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.

Comments

What could be gained there?

[damn_registrars]

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?

Re:What could be gained there?

[ArhcAngel]

Cambridge Analytica wasn't a failure of the system but rather the system working exactly as designed.

Exactly. I suspect FB has/had similar relationships with thousands of other businesses. It is, after all, their very business model.

Re:What could be gained there?

[jon3k]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

As we understand it now, the data mining and analytics company, based out of London, gained access to data on as many as 50 million Facebook profiles thanks to generous data-sharing policies Facebook app developers enjoyed back in 2014. This data, which was sold to Cambridge Analytica against Facebook’s terms of service, reportedly informed the firm’s election ad targeting toolset used by the campaign of President Donald Trump and others.

Cannot disagree at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Facebook doesn't sell user's data...

[BringsApples]

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.

Re:Search and seizure (yeah its a stretch)

[Rob Y.]

The court jumped head first into a purely political issue rather than allowing voters and legislatures decide it through the political process.

Well, if you think requiring someone to carry a pregnancy to term because some people's religions insist that a fertilized egg is deserving of personhood is a 'purely political issue', then I guess you have a point. You're wrong, but in your warped universe, you're at least consistent. If you don't think that, then you're just wrong.

Force them to do better disclosure

[rsilvergun]

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.

That's better than Blackmun's reasoning

[raymorris]

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?

Re:That's better than Blackmun's reasoning

[hmadrone]

There's a continuum from human germ cells (sperm and ovum), to a baby who can survive outside the womb. A blastocyst is different from an embryo is different from a fetus. Where do you want to draw the line? Some people want to draw it back at the level of sperm, and say that male masturbation is essentially murder. Others draw it at birth itself.

If you want to criminalize the removal of a blastocyst or an embryo, then you might as well criminalize all non-reproductive uses of semen. Biologically, blastocysts and embryos are much closer to germ cells than they are to a living, breathing baby.

Having had children and miscarriages myself, the idea of abortion nauseates me, but I am also aware that pregnancy is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting.

I have supported friends who discovered that their much-wanted children had defects incompatible with life. People in such a terrible situation need all their medical options on the table, including late termination. If you discover your child has anencephaly or Potter's syndrome and that there's nothing ahead for them outside the womb except pain and death, you don't need anyone telling you what to do. You need compassion so that you can make the best decision for your family, including a late termination if that seems least awful for all involved.

The state should keep its snout out of our private lives, and there is no aspect of our lives more private than reproductive health care.

We should own our personal data, too. Using it without our consent violates our inherent intellectual property rights in ourselves.

Thanks for that

[raymorris]

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.

Re:Search and seizure (yeah its a stretch)

[sysrammer]

Do you want to introduce any other highly contentious issues into this discussion about data privacy?

I prefer vi.

Murder isn't a religious thing

[raymorris]

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).