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DC Attorney General Sues Facebook Over Alleged Privacy Violations From Cambridge Analytica Scandal (washingtonpost.com)
The attorney general for the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Facebook for allowing Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, to gain access to the names, "likes" and other personal data about tens of millions of the social site's users without their permission. From a report: The lawsuit filed by Karl Racine [PDF], confirmed Wednesday by two people familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak on record, marks the first major effort by regulators in the United States to penalize the tech giant for its entanglement with the firm. It could presage even tougher fines and other punishments still to come for Facebook as additional state and federal investigations continue.
The lawsuit comes as Facebook continues to face criticism around the world for mismanaging its users' personal information. On Friday, for example, the company admitted that some users' photos may have been improperly accessed by third-party apps. On Tuesday, new details emerged about Facebook's extensive data-sharing arrangements with corporate partners including Amazon and Spotify. The report from The New York Times quickly triggered another round of calls from Capitol Hill for the tech giant to be penalized. To that end, a person familiar with the new D.C. lawsuit said it is likely to be amended in the future to include more recent allegations of improper data collection and use.
The lawsuit comes as Facebook continues to face criticism around the world for mismanaging its users' personal information. On Friday, for example, the company admitted that some users' photos may have been improperly accessed by third-party apps. On Tuesday, new details emerged about Facebook's extensive data-sharing arrangements with corporate partners including Amazon and Spotify. The report from The New York Times quickly triggered another round of calls from Capitol Hill for the tech giant to be penalized. To that end, a person familiar with the new D.C. lawsuit said it is likely to be amended in the future to include more recent allegations of improper data collection and use.
The very reason why facebook exists is to sell the personal information of its users. Cambridge Analytica wasn't a failure of the system but rather the system working exactly as designed. What could the AG have to gain by winning a lawsuit against a company that was doing exactly what they were telling their users - and customers - they were going to do?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The very reason why facebook exists is to sell the personal information of its users. Cambridge Analytica wasn't a failure of the system but rather the system working exactly as designed. What could the AG have to gain by winning a lawsuit against a company that was doing exactly what they were telling their users - and customers - they were going to do?
There's all this focus on facebook and Cambridge Analytica and the Russian influence etc ..... I've seen some of the Russian ads. It was pretty lame. And the rhetoric was just eye-rolling pathetic - but I have to tell ya, as someone who lost his job because of off-shoring and H1-bs, it did sound good - I'm not gonna lie!
IF it actually worked (I'm not so sure all that fb and CA bullshit was THAT effective ), it says more about our electorate than it does about facebook and CA.
I mean, it did feel good. And when Democrats say shit like, "I'm gonna hold my nose and vote for Hillary." (I did so myself because I do not like what Trump or the Republicans stand for.), I CAN NOT blame anyone for voting for Trump.
Guys, most Trump supporters I know (yeah, pls. don't lecture me samples and stats :) ) are old people who are glued to Fox News and others who really do want to go back to when "America Was Great" and are susceptible to anyone who preaches on that.
Privacy is not in the interest of the collective, comrade. Says Zuckerberg.
Corporatism != Free Market
The users trade their data to Facebook, in exchange for the illusion of time spent with friends. And now that Facebook owns that data, they sell that data. This is their business model. I don't see what there is to sue about.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Cambridge Analytics really screwed up. There was an easy way they could've avoided getting sued, and still make their money sucking off all that Facebook data and selling it. All they should have done is sell that data to Hillary. Presto. No way they would've gotten dragged into court, over that. Dumbasses!
If this were truly an issue, it would have been done in 2012 when Obama took advantage of this info. No one cared them because the "correct" people were using it. The AG is attempting to make it clear to all companies that if you help the GOP/Trump you will be punished.
Story
Other examples:
Cohen lies to Congress is a felony/ Comey, McCabe, Clapper, Brenen, Lynch, Yeats, Clinton lie to Congress no problem.
Enquirer buries story is illegal campaign contribution to Trump/ CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NYT, WaPo don't report on Clinton taking hundreds of millions in bribes as SOS no problem.
