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?"
How can a 'state agency' use the Patriot Act to subpoena a Facebook profile?
What kind of crappy 'Ask Slashdot' is this? They just do it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
If the job required a security clearance, he probably agreed to such invasive examination in applying.
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
After all, if he isn't a terrorist, he doesn't have anything to hide...... right?
1. Never use your real name on the Net.
2. Never disclose any information under your profile especially if you violated rule 1.
3. Never violate rule 1 or rule 2.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Even granting the law allows "state agencies" to perform a search of private property (which a website's content is, even if its on the ISP's server) -- that they don't have to disclose the act to said person.
There was not even reasonable cause -- much less probable cause -- of terrorism. Or any crime.
If a law is written in such away that it can be abused, it will be abused.
Lesson 1. You don't want people to know things about you? Don't put it on the internet. Lesson 2: Don't entrust private data to a company that can change its privacy policies whenever it damn well pleases, or that voluntarily hands things over to state agencies when requested.
Wow, this looks like an answer to the question that was posed here.
This guy's the limit!
How can anyone comment on this article intelligently? No details are given, did he sign a privacy waiver (as you do with many classified gov't jobs), what was the agency? Possibly the recruiter was giving him a BS-line about the patriot act. It's still not a routine enough matter the patriot act would be invoked to investigate some low-level intern....
Interesting wording, since it leaves out the fact that the last one turned out to be a hoax...
Who said anything about a subpoena? TFA certainly doesn't.
Shit, they probably didn't use the "PATRIOT act". My money is on the probability that they simply SAID the words "PATRIOT act" and facebook folded up like an origami swan.
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...
Its really tacky of the employeer. Did they ask: "I see here you like heavy metal music, are you in league with the devil?". I mean, jeeze, its mostly private time stuff.
There are Conspiracy Theories claiming that Facebook's initial funding was from DOD connected venture capital, and that it is a remenant of Total Information Awareness.
Facebook links to eTrust from their privacy policy. Would it be effective if all of slashdot lodged complaints using the eTrust form? https://www.truste.org/pvr.php?page=complaint
> Sounds like the Patriot Act's at Slashdot as well...
;-)
You mean it as a joke, but I'm sure that Slashdot hands over
information to when required by the PATRIOT Act.
So much for the Anonymous Coward
Any law can be used for ill purposes; and the PATRIOT Act is no different, it matters not if the law is good or bad. But with the PATRIOT Act, the law is as those who wield it wish it to be, a nebulous thing without restraint--the essence of bad legislation; yet it became law because nobody in Congress read the proposed legislation prior to the vote to approve--there simply wasn't time to do so. Thus we have a law that is a chameleon: all things to everyone. It is both weapon and armor, and it needs to be repealed.
Having worked in a Career Development Office (read: job placement), I can recall telling dozens of students on my campus to keep their facebook exploits as a minimum, simply because there are so many people trying to get a look at their facebook. Facebook causes a lot of problems because of the things that are exchanged behind the wall of privacy that Facebook has, and companies are wary of it. On top of that, they are paranoid about who they are hiring and have trouble dis-associating a person's professional life from their personal life, and often times use things such as facebook as a sort of pre-judgement.
What this article tells me is that the paranoia of some employers has reached a new level of ape-shit. The fact that more time was spent during the interview discussing facets of his Facebook profile instead of interviewing him for the internship he applied for is a bit appalling. Imagine some future ramifications of agencies being able to plug Facebook; homosexuals being screened before the interview process even takes place, racial profiling, any of those things that employers simply are not supposed to do. While I agree that people need to be careful about what they put out online, it does strike me as a big no-no that we have employers actively seeking out the personal lives of prospective employees before they've had a chance to see what the employee has to offer to the company.
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.
So what would said paranoid individuals do, when confronted with a blocked personal site? Ignore it? Yeah, right. I don't agree with what they look for - it seems questionable as to whether it has any relevance to whether the individual can be trusted - but it's blindingly obvious they'd investigate obviously hidden data.
For "confidential" clearances, the rules are different. There, a fingerprint check with the FBI and a routine background check seems to be sufficient. That can take a week or two, but it's nothing like as extreme.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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?
Know why the government won't give you a security clearance if you have bad credit or unsavory habits? Because it makes you vulnerable to blackmail. If their screening process doesn't identify people that have made themselves extortable ("'lose' your keys this weekend or I tell your dad about that 'experimental weekend' you posted about on MySpace") then they wouldn't be doing their jobs.
In short, if you must keep secrets about yourself, don't publish them online and still expect to get the sort of jobs that frown on them. This isn't rocket science.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
How can a 'state agency' use the Patriot Act to subpoena a Facebook profile?"
Ummmm, like this:
State Agency: Facebook, under powers of the patriot act, we request that you give us access to your site. Failure to do so will be considered obstruction of justice and people will go to jail.
