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Moglen: Facebook Is a Man-In-The-Middle Attack
jfruh writes "In an email exchange with privacy blogger Dan Tynan, Columbia law professor Eben Moglen referred to Facebook as a 'man in the middle attack' — that is, a service that intercepts communication between two parties and uses it for its own nefarious purposes. He said, 'The point is that by sharing with our actual friends through a web intermediary who can store and mine everything, we harm people by destroying their privacy for them. It's not the sharing that's bad, it's the technological design of giving it all to someone in the middle. That is at once outstandingly stupid and overwhelmingly dangerous.' Tynan is a critic of Facebook, but he thinks Moglen is overstating the case."
It amazes me that people think Moglen is overstating the case. He is not. Let's forget the datamining for commerce. Let's just think about what a simple post on a social network can do with ones life. People have been murdered over a post on social networks by goverments. People have been held in custody (hi USA) over posting a qoute from family guy... Moglen is right. Everything you post on facebook, twitter, hell any service that has an office in the USA will get into the FBI, CIA an SS databanks and you will get in trouble if you post something those warmongers don't like. Moglen is right. Using centralized, datamined networks is stupid and even more dangerous. It takes a lot of effort not to see that.
Your ISP does not see the information you transmit if it's encrypted, or email, chat, etc.
Facebook CAN see the messages you send, even if your communication to and from facebook is encrypted.
Sigh - straw man arguments are so tiresome.
These social sites are not your ISP.
These social sites are like inviting a business into your living room to eavesdrop on conversations with your acquaintances.
And for those who say "Who cares of I publicly post all my thoughts and relationships?" I have one question:
What would McCarthyism look like with the data available today?
Rather it seems we have to have special whole new laws because "via the internet" or "with a computer" needs to be tacked on. I'd say this is the larger problem.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Your ISP can see which websites you visit, how long you spend there, how often ....
Yes, but it is not part of their business model to do that.
People would be quite out-raged to receive an email from their ISP, that reads: ... P.S.: Has your daughter looked at planned parenthood?
Based on the web-sites you visited, we recommend following companies to you.
What would McCarthyism look like with the data available today?
You remember when your president had to publicly reaffirm he wasn't a muslim but a good god-fearing christian with good wholesome christian values ? McCarthyism never left.
You americans and your battles over symbols. You raise a big stink over irrelevancies like ID-cards and Facebook and meanwhile you've got the TSA, warrantless wiretaps, draconian copyright lawsuits, etc.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Back when Facebook became the Next Big Thing, I thought it seemed silly and a bit dangerous to rely so heavily on a single web site for so many things while excluding anyone who wasn't a member. You're just opening yourself up to monopoly abuses in that situation. I thought an open protocol for interfacing with social media components, whether hosted on Facebook, a competitor, or a personal site would be a more inclusive solution with less potential for exploitation or single point of failure issues. Then I realized that there would be no commercial incentive to supporting a solution that bypasses central servers, so of course it would never happen. The Internet is devolving back into AOL.
The assertion that "Facebook is a man in the middle attack" is utter bullshit. an "attack" would imply that Facebook is doing something that the user does not want to do.
The reality is that facebook/myspace/google+ et al. is a service in which the user willingly sends their information to them, and then they happen to share such information with some connections.
People do that willingly, people willingly sign up to facebook and send such information to facebook. The people who do not want to share information with facebook do not do it.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Stated another way...
Your relationship with your ISP: You are the customer.
Your relationship with Facebook: You are the product.