Facebook Hires Firm To Conduct Forensic Audit of Cambridge Analytica Data (cbsnews.com)

After it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users, the social media company has been scrutinized for not better protecting its users. Today, CBS News reports that Facebook has recently hired Stroz Friedberg, a digital forensics firm, to conduct an audit of Cambridge Analytica. According to a press release issued by Facebook on Monday, Cambridge Analytica has agreed to "comply and afford the firm complete access to their servers and systems." From the report: The social network said it asked Christopher Wylie and University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan to submit to an audit. Facebook says Kogan has verbally agreed to participate, but Wylie has declined. Wylie is a former employee of Cambridge Analytica who described the company's use of illicit data in interviews late last week. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie were banned from Facebook on Friday. Cambridge Analytica did not immediately confirm that it had agreed to comply with the audit. The firm has denied the allegations that it improperly collected and used the data. A spokeswoman for Stroz Friedberg declined to comment on the firm's involvement with an audit.

"We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims," Facebook officials said in a statement. "We remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information. We also want to be clear that today when developers create apps that ask for certain information from people, we conduct a robust review to identify potential policy violations and to assess whether the app has a legitimate use for the data. We actually reject a significant number of apps through this process. This is part of a comprehensive internal and external review that we are conducting to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. If this data still exists, it would be a grave violation of Facebook's policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made."

Comments

Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Train0987]

"The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama" - https://politics.slashdot.org/...

Carol Davidsen, former director of integration and media analytics for Obama for America:
"“They [Facebook] came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side,” Davidsen tweeted." https://ijr.com/2018/03/107708...

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Xarius]

Jeez there's a lot of Whataboutism on every single article on here these days. Is it new? Or am I just noticing it more?

@Parent: How about you, instead, tell us what you actually think about the mass harvesting, potential abuse, and resale of people's personal information - how does it make you feel? Do you think it's a problem? If so, do you think there are any solutions?

Me? It make me feel very uncomfortable, and I think we need legal mechanisms in place to take control over our data from these parties - even if we misguidedly gave some control away in the past, usually by having our trust betrayed or being bamboozled by small-print and legal linguistics.

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

A: We're punishing you

B: That seems like a double standard, here's why.

A: whataboutism!

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[GrimSavant]

Right wing authoritarianism is on the rise nowadays, and it seems to have taken root pretty strongly in the internets, or at the very least it has taken root very loudly. Principles don't really matter for that, what matters is particular people, and whether it's my guy doing something or if it is your guy. Tu quoque is what passes for a standard rhetorical technique.

So for this subject, the underlying issue of whether or not Facebook hoovering up tons of personal data with poor controls on how that data is handled with political actors or even hostile criminal or foreign entities is immaterial to the RWA, much less the particular details of each case. What matters is whether Obama did it or Trump did it, or choose your own dichotomy if you are not in the US.

It really looks like it is time for the Wild West days of social media to come to an end, and the Europeans at the very least seem to have come that conclusion already. I'm not really expecting the Republicans in control of the US government currently to do much about it until the next time it bites them in the ass, though. Shouting "but Obama!" doesn't seem to be very motivated by the concept that there's a more general underlying problem, but rather as an excuse.

Wait a second...narrative shifting

[argStyopa]

...when I first heard this story, it was that Facebook sold an analytics firm a shit-ton of data on their users. You can argue all day long whether FB's gathering was moral or no, but the sale seemed straightforward.

Now this has morphed into "..it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users,..." . ...which has an entirely more malignant sound. Coincidence?

So - did CA "harvest" this data in any sort of illegitimate way, or does that have more to do with the person/party they did it FOR than anything?

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[AmiMoJo]

The created a Facebook app. It looked innocent, one of those stupid personality tests. But in the ToS that no-one read it said it would grab your private data AND the private data of your friends.

That last bit is definitely illegal. You can't agree to give up personal data on behalf of your friends. About 300k people took the test, 50m people's data was stolen.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Trailer Trash]

Here's what's happening. The Russia narrative fell apart. Even with Democrats screeching about it 24/7 for months, it's obvious that Trump isn't going to be ensnared in that and nobody right of Bernie Sanders believes it. So the next thing was some porn star that Trump apparently had sex with. Oh, wow, *nobody* knew he was a womanizer. Right. Of course, the left lost all their credibility on this being a big deal 20 years ago.

So this is the latest. Some company tied to Trump stole a bunch of data from Facebook. Oh, they haven't said "stole" yet, have they? I don't even read this shit at this point because it's not worth it. But my guess is that they'll go that route, and the retards who think Trump's going to be impeached and that'll make Hillary president will be dancing again.

What crime is being alleged here?

[mi]

A private firm used computers and access to social networks to learn about people's opinions on various political matters. What's the crime in that?.. Why would this even be unethical, much less illegal?

Maybe, this violated Facebook's TOS — but that's the most, that can even be alleged here... If that...

Re:Oh really?

[Uberbah]

If you are being honest though you will also have to acknowledge the fact that she won the popular vote by a huge margin.

And as long as we're being honest, you know there's no such thing as a popular vote for president in the United States. Millions of people stay home or vote third party because they know full well their state is going for one party or the other. If everyone's vote actually counts, both candidates would have actually run completely different campaigns with completely different outcomes. Democrats in Texas would have a reason to go to the polls as well as Republicans in California.