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Facebook Has 25 People Dedicated To Handling Gov't Info Requests
nonprofiteer writes "A profile of Facebook's CSO reveals that his 70-person security team includes 25 people dedicated solely to handling information requests from law enforcement. They get thousands of calls and e-mails from authorities each week, though Facebook requires police to get a warrant for anything beyond a subscriber's name, email and IP address. CSO Joe Sullivan says that some government agency tried to push Facebook to start collecting more information about their users for the benefit of authorities: 'Recently a government agency wanted us to start logging information we don't log. We told them we wouldn't start logging that piece of data because we don't need it to provide a good product. We talked to our general counsel. The law is not black-and-white. That agency thinks they can compel us to. We told them to go to court. They haven't done that yet.'"
You've already saved them quite a bit of work there.
So Facebook provides all the necessary info for Law Enforcement, but doesn't engage in detailed logging, probably because it is too expensive and as the gentleman said, it doesn't yet fit in with FB's business model. Still, they provide peoples' names, emails, and IP addresses for Law Enforcement, so really they cooperate with the fuzz as much as is needed. Nice damage control, making themselves out to be standing up to Big Brother. Then again, IDNRTFA, and with the way sunmaries have been lately, this could be an article about My Little Pony, for all I know...
- elgo
I have a feeling this entire article is nothing more than window dressing to make Facebook users (or the general public) somehow feel better that ANY logging requested by law enforcement isn't automatically done. Laws and rights pretty much went out the window with the advent of things like PATRIOT act.
The open assumption is that the data put on Facebook is entirely valid. Since it cannot be held to be valid, it becomes NP-Hard to sort through all the data for the bits which are true and the bits which are false.
It's entirely possible to setup an identity for someone who doesn't exist (trolls + marketers do this all the time); that's one strike against the data. It's also possible to have a user simply lie, such as saying they were at a party or visiting a cousin when they weren't. Job applicants could maintain an entire account simply for the purposes of appearing social while maintaining a carefully controlled, carefully tailored public image. Finally, other people may post things, or even borrow someone's account, and change the user's profile to something unsavory, as a prank.
Anyone who puts stock in this data as some sort of glimpse into another's thinking should not be allowed to make any kind of lasting decision.
Of course, this is not to say that a portion of that data may not be true, only that it is impossible to know what quantity of it.
I am John Hurt.
What could possibly be so privacy-invading, not-worth-the-disk-space-to-log-it crazy that Facebook doesn't already log it? These people make tons of money selling every minute bit of data and metrics about their suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers that they can possibly hoover up. What could it be that even *they* wouldn't want to log?
Just goes to show, there is no boundary that some government agency won't want to cross to invade your privacy.
How about Facebook's Actual Law Enforcement Contact page with guidelines. It seems facebook does waive these requirements sometimes, such as when "responding to a matter involving imminent harm to a child or risk of death or serious physical injury to any person and requiring disclosure of information without delay."
What was written (p.2) was,
The sprawling campus is still under construction around us on this February morning, with workers carrying ladders and bulldozers preparing the intrabuilding walkways for food carts and play areas.
What was meant (I think) was,
The sprawling campus is still under construction around us on this February morning, with workers carrying ladders, and bulldozers preparing the intrabuilding walkways for food carts and play areas.
The first time through I had to do a re-parse, as I ended with an image of workers carrying a ladder under one arm and a bulldozer under the other.
Paragraph (c)(2) at the following link:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2703
"(2) A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose to a governmental entity the—
(A) name;
(B) address;
(C) local and long distance telephone connection records, or records of session times and durations;
(D) length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized;
(E) telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and
(F) means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number),
of a subscriber to or customer of such service when the governmental entity uses an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or trial subpoena or any means available under paragraph (1)."
Paragraph (1) provides for broader disclosure under certain circumstances (but still requires a real warrant for disclosure of contents of communications). This is the same statute that lets the cops get access to your phone records without a warrant. An "administrative subpoena", does not require judicial review. Processes vary, but basically it amounts to getting a superior to sign off that you have a legitimate law enforcement reason to get the info (helps keep people from searching their spouses phone records, but does nothing to keep the cops from looking in anyone's records if they are in any way suspected of a crime).