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Government Data Requests To Facebook Up By 24%
davidshenba writes: Facebook has revealed that government requests for user data has increased by 24% to nearly 35,000 during the first six months of the year. Also content restrictions due to local laws increased by 19% in the same period. According to Facebook, they scrutinize every government request for legal sufficiency and "push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests." Already Facebook is fighting its largest ever legal battle against a U.S. court order to handover 400 users' data.
No sympathy here for anyone who has a Facebook acct.
Sure. That's fine. I don't have one.
But... um... sympathy isn't the point. Universality of constitutional protections is the point.
So how many of you have written your congress-critter and demanded they work to repeal the bad laws passed that are facilitating this?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But how long can we still be without one? Suuuure, nobody can force you to have one. But more and more companies rely on FB for more and more things. It used to be that you have to have some FB account to participate in some raffles. Ok, no biggie. I can do without winning something I never needed. But more and more rely on them for authentication. And that's when it starts to become inconvenient.
Or at the very least more expensive. Because companies that can cut corners by "outsourcing" some of their cost to FB will be able to offer their gadgets cheaper. And that in turn will mean that privacy will become more and more a luxury item, for people that can afford it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.