Trump pays off woman to be silent, impeachable issue / Congress has spent $17 million of taxpayer money in 264 cases that are similar is no problem.
DC is a joke at this point.
> I believe there has been rulings in the Supreme Court that privacy is somewhat protected (I think that was actually a major part of the Roe v Wade case surprisingly enough).....but really what protections do we US citizens have in law?
Yeah that's related to the government invading privacy, Constitutional rights. The Constitution says what the federal government is allowed to do and what it is not allowed to do. It doesn't say anything about Facebook.
The reasoning in Roe vs Wade is that because the fourth amendment says the federal government isn't allowed to do "unreasonable search and seizure", states can't regulate abortion. In other words, they wanted to prevent the states from regulating abortion, so they did - despite having absolutely no coherent line of reasoning why such laws could possibly be unconstitutional. The court jumped head first into a purely political issue rather than allowing voters and legislatures decide it through the political process. The court learned from this mistake, to some extent, and avoided decided some other political questions after Roe v Wade.
The justices discussed it for a while, trying to find some way to connect the issue to the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't mention abortion, the Constitution protects "life" in the 5th and 14th amendments, but that's the opposite of what they wanted. They wanted to make protecting life unconstitutional. In the winter of 1972 Justice Harry Blackmun, apparently very drunk, came up with the idea a state telling someone "you may not kill babies" is pretty much the same thing as searching their house, because abortion could occur in private and searches have something to do with privacy.
Everyone and their parents, and even grandparents now knows that Facebook is awful. But are there a real alternative?
I am not going to join Facebook again.
L'Idiot
to IMPEACH TRUMP, traitor to the AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Is lying to Congress a crime?
Clapper lied to congress and wasn't charged.
Eric Holder lied to congress and wasn't charged.
Hillary Clinton lied to congress and wasn't charged.
However...
Michael Cohen did get charged for lying to Congress.
With selective prosecution like this, I think being an associate to Trump is a crime but lying to Congress is not. This is what tinpot dictators do. Pass laws that make everyone a criminal and only prosecute those you don't like. Its called a dictatorship, and is run by the DNC not Trump.
Vote Tyranny, vote DNC.
which would turn off a lot of users. Also make it so that every political Advert is very clearly labeled as such.
Finally, the GOP and CA had a major voter suppression campaign run through Facebook where they run attack pieces on Hilary targeted to specific users to suppress the black vote. A variety of civil rights laws make this practice of dubious legality (though IANAL so it might get past a jury). But the bad press from it coming out would be enough to stop the practice.
And it's definitely something worth stopping. Whether you like Hilary or not targeted voter suppression drives do not add to our nation's political discourse, they subtract from it. I'd like to say "That goes for both sides" but as far as I can tell this was a uniquely GOP/CA thing. And I know it's not popular to call one side out, but I calls it like it is.
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Roe Vs Wade wasn't a 4th amendment case; it was a 9th amendment case. The right to privacy is fundamental, and one that stretches back to the common law the underlies the Constitution. Reproductive and medical decisions are fundamental to human beings, and the state has no business inserting itself in the process. The Roe vs Wade decision protects a lot more than a woman's right to make reproductive choices; it also protects our rights to make other family and medical decisions.
Yet you calling people a bigot if they plan to vote for Trump isn't an attempt at voter suppression?
I think you might be right, and should be prosecuted for voter suppression. Give me your contact details so I can report you to the FEC for prosecution.
If you think my comment is stupid, it is, it was an attempt to point out how stupid rsilvergun is ONCE AGAIN.
Lying to Congress is a crime, that's why Trump is headed to prison. Because he's too dumb to keep his lies straight, unlike Clinton, Clapper, or anyone with half a brain. Trump is just too dumb to be an effective traitor.
#Rope.
She's since apologized for it, but I don't see a lot to apologize for from a racist standpoint. I'm woke as f**k and I can't read a dog whistle in there. Now, I still would have liked an apologizing for the shameless fear-mongering, but not for any racism (and yes, I disagree with politifact on this, I'd rate it false, they gave it a "Mostly True" in context).