Facebook: No prob
Seriously, who in their right mind is going to stand up and be the test case for government powers this day and age, especially over something this stupid. Even if you win you will be labeled a terrorist sympathizer, unpatriotic, and have mounds of legal and financial problems. Not just the company, you personally.
And I'm sure there will be some responses of "vigilance is the price of liberty" and "we must stand up against this" and all that jazz, but YOU aren't putting your life, reputation, livelihood, and (if applicable) supported family on the line. Whining that other people don't do so for you is just cowardly in the extreme.
if-you-don't-want-it-published dept.
Boy is the the truth. Think people. Have an interview coming up? Why not delete the pictures you posted online of yourself doing bong hits? Don't blame facebook or even the patriot act for what is clearly your own stupidity. Why trust the access control mechanisms of facebook when most of corporate America cannot control access to financial data and the government cannot control access to classified information. What makes you think that tomorrow facebook will not say "screw private controls, we are opening up the whole thing for the world"? What are you going to do, demand your money back?
Finkployd
(Warning karma killing rant coming ... damn whipper snappers.)
Patriot Act or not, marked private or not -- saying something on Facebook, MySpace, or their ilk is akin to a billboard in the middle of the town square. Kids today think that they can post ellicit, embarressing, or immature activities on the Internet, mark the information as private, and, magically, no one they don't want to know will ever find out. Learn some discretion, and keep matters to yourself.
In short, quite your whining and develop some common sense.
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.
Facebook is a private company that, so far as I know, does not sell the personal information of the people who visit the site. If they sell their information, which isn't suggested in this article, then what I'm about to say is moot. Even for a security clearance, the investigation does not involve issuance of subpoenas or other extraordinary searching. The clearance involves interviewing the person, their friends and family, and thoroughly scouring public records. In some cases it might involve a polygraph test.
What really disturbs me though is how the article just glazes over the fact that Patriot Act was being used to investigate an intern for a government job. They just go on about how you should be careful what information you put out there. That's not the issue. Here we have a situation where information is on a public service but is kept private and it has been obtained through the Patriot Act for purposes clearly not realted to a terrorism investigation.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The DMCA!
Yes, that's right, our other poster boy of bad legislation, the DMCA, to the rescue! See, bypassing the lock constitutes circumventing an access control...
>this whole sketchy story is just bogus
right. if anyone speculating about this had bothered to RTFA, this is a 'true story' given as an example, w/o any real details whatsoever, as part of an 'article' on why you should be careful what you post about yourself online.
IOW, the whole thing is about as 'true' as the true stories they told you at school about the kids who put fireworks in their pocket / took acid and thought they could fly, depending on what level of education you were at.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Name: John Smith
Favorite Hobby: Stealing Office Supplies to sell on eBay.
(And don't tell me there isn't someone out there dumb enough to post exactly this.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I mean, really. Seeking employment isn't like running for office.
(sigh) Pearls before swine.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
My roommate recently started a blog, and belongs to several of the social networking sites. When he ask me why I didn't join him, I simply explained that thought history we've always had the ability to list all our friends and thoughts in a diary and leave it on our front porch for anyone to read, but nobody ever wanted to.
Just because we can doesn't mean we should...
Why would anyone put things on the internet (at any security level) that could prevent them from getting a job? Sounds Darwinian to me, if you're too dumb to protect your private life, you're probably related to the person taking home a laptop with 25,000 social security numbers on it, so good riddance!
1. Just because your cell phone can take pictures and post them on the Net (or Facebook), doesn't mean you should.
2. Joining a Facebook group like The Drunker I Am The Smilier I Get and posting an album of pics to it, probably isn't a swift move unless you want to work as a public drunk.
3. Taking revealing pics of yourself always sounds good, until your grandma or prospective employer sees them. Ewww.
4. The more you drink, the less sound your judgement becomes. Never post anything while drunk. Ever.
5. Don't break up with a vindictive ex-bf/gf, as they will post those pics they promised never to post.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm sorry, but this is a little bit overreaching, considering that he had marked his profile as being private.
To create an analogy:
If he had a public profile, it would have been like the employer sent out a PI to follow him to the grocery store every time he purchased groceries. Groceries are in no way connected to work, but hey, he could be building a bomb out of household cleaning products. It's creepy, but is most likely within the realm of the law --- and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent this sort of thing.
If his profile was private, it would have been like the detective following him into the grocery store, recording exactly what he purchased, taking down the number of the credit card he used to pay, and following him home to see how he used each item he purchased, and then following him on a date with his girlfriend. Whoa there! That's a definite unwarranted invasion of privacy!
