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Facebook Scans Chats and Posts For Criminal Activity
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has added sleuthing to its array of data-mining capabilities, scanning your posts and chats for criminal activity. If the social-networking giant detects suspicious behavior, it flags the content and determines if further steps, such as informing the police, are required. Reuters provides an example of how the software was used in March: 'A man in his early 30s was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day. Facebook's extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police. Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day.'"
This just reminds me of the whole 'freedom of speech' logic. I run some online fourms, and the whole 'expectation of privacy' fails the exact same way as 'freedom of speech' does. And it comes down to the fact that I, and Facebook, are not the government.
I, as a private citizen, am not required to allow freedom of speech on my privately run forums. And while in generally, I allow people to say what they wish, there are certain discussions my moderators are going to shut down immediately. And I can do this because freedom of speech only guarantees that the GOVERNMENT can't stop you from saying something, not another individual if you happen to be saying it on their servers.
Similarly, the whole expectation of privacy is a government thing. There are indeed certain places that the government can't just gather whatever information it wants about you or spy on you without a court order (or at least can't use any information they gather in court), because you have an expectation of privacy. Private citizens however have no such restriction (except of course if they break another law to gather such information, like breaking into your house). Which means that if you voluntarily use THEIR servers to chat, you have NO expectation of privacy from them, as they are NOT a government either. This is completely besides the fact you agreed to their terms of service for the opportunity to use their servers in the first place. Which I'm sure contains some language about them being able to see and use any and all communications you put on their servers.
Why do people not understand that many of the freedoms in this country, are freedoms that protect us from our government ONLY, not each other?
Why would Facebook spend money policing it's patrons and voluntarily reporting misdeeds? They are a "for profit" company, not a social service.
Yeah. Google doesn't because its bad for business. For Facebook, there may be backlash from the regular (no pedophilic) community, but dumbed down because they say this is being used to catch pedophiles and criminals and not to just randomly read up on peoples conversations. Then again, most people on Facebook don't care about privacy and like to have their thoughts seen (the Wall).
Would they of their own volition narc on a pot sale? Or a direct action protest? Or someone that didn't pay a use tax on an out-of-state purchase? Wouldn't they have to, else be accused of picking and choosing which laws they help to enforce?
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
So AT&T can listen to your phone conversations and read your text messages? It all goes through their "Servers" (infrastructure in this case).
Saying FaceBook is a public place means that their Privacy settings are irrelevant. Or does Private not mean Private anymore?
As much as men who molest 13 year girls should be castrated and hung, Facebook shouldn't be doing this unless they make clear in the Terms (and I'd say in big notifications when you sign up) that they will watch what you do and if anything looks suspicious, they'll report you.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
What's needed is a HTML5 Facebook access app that would layer on top of a Facebook session and encrypt everything typed into any chat or update fields. Enrcypted content would be recognized and decrypted automatically. Otherwise, it would be a transparent layer over Facebook.
You'd want some kind of key management and an easy option for posting without encryption.
Encryption would make conversations much more private, especially the ones you (rightly, IMHO) assume should be private, like messages and chat. A nice side bonus would be ensuring that the communication you were having is the person you think it is.
The fun bonus is that it would make Facebook batshit nuts to lose access to content, since they would not be able to encrypt it.
Dunno how to break it to you, but there are a lot more issues than just sexual congress here.
I take it then that you want to raise the age for driving, alcohol use, joining the military, and everything else typically restricted by age to 25?
Or are we going to do the sensible thing and realize that young people have had adult responsibilities for millenia and dealt with it fine? The problem here isn't the brain of a young adult, they obviously work well enough or we wouldn't all be here. The problem is paranoid parents looking for ever more excuses to exert ever more control over their offspring.
But since you said it: the problem is that teenagers are far more likely than adults to *expect* to be happy with their decisions, and only afterwards find out they're not.
I've not actually seen data that shows that. I've seen data that shows that teenagers think harder (IOW, the decision making part of their brain uses more oxygen) about risky situations, and are more likely to make choices adults wouldn't. Is there data about how satisfied they are with their decisions?
But whether teenagers make better decisions for themselves than the decisions adults make for themselves is irrelevant. What's important is whether teenagers make better decisions for teenagers than adults make for teenagers. I've seen no evidence that this is the case.
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Do yourself a favor and stop being deliberately fucking obtuse about this.
Provide some arguments not based on anecdote or threats and I will.
I'm like this because my mother, my wife, my wife's sister, my aunt, all have suffered abuse at the hands of older men they were supposed to be able to trust.
That's an awful thing, but what does this have to do with statutory rape?
The psychological damage that comes from rape is undeniable
Except that quite a lot of people have lost their virginity before the age of consent and deny that it has done them any harm. If anything, it's the unnecessary shame that people like you force on them that does the real harm.
If you are confused about this I strongly recommend you don't test your head-up-the-ass moral ambiguity out on the nearest teenage girl you can find,
My sexual needs are sated, thanks. But at 13, I would have loved to been "raped" by a 30 year old. I know there are other 13 year olds out there who would like that opportunity. I still don't see any reason to deny them that.
So, I repeat, do yourself a favor, and shut the fuck up before you really piss me off.
And just what are you going to do about it, a barrel roll?
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