
Third-hand (at best) information, with no actual, you know, FACTS or anything.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
That got me thinking Recently I saw a job posting on one of the major boards for a well known anon service, and at the end of the posting it said "security clearence required".
Now, unless they're doing some kind of business with the government, or spying on the people - why would they require a security clearence?
1. It doesn't say WHICH state agency, which after all makes a significant difference.
2. Nor is there any sort of sourcing, just some sort of vague (and short!) mumblings about some unidentified student and what he told his mother his interviewer told him.
3. The bulk of the article is even worse, posing "ethical" questions about whether employers should look at publicly available information about a candidate. The way I see it, if you go around posting pictures to the web of you mooning cop-cars from your last drunk drive across the country, you deserve what you get. There almost certainly isn't a real legal question, at any rate.
If the governemnt comes to Facebook (or mySpace, or whoever), and demands that information on an individual, there's not much Facebook can do. Most of these sites have agreements that reserve the right to hand over information to government agencies that ask for it.
/.) has this in it's TOS. You can also find the link to it at the bottom of the page...
/. website (and whatever else OSTG owns, whatever that is...), not just accounts, so this covers terrorist threats by our good friend, Anonymous Coward.
For example, Open Source Technology Group (Which owns
OSTG, in its sole and absolute discretion, may preserve Content and may also disclose Content if required to do so by law or judicial or governmental mandate or as reasonably determined useful by OSTG to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of OSTG Sites' users and the public.
That's for the whole
Sadly, in the age of speed scrolling to the bottom of a website's 'Terms of Service', we have many people who wonder these things...
Idiot: What? You can't give away my information to a government agency without my permission!
Social Networking Site: We already have your permission. You agreed to our ToS, which give us that right.
Idiot: But I didn't read the ToS!
SNS: Tough luck dumbass!
Good advice would be to read these things before you click 'I Agree'. Better advice would be not to post stories or pictures on the internet that involve you doing things that are stupid and/or illegal. The best advice is to just avoid doing stupid and/or illegal things altogether.
"Police: "Open up. We want to make sure you're not doing anything illegal."
Guy: "You can't come in without a search warrant."
Police: "Why not? If you're innocent, you have nothing to hide!""
No one ever includes the last line of this dialogue. Do I have to do everything?
Guy: That's right, I have nothing to hide, so quit wasting my time, your time, my tax dollars and fuck off unless you have a warrant.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
You missed the part where they bash down the door and arrest you for "interfering with an investigation", start wailing on you, then throw in "resisting arrest" for good measure.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
By posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
That is in the TOS for facebook. In short, anything you put on their is theirs, and they can do whatever they damn well feel like with it.
Finkployd
I looked at the link. It is on Louisiana State University - Shreveport. The article says it came from "NACE Spotlight Online", but NASE Spotlight Online had no reference to the article, and the reference on LSUS's site had no reference to a webpage or date of publication.
I've found three other copies of this story, all with the same generic NACE Spotlight Online reference.
The article is of an unnamed individual interviewing at an unnamed company located in an unnamed town. It references a well known career site, but with no context about where this article was located or when it was published.
Hear that sound? That's the sound of an URBAN LEGEND!
Add to this the recent relevations that the Pentagon still considers homosexuality a mental disorder more than 25 years after mainstream Psycology determined that's false.
And if the Patriot Act was used in leiu of just cause to issue a warrant or to snoop without a warrant in this case, I would consider it a complete breach of our government's entire foundation.
What kind of crappy 'Ask Slashdot' is this? They just do it.
;)
Yeah, and the fact that they "just do it" IS THE PROBLEM! Maybe you don't care about your rights, perhaps you wouldn't mind living in a prison state. But there are those of us who find this to be just plain WRONG! There's nothing "crappy" about this Ask Slashdot. The only thing "crappy" is the fact that there are people in the world, like your self, who don't get pissed off when things like this happen. You just take the attitued of "that's just how it is", or worse, you find these things acceptable in the name of "security". People should be pissed off that the government is slowly taking away more and more of our rights and privacy! You should be yelling out the window: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!!"
