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Photo illustration of the Facebook logo. (CHRISTOPHER SIMON / AFP / Getty Images)
Buried under the avalanche of coverage of its huge security breach, Facebook has quietly acknowledged a second major leak of news this week, admitting this time that a Russian company that counts the Russian government among its Customers had mass-uploaded so much data from the platform that its marketing materials claimed that it basically had a mirror of the Russian part of Facebook. More disturbingly, Facebook believes that, in contrast to previous leaks and demographics-related violations, this leak was in part due to the company's need to mass-collect Facebook images to create facial recognition models that could to be used by the Russian government for surveillance purposes. As Facebook becomes more and more an unintentional ally of government surveillance and repression around the world, providing it with useful databases for identifying dissidents, tracking critics, targeting campaigns misinformation and the establishment of facial recognition systems, the question to It is time to finally force Facebook to take seriously the protection of privacy and security, perhaps by closing or significantly reducing the key elements of its activity, or if the company simply has to rotate and become a public publishing platform of the Twitter type, in which everything is considered readable by everyone?
Facebook is an anomaly among its peers in Silicon Valley in that its business involves both convincing customers to trust their most sensitive and confidential information and simultaneously making this private and sensitive information as accessible as possible. advertisers and developers around the world to exploit for commercial purposes. In contrast, LinkedIn has emerged as an interactive resume hub, providing businesses and individuals with the tools they need to share their work experience and skills in a public-facing environment where the visibility of a resume or an offer of employment is all the more visible. the best. Similarly, Twitter's entire business model is a voice of the world with an interface and mindset that everything is public and that the goal is maximum publicity and virality. Thus, the fact that Twitter earns money to cash all these tweets and sell them to companies around the world is much less detrimental to privacy, since users are aware from the start that they are preparing to give a speech in front of the media. world. In the same vein, most other internet giants who hold huge data about us keep this data as the lifeblood of their businesses. Amazon, for example, can collect a lot of information about the buying habits of its customers, but keeps this information with every element of its security infrastructure, instead of opening it with a host of APIs and claiming it. openly as the ultimate platform for consumer information. For Amazon, the data it holds about its customers is its main competitive advantage, namely absolute security. On the other hand, Facebook has been open for many years both as a private platform and as a public data broker: to convince people to transmit their data, while strategically and consciously building an entire infrastructure. Tools and processes to maximize developers to access all this data.
In short, Silicon Valley's large companies promote privacy and fiercely protect their customers' data, exploiting them internally as a competitive advantage, or developing their publisher business, helping their users to spread their ideas and ideas. ideas. the public according to a model of confidentiality in which everything is public and where privacy is not the issue. In this respect, Facebook is the only one among its peers insofar as it has promised confidentiality to its users and has made a point of maximizing access to their data.
This is one of the reasons Facebook has become one of the most important surveillance tools of governments around the world.
Twitter can be useful for collecting global population-wide trends and observing how the public is filtered into the world, but Facebook is where we really are. Even though West World's amusement park offered a liberating world in which its guests could momentarily release themselves from the chains of modern life and enjoy what they'd mistakenly thought to be at the shelter of observation, judgment and consequences, Facebook has also become a quarter of the world's population. turns to communicate and express themselves in what they believed to be a secure and private space.
Other web companies may know us better, but only Facebook makes its observations available to the world.
In its latest data leak, Facebook acknowledged this week that two Russian companies had mass-collected user profiles and images of its platform. Unlike the so-called Cambridge Analytica work that focused on the national political campaign, the latest case was about companies that would provide their services to the Russian government. Most troubling of all, however, is that, contrary to the textual and demographic objective of the previous flaws and leaks, this one implied an explicit focus on the mass collection of photographs to create facial recognition patterns. Specifically, Facebook stated that it "had reason to believe that your work for the government included corresponding photos of individuals' personal social media accounts in order to identify them."
However, as the company pointed out, at least some of its data came from the use of web-based information robots to collect publicly available information through Facebook site searches and that, in accordance with the Russian law, his practices were entirely legal. The ability of companies to collect data externally without connecting to Facebook is one of the challenges of Facebook's privacy model: it is a private garden in which confidentiality is paramount, while encouraging users to embrace privacy. privacy settings to make their content accessible. visible even off Facebook for foreigners beyond its walls.
The global nature of Facebook also poses unique privacy issues. As an international corporation operating in many countries, it is exposed to each of their distinct legal systems, some of which may be profoundly different from the freedoms and protections known to those of the United States. The company has no choice but to comply with these requirements or to give in to such activities that are completely legal and lawful in those countries.
It is here that lies one of the great existential challenges of the increasingly centralized Web: when a small group of companies defines their respective corners of the "Web" for the entire planet, they expose all their users to the laws and standards of each country. In the decentralized Web as it was envisioned, a Chinese-based Chinese social media platform targeting Chinese citizens may censor any mention of Tiananmen Square, but such restrictions have no impact on a American social platform targeting Americans. As the underlying content infrastructure of the Web has been reduced to a handful of companies, we now find ourselves at a crossroads where the US social media platform must now meet the demands of Chinese censorship, potentially expanding elements globally as it attempts to design a single system. set of moderation rules applied to all countries and cultures.
