Congressman Steps Up Pressure On Google, Facebook

crimeandpunishment and other readers noted the US government's increasing pressure on Facebook and Google. On Friday the head of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, sent the two companies a letter asking them to cooperate with any government inquiries. It's not clear exactly what purpose the letter served, other than to make Google's and Facebook's lawyers squirm a bit more than they already were, with Germany and courts and the FTC looking hard in their direction; Conyers did not say his committee will be holding hearings. The FTC just asked Google to hold onto the Wi-Fi data that it says it accidentally collected while snapping Street View photos. And in response to the growing outcry since its F8 conference last month, Facebook offered some simplified privacy controls — though opinions vary on how much the new controls simplify things for users.

Comments

"It's not clear what purpose the letter served..."

[John Hasler]

There is an election this fall.

Government

[XanC]

So in government-land, the way to fix the problem of data accidentally collected is to order that said data be KEPT, instead of immediately deleted??

Re:Government

[nacturation]

For some reason, the United States is the only country on Earth where accidents don't happen – it's always somebody's fault, and you can sue that somebody for neglect.

Re:Government

[XanC]

(apologies for the double reply)

Let's consider this scenario: I'm diagnosing some problem with my wireless network, setting my radio to promiscuous mode and recording the results. I happen to record a few minutes' worth of traffic from the access point of you, my next door neighbor. Which of the following would you prefer:

a) To protect your privacy, I immediately delete the data.

b) To protect your privacy, I "turn myself in", sending a copy of what I recorded to the FBI, CIA, John Conyers, and anybody else who feels it's his job to "safeguard privacy".

You're arguing for b), which is the wrong answer.

Re:Government

[khchung]

Let's consider this scenario: I'm diagnosing some problem with my wireless network, setting my radio to promiscuous mode and recording the results. I happen to record a few minutes' worth of traffic from the access point of you, my next door neighbor.

See if your analogy still make sense if you add the following:

1. You have been recording for the past 3 years' data from my access point, instead of a few minutes, and you have been processing those data for the whole time instead of just letting them sit there. Kind of hard to say you are not aware of those data are there for the whole time, huh?

2. For the sake of argument, there are relevant laws in your country that exactly prohibits such recording. (you may consider, as example, covertly recording telephone conversations in countries that requires consent from both parties)

3. Turning yourself in means sending what you recorded to the relevant authorities, != every 3 letter agencies you can imagine.

Still unconvinced? Consider another analogy:

A peeking tom living nearby has been secretly taking pictures of your daughter for the past 3 years. And (for the sake of argument) there are local laws that forbids exactly this kind of tracking/following/photo-taking activity. Now you find this out, but you have no idea what kind of pictures have been taken, you confronted the peeping tom and he promised to delete all the pictures.

Do you prefer to:

a) To protect your daughter's privacy, let the peeping tom delete all the pictures, trust him that he will actually do it.

b) To protect your daughter's privacy, call the police, knowing that they will need to take the pictures as evidence to prosecute the peeping tom?

You are arguing for (a), that may be the right answer for you, but don't judge others arguing for (b) as "wrong".

Re:Government

[khchung]

So what's the point of the order to keep it, then? If this data is so unimportant and un-sensitive, then who cares anyway?

How about as evidence to proof Google violated the law in court?

Isn't that the whole analogy with corp spy about, and the purpose as evidence part was explicitly spelled out in the post as well.

Really, this is quite a unique experience for me! To see, first hand, where otherwise technically competent people suddenly unable to understand simple things (i.e. illegally collected data is evidence) when it contradicts with their beliefs (Government==bad, and Google can do no wrong).

Google just needs to ask him "how much?"

[Attila Dimedici]

Obviously, Brin, Page and Zuckerberg obviously haven't been giving as much to Conyers re-election campaign as he would like.

Re:Google just needs to ask him "how much?"

[binarylarry]

No joke, it's just a corrupt Detroit politician shaking down big corporations for money.

The guy's wife got put in jail for doing the same thing when she was on the Detroit city council: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Conyers

There is something deeper going on

[Omnifarious]

I have a random suspicion about this...

Microsoft has been looking to use the big lobbyist network they acquired when they decided that the antitrust trial happened because they hadn't bought off the government and their competitors had (because, you know, they couldn't have done anything wrong!). They've been angling on Google for a long time.

I think they haven't gotten any action because while congresspeople like lobbyists and money, they can't actually act in a way that shows it obviously is the driving force. They have to sort of look like they're actually carrying out the political will of the people, more or less.