The line has to be drawn between what goes on in the business world, and in the personal world. Even if you're perfectly legit, certain personal information on your profile could affect the hiring decision for the wrong reasons. In the job application process, I don't specify my religion, political affiliations, sexual orientation, musical tastes, etc. because none of these things have anything to do with my ability to work. However, on facebook, I provide all of this information voluntarily to the people I consider to be my "friends" so that I can form new relationships and network with others. From a logical standpoint, there is no reason why I should not share this information, as it has absolutely no bearing on my ability to do my job.
However, it is a well-known fact that subliminal subconscious biases occur in virtually all people. Perhaps if the employer noticed that I listed Greatful Dead and Phish as my favorite bands, he would subconsciously draw the correlation that I could be a stoner, and am thus less worthy to be hired. Logically speaking, itis a completely ludicrious assumption to base a hiring decision bsaed upon musical tastes, but the fact is that we make these sort of snap-judgements every day without realizing it, and such a judgement might be the impetus to choose between two equally-qualified applicants.
I guess what it boils down to is that these sort of invasions of privacy give employers access to completely extraneous information, that although innocuous, will unfairly affect that person's chances of being hired.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I wonder if he realizes that with the right connections and a few thousand bucks, *everything* about his life is shared on the internet. Financial transactions, phone bills, property ownership, FedEx and UPS shipping records, legal records, etc are all there in corporate databases and on information brokering sites. A judicious use of the phrase "patriot act" could probably get you all the bank statements and phone records you could ever want.
He can be smug now, but his next job interview could still go something like this...
"So, Mr. Rogers, I see here that in September of 1988 you wrote a $200 cheque to a women's health clinic that no member of your family had ever visited before. That's about the same time your teenage daughter broke off her relationship with the Tanner boy who used to live down the street from you, or at least she stopped calling him every night, isn't it? The CEO is strongly pro-life and things like this concern him greatly. Anything you want to tell us about that incident?"
0 1 - just my two bits
I have to agree to some extent. I'm growing a little tired of stories along the lines of "My prospective employer didn't like my web site with 900 images of furry porn that I drew using bodily fluids, or my UberShrine to Gadget Mouse, or my collection first-person POV stories about a serial killer who skins women alive! How dare they look at something I exposed to a global network!"
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!
I don't understand what the issue is here. If you handed a complete stranger a photo album with a lot of photos, comments, and other potentially embarassing things, would you expect that person to keep it private only if you told them too? Let's use some common sense here people. When you post something online, anywhere & anything, it is really the same thing a posting it on a sign for the whole world to see, and it lasts virtually forever.
The myspace craziness should have been tempered with common sense. Kids posting personal information about themselves, and then people wonder why pedophiles toll the myspace boards. This is just another example of college kids being completely stupid! This really has nothing to do with the Patriot Act. Everyhting you post online may, and can, be viewed by anyone @ anytime. Privacy on the internet is only an illusion.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
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.
"Very well, Herr Klein so you've decided to apply for membership in the SS. I see you have a very good athletic record, .. puzzled .. Tell me, Herr Klein, what do you do every wednesday night?"
your certificates of racial purity appear to be in order.. and you have served in the Reichswehr during the war, Herr
Gefreiter. You're almost 2 meters and 10 centimeters tall, you have blue eyes and blonde hair and you have won multiple
contests both military and private in marksmanship. I'm sure a carreer awaits you in the Schutzstaffet but there is a
matter which still has us
"Herr Standartenfuehrer, I go to a club where we listen and dance to music but I can assure you this has nothing to do
with my dedication to our Fuehrer and the Reich."
"Oh? But I am afraid it does, Herr Klein, I'm afraid it does. You listen to American music! You listen to music created
by jews and enacted by blacks, isn't that so?? You seem to like that kind of music, eh? We had you followed! We saw you
dance with a Fraulein and above all, did you know that Fraulein is also half jewish??! We followed you then to your appartment
where you sneaked in with your "Fraulein" and had sex with her. Our investigator listened at your door and made a personal
of what perversions you were living out with that "woman". You had sex with a half-jew and outside of marriage at that and
believe me you're going to hear from the Staatsanwaltschaft (state prosecutor) for this."
"What, Himmel Herrgott! You had me followed??! You spied on me??" You spied on me sex-life??!?
"Quit acting so surprised Herr Klein. The SS lives up to high standards and we are legally bound by order of the
Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler himself and by various laws enacted by the Reichstag to investigate the backgrounds
of all our applicants. You Herr Klein are certainly not the kind of person we're looking for. If you want to make an issue
of it, be my guest. If you want, you can use my phone to call the Gestapo.
Someday, a slashdot troll will apply for a government job and they will ask him about those lovely images he continually posts, and is he really into that sort of thing? And what is his connection with the known terrorist organization, GNAA?