As for calling Trump supporters bigots, as a blanket statement that is wrong. But Trump is a bigot. That's not really up for debate. There's decades of actions on his part with that regard. What's more it's like the old Simpson joke: "Not racist, but No 1 with racists". There is an element of guilt by association because by supporting Trump for, say, his pro-worker and populist policies you give him the power to implement his racist policies.
And that is the difference: in one case you're making an argument about why you shouldn't vote for Trump and should in fact for for Hilary. In other case you're just focusing on getting the Blacks to not vote. It's a subtle difference but it's real. There's no attempt at discussing policy even as a background. CA was just trying to say "Don't Vote". Not, "Vote this way" but "Don't vote".
That's voter suppression. That's the difference and the genius of CA's approach. It's a whole new type of politicking. You're no longer making arguments, your just trying to game the system. It's an "end justifies the means" form of politics, and it's why everything CA did makes us so uneasy. Again, the genius is that it's hard to put your finger on why what they did was so bad because at first glance it looks like politics as usual. It's not.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yep, playing unedited videos of your political opponent is voter suppression.
This is what he just claimed.
Congratulations, you have surpassed creimer as the /. village idiot. Just when I think progressives can't get dumber, one of them proves me wrong.
Byte (magazine) Information Exchange
That was "Social Media"
That was fun.
That was informative.
And it cost - money - to belong. Not a lot of money, but the members paid for the service.
We were the users, clients - Byte was the service provider, Bix was the service.
Clear as a bell.
Also there was Delphi and several others.
(even AOL?)
Then there were 'hidden cost' services like a college account and USNET.
Why put up with Farce Book?
I'm impressed. Your reasoning is better than the reasoning SCOTUS uses. It makes more sense, IMHO. I'm not being facetious, I think your ninth amendment argument is better than the fourth amendment reasoning (with either being applied to the states via the 14th).
However, the ninth begins "the enumeration of certain rights may not". One cannot Constitutionally say "because the Constitution affirms this right, it takes away this other right". The ninth would shoot down that argument. Nobody is making that argument, so the ninth has no effect. Nobody says "because you have the right to free speech, you don't have the right to kill babies". They say you don't have the right to kill babies simply because you don't, nothing in all of human history in any way suggests that's a right, until Roe v Wade magically appeared it. Obviously the pro-abortion people say that the offspring of two people isn't quite a person, so abortion isn't exactly "killing babies".
That's an argument they can make. The first question is whether abortion is "killing babies". The Constitution doesn't answer that question. It's not a question about the Constitution, it's an opinion question, a political question.
What few people think about is the obvious follow up to "is abortion killing babies?". Assume the answer is "no, not exactly, here's the difference between abortion and killing babies ....". If we all agreed on that, we'd then have an agreement on why abortion isn't quite the same thing as killing babies. The state has a legitimate interest in making Jay walking illegal, they have the power to do that. Do they not have the power to make "not quite killing babies" illegal?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate it. It sounds like you've thought about and you have good reasons you'd vote to allow abortion, though of course others may come to a different conclusion about when exactly human life begins.
I note with your latest post, we've switched to a different topic. You've very effectively expressed why you would vote for liberal abortion laws in your state, which is a very different question of whether the text of the US Constitution says you're not allowed to have a vote.
> I am also aware that pregnancy is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting.
This is the one statement I'd take issue with. Rarely are we talking about "unconsenting". In the vast majority of cases they copulated *on purpose*, not only with consent, but they took the guy home, took of their clothes, etc, in a deliberate effort to take the actions which they know will likely result in pregnancy after a few tries. So they didn't just consent to someone else doing it, they actively did it themselves.
I say sure, go for it. It will be a dual hanging with Hillart swinging right beside him
I'm not sure why you're bringing up religion. Murder isn't a religious issue.
On abortion, there are three groups of people:
People who think it's murder (and therefore very much should be illegal).
People who think it's not exactly murder. ("Not quite murder is still pretty bad, a heck of a lot worse than jaywalking, which is illegal).
People who think it's perfectly fine, because it's not quite murder. They can't explain why "almost murder" is okay, while slapping someone should be illegal).