The Facebook debacle and Google's mistakes with Wi-Fi harvesting are garnering enough negative public attention that congresspeople can now actually take action against those companies without looking too obviously like they're in Microsoft's pocket.

I do think Facebook has definitely done something wrong, and I'm really curious as to the whole decision process that led to Google doing what they did with Wi-Fi data. But I don't think, on an ordinary day, that congresspeople would generally care at all. I think the reason they're putting on the appearance caring is money and lobbyists from Microsoft.

I'm sorry to be so cynical, but I think congress is hopelessly and nearly irreparably corrupt.

Re:Accidentally or Tactically Aquired data

[spleen_blender]

The cameras are hooked up to a computer. The computer has wifi. The cars have GPS. All of the logs for each of these are synchronized since they are all on the same computer. So if your wifi logging happens to be detailed enough you could definitely "accidentally" collect that data just by having the wifi on with a default of connecting to any open network.

Does anyone know what these computers in the Street View cars were running OS wise? Hardware wise?

A new privacy issue I saw today:

[Culture20]

After typing my password wrong a couple hours ago, I noticed the new facebook "wrong email/password pair" page does the GUI login interface: it changed my email address into my Full name and profile picture. So now random Joe can find out someone's profile picture without even having a Facebook account. Also, it ties your email address to your real name, even if you don't make your email address visible. All random Joe needs is an email address. It's not like spammers don't have millions of email addresses, and botnets to do the intentionally failed logins.

It's not as bad as some of the other crap, but this is an example of where they don't think their "ease of use" through.

Conyers is a crook

[Kohath]

Watch out Google and Facebook. One of the most crooked congressmen of modern times wants your "cooperation". He can't use his government staff as personal valets anymore since he got caught. And his wife was recently sentenced to 3 years in prison for taking bribes.

If he asks you for a private meeting, you'll want to either bring a checkbook or a tape recorder.

Re:FTC?

[Peach Rings]

Uh so the evidence isn't destroyed obviously. Presumably because the FTC is investigating.

Re:"It's not clear what purpose the letter served.

[zippthorne]

Close. It's part of the campaign itself: If you're an incumbent, it helps to appear to have done something during your term. But your constituents won't remember anything you did before march of the election year, if you're lucky. So, a cheap way to get cameral-cred is to be part of some kind of investigatory commission.

Like when the US congress thought it would be a good use of their time to interview every f'king baseball player to see if they'd ever used f'king steroids. Steroids. In sports. Considered important enough for f'king Congress to have weeks of hearings. Brilliant.

Anyway, stuff like this gets their name in the news for free which is even better than spending your hard-grifted campaign cash on advertising.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"It's not clear what purpose the letter served.

[Cornwallis]

More likely to steer attention away from his wife who was a Detroit City Council member and is due for some jail time over (SURPRISE!) bribery charges.

Facebook

[Andy Smith]

I'm sick of Facebook's attitude to privacy. Their settings page is designed to be confusing and time-consuming.

As far as I'm aware I have everything set to "friends only" and no apps or third-parties are allowed to see my data. Yet just this evening I went to a photo hosting site that I'd never been to before, and it prompted me to post a comment -- with me logged in using my Facebook account and my profile photo.

It's maddening.

The real problem with Facebook privacy controls

[ZipK]

The problem with Facebook's privacy controls is only peripherally related to their complexity. The real problem is Facebook's habit of changing privacy configuration and automatically opting their 400 millions users into sharing information that was previously private. It's Facebook's monetization of their users' personal information (via constantly shifting opt-out changes to privacy settings) that is the root problem.

Re:Accidentally or Tactically Aquired data

[beakerMeep]

Or, you could have just answered his question in a sentence or two. From what I have read, Google was collecting publicly broadcast SSIDs on purpose to help with geo-location and their Maps service. However they (claim) the code they used to gather this data was accidentally cut an paste from a research project that demonstrated how much more than just SSIDs could be captured.

So while they were hoping for grabbing just this:

getSSID();

they got

getSSID();
getAllSnifableTraffic();

This is an oversimplification-guesstimate, but I think makes the claim more understandable. Are they telling the truth? Hard to say. Certainly we've all seen cut and paste errors in code like that. But you'd also think if someone was using code from a project designed to actually sniff traffic they would know to be careful what they cut and paste. So while it seems a bit fishy, it's absolutely plausible the whole thing was just an accident.