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. - Ben Franklin
Been there, done that. Have the arrest record to prove it, though I was found "not guilty" in a court of law. My lawyer said, because I was white, I couldn't sue. Had I been a minority, I could have sued for false arrest.
... "Drunk in Public". Mind you, I was in a PRIVATE residence, and not intoxicated.
.. "I'm neither drunk, nor in public". And after that, I said NOTHING.
... yeah right a three fisted drinker!
Yes, it was that bad. During the arrest, I asked "what am I being arrested for", they said
So, I said to the arresting officer
The final charges were assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. Now mind you, I am 6'5" and very much had an athletic build of 225 lbs, brown belt in Judo, so if I had "resisted" arrest, I would have seriously injured me, or them or both. In addition, it seems that resisting a false arrest is completely legal, and as the police officers described it, they were arresting me when the so-called assault occured, not before.
Then, realizing their mistake, they said I threw a (can/bottle/cup) of beer on them. Notice that there are THREE answers given, which doesn't look good. Cup of beer is not assault, can and bottle might be, but the cops said there was a Keg at the party. The lying bastards couldn't get their story straight. I had cup, can and bottle at a kegger
The jury elected a foreman, and on the first vote found me "not guilty". And people wonder why I hate cops.
The funniest thing, was during the selection of the jury, one of the prospective jurors was asked why they couldn't sit on the jury. She said she had dealings with one of the arresting officers and said "He's an asshole". Truly hillarious. All the other jurors heard it too. Priceless.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Come on. A "state agency" claiming they can instantaneously get around Facebook security without a subpeona in the course of a few days, and then claiming an act of Congress empowered them to do so? The article itself states that the interviewee had friends within the agency - more likely, they were pressed for the information, and the employer told the interviewee they had the power to do so through a well-known and controversial act in the hopes he'd buy into it. Apparently he did, and is left with the impression that his new employer has more power than they originally led him to believe.
One anecdote based on hearsay is hardly proof of wrongdoing. The far more likely explanation is the employer pressured his friend to do the search and lied about it. Show me another state agency that's claimed to have identical power, or better yet, the specific clause in the Patriot Act that would allow that kind of power.
About a month ago my wife--who is a permanent resident but not a national of the United States--was mugged walking home from work. The assailant got everything in her purse, keys, debit/ATM, credit cards, etc. We immediately cancelled all of her banking credentials and even went as far as having our bank account number changed the next day during our visit to our banking institution (since checks were also taken from her purse).
A week later we received a letter from our bank saying that since the account was opened without her showing any identification that under the USA PATRIOT Act, section 326, our bank account would be closed. The account actually wasn't new, just the numbers. She couldn't have possibly shown any ID since she lost it all in the incident (yes, by now we realize it would have been much smarter to have photocopies of all her identification).
I often wonder how far we're all willing to go under the pretext of national security. I wonder how many lives have been more than inconvenienced due to simple misunderstandings. It doesn't bother me so much that we're required to show ID to open bank accounts, just moreso that the government can come along and close my bank account and I have no recourse.
I now keep my savings in a safe in my house.
Step 1 - Obtain employee list of 'ethical drug industry' corporation.
Step 2 - Threaten to post anonymous claims of methamphetamine use of every listed employee somewhere on the internets. Blackmail the company for phAt l3wt.
Step 3 - Profit!
Seriously, when _anyone_ can perform a DOS attack on a company and get their board and executives all fired in a trivially easy fashion, you have to wonder why it hasnt happened yet.
Thank goodness 'Innocent until proven Guilty' has been removed from legal doctrine. Its so much easier to execute random people, claiming suspicion of them being a terrorist. Of course, what with everyone being killed constantly there is pretty much worse than any terrorism, but hey, its the law so it must be right and ethical.
And the President will throw your suit out, citing state secrets privilege.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.