And without knowing why, the rest of us will get a warm fuzzy feeling in our bellies and we will laugh in a Nelson voice, Ha-ha! and then wonder why we did it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
I think the issue is the use of the patriot act by a state agency to access his profile, which he had set as private. This really seems like one of those stories where the patriot act was at least apparently misused. Personally, if it was the military, or a major defense contractor, or a position anywhere near the president I could understand, but it does seem a bit excessive for a state agency to use it. While I do not feel that information posted online is private in any way, the patriot act really doesn't seem like it should have anything to do with him trying to get an internship.
Oh great, so why the hell bother in the first place with such useless stuff like privacy laws and the like, because "If you handed a complete stranger ...[any kind of information]... would you expect that person to keep it private only if you told them too?"
:D
I know, everyone is stupid, but you...hear it all before
I also suppose you don't rent or lease places - ever! After all, you don't want to deal with a third party that posses a thread to your privacy, now would you?
Two quick points: 1. Car dealers requires SSNs for the Patriot Act on some purchases. Even casinos are involved in this kind of stuff as well. Don't believe it? Visit http://www.bridgerinsight.com./ 2. Earlier this year, I told my older kids not do anything with MySpace.com if they don't want their past to haunt them. Same thing applies here with Facebook.com. With Google + archives + cache, there's lots to see. Job holders and hunters: what you do on the Internet stays on the Internet, and stays, and stays, and stays... TechVet
Yes. If the attempt to bar access to the data was made and the user circumvented the access controls. If the user is not authorized to access the computer system then he should not be doing so. What is authorized access varies from state to state, in my state it is defined like this:
The standard B&M analogy to your example of a password being available would be that a shopkeeper locked up for the night and accidentally dropped the key to the store on the front mat. Is it legal to enter the store just because there is a key to it lying on the mat? How about if there is a crappy lock on the door, or if the shopkeeper neglects to lock the door? Just because the security is not up to standards does not give you the right to trespass.
However, in this case it appears that Facebook has the legal right to do whatever it likes with the data. The user agreed to those terms when he signed up, if he does not agree to the terms he is free not to use the service.
Enigma
I keep hearing the "well, they're vulnerable to blackmail" excuse, and the more I hear it, the more it sounds like just a crap excuse to discriminate against some people. It's the same bigotry and idiocy, only with a better sounding excuse than the previous "they're an abhomination in the eyes of God!" excuse.
How _do_ you blackmail someone with info they've made _public_? No, seriously. Let's say I were to write on my home page, Facebook profile, MySpace, etc, "I'm gay and into BDSM". I'm not into either, but let's assume that for example sake. How _would_ you go about blackmailing me with something that's that public? How would a blackmailing dialogue go?
"'lose' your keys this weekend or I tell your dad about that 'experimental weekend' you posted about on MySpace"
"Heh. Dude, have you met my parents? Even if I hadn't already told them, they're the kind that put TALKER in STALKER. They google me weekly and tells all their friends, relatives, and strangers on the street about it. Heck, dad not only 'accidentally' openned and read my mail when I lived with them, he used to take the train to come over and 'accidentally' open my mail when I moved to another town. So, trust me, any information you may find, dad already _knows_. And mom already emailed all her friends about it."
How do you go from there?
"I'm gonna tell your boss about it!"
"Dude, I hope you do realize that (A) it's public information, and (B) they do a background check when they hire you here, and dig up exactly this kind of stuff? Trust me, they googled for my name already. They know."
What next?
"I'm gonna publish it in a newspaper!"
"As opposed to it already being published on several sites indexed by Google? You do realize that anyone interested in me is more likely to find it via Google than in that newspaper, right? So knock yourself out."
I mean, seriously, how does one go about using _public_ information to blackmail someone? Exactly which part of "public" is so confusing? Is it the "pub" or the "lic"? How can you threaten someone with publishing something they've already published themselves?
So as I was saying, it seems to me like the whole "blackmail" excuse is just a crap excuse to continue to be a bigotted prick. The same bigotted pricks who 100 years ago would just say, "eew, you're an abhomination in the eyes of God! I'll never hire you," now discovered that they can be hit with a nasty discrimination lawsuit for that. And rightfully so. Enter the golden age of using some crap illogical excuse instead. Like the "blackmail" one.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Last time I checked, the government didn't need to ask you for your papers. They just look up the information They want in their databases. You won't get caught on an airplane without your papers. You simply won't get past the checkout counter. Hell, you're lucky you can still get on a bus without being screened. Once you get your shiny new national ID smart card, you'll probably have to swipe it for any kind of long distance travel. I bet They'll find a way to tie it into you bank account too, as a convenience, so that you can use it to buy goods, instead of having to carry around all that heavy, awkward, anonymous cash.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
You're a fucking idiot. Go read some history and you'll learn that the Germans didn't go from a republic to a genocidal dictatorship overnight.