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Belgian Privacy Watchdog Sues Facebook
An anonymous reader writes: Belgium is taking Facebook to task – and to court – about the company's opaque user-monitoring frameworks. The country's independent Privacy Commission, which is partnered with equivalent institutions in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Spain, failed to obtain information from the social media giant about the extent and nature of its user-analysis network, and has now decided to take action. The commission is particularly interested in the use that Facebook makes of information about users who are not logged in to Facebook, and may not even be members. The ubiquity of Facebook "share" buttons, along with other popular widgets or modules, have extended the company's reach far beyond its own site. The court convenes on the matter this Thursday.
I use it daily to connect with friends and family and to share the things I care about. Facebook respects user privacy and allows YOU control over how your information is used. Over one billion users agree with me. Facebook makes our lives better.
"Hi, Facebook! Belgium here... we'd like to have ubiquity in surveilling our own citizens, like you have, but we're too stupid to build it ourselves, so we'd like a copy of your blueprints, KPLZTHX!"
No, not yay for Belgium.
Don't these privacy regulators have anything else to do? Where is their input in the Snowden affair, for example? Suspiciously missing in action.
Here's a good place to start when evaluating the utility of these investigations: a list of people who have been objectively harmed in some way by the alleged action. Can't find anyone who has been harmed by Facebook's actions in an entire countries worth of people? Then maybe that suggests the taxpayer money is better spent elsewhere.