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??

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.

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.

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:"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.