These international companies are not loyal to their results. They have no financial or other incentive to fight terrorism or to end hate speech, no interest in preventing governments from silencing critics or carrying out mass surveillance, no reason for it. increase privacy or invest in security. Their only risk is the possibility of government intervention, while allowing each of these activities to yield an economic benefit is considerable. After all, while officially banning terrorist speeches, Facebook is ultimately getting money from the ads that people see when they consume or react to that content. The more content you have on your platform, the more you can sell to advertisers.
In Russia, FindFace hit the headlines in 2016 by mass-collecting photographs of the Russian social network Vkontakte and enabling real-time face recognition with 70% accuracy. Applications such as using her smartphone to identify a woman walking on the street and send him a message of meeting or a mass identifying everyone leaving the subway station.
Of course, Facebook itself has made an art of mass facial recognition and has even filed patent applications covering the notion of marketing their data and facial algorithms in order to provide mass facial recognition to businesses and possibly to the forces of order (although the company pointed out that she had no immediate plans to do this).
One could reasonably ask that if Facebook had at least considered opening its facial recognition platform for external use, why would it oppose what other companies do likewise? If Facebook considers that it is acceptable to file a patent application describing the use of its extensive database of images to allow companies to perform a facial recognition and refuses to do so. exclude the possibility for governments to take advantage of the same technology, why should it be allowed to prevent third-party companies from competing with that? Indeed, such arguments go to the heart of the question of whether Facebook is a monopoly, when it uses its power to prevent companies from offering precisely the same services that it was seriously considering filing a patent.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
In the end, perhaps the biggest story in this area is that Facebook has once again failed to notice or simply ignore another company that mass-collected data from the sanctity of its walled garden. . In its haste to become the hub of the modern social network, Facebook has focused all its resources on the possibility for other users to access as easily as possible the data that its users have entrusted to it, without even asking if Was a good idea or not. the privacy implications that this would create. The company's reluctance to comment on these issues and the fact that nothing seems to have changed, with another violation that occurs last month, suggests that the only hope we have for privacy protection online is that governments finally intervene and force Facebook to take concrete action. measures to secure the data of its users that go far beyond its current efforts or finally, recognize that it can not keep the information of its private users and pivot to the public model of its peers in which it presents itself as a platform for public rather than private communication. Since privacy is actually dead in today's digital world, perhaps the best option is for Facebook to accept the fact that its once quiet walled garden has become an Orwellian surveillance state and teaches its two billion dollars to Users to treat everything they do as public. After all, if we acted at all times as if the cameras were watching, the next data breach would only be a retweet giving us more publicity.
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Photo illustration of the Facebook logo. (CHRISTOPHER SIMON / AFP / Getty Images)
Buried under the avalanche of coverage of its huge security breach, Facebook has quietly acknowledged a second major leak of news this week, admitting this time that a Russian company that counts the Russian government among its Customers had mass-uploaded so much data from the platform that its marketing materials claimed that it basically had a mirror of the Russian part of Facebook. More disturbingly, Facebook believes that, in contrast to previous leaks and demographics-related violations, this leak was in part due to the company's need to mass-collect Facebook images to create facial recognition models that could to be used by the Russian government for surveillance purposes. As Facebook becomes more and more an unintentional ally of government surveillance and repression around the world, providing it with useful databases for identifying dissidents, tracking critics, targeting campaigns misinformation and the establishment of facial recognition systems, the question to It is time to finally force Facebook to take seriously the protection of privacy and security, perhaps by closing or significantly reducing the key elements of its activity, or if the company simply has to rotate and become a public publishing platform of the Twitter type, in which everything is considered readable by everyone?
Facebook is an anomaly among its peers in Silicon Valley in that its business involves both convincing customers to trust their most sensitive and confidential information and simultaneously making this private and sensitive information as accessible as possible. advertisers and developers around the world to exploit for commercial purposes. In contrast, LinkedIn has emerged as an interactive resume hub, providing businesses and individuals with the tools they need to share their work experience and skills in a public-facing environment where the visibility of a resume or an offer of employment is all the more visible. the best. Similarly, Twitter's entire business model is a voice of the world with an interface and mindset that everything is public and that the goal is maximum publicity and virality. Thus, the fact that Twitter earns money to cash all these tweets and sell them to companies around the world is much less detrimental to privacy, since users are aware from the start that they are preparing to give a speech in front of the media. world. In the same vein, most other internet giants who hold huge data about us keep this data as the lifeblood of their businesses. Amazon, for example, can collect a lot of information about the buying habits of its customers, but keeps this information with every element of its security infrastructure, instead of opening it with a host of APIs and claiming it. openly as the ultimate platform for consumer information. For Amazon, the data it holds about its customers is its main competitive advantage, which must be secure at all costs. On the other hand, Facebook has been open for many years both as a private platform and as a public data broker: to convince people to transmit their data, while strategically and consciously building an entire infrastructure. Tools and processes to maximize developers to access all this data.
In short, Silicon Valley's large companies promote privacy and fiercely protect their customers' data, exploiting them internally as a competitive advantage, or developing their publisher business, helping their users to spread their ideas and ideas. ideas. the public according to a model of confidentiality in which everything is public and where privacy is not the issue. In this respect, Facebook is the only one among its peers insofar as it has promised confidentiality to its users and has made a point of maximizing access to their data.
This is one of the reasons Facebook has become one of the most important surveillance tools of governments around the world.
Twitter can be useful for collecting global population-wide trends and observing how the public is filtered into the world, but Facebook is where we really are. Even though West World's amusement park offered a liberating world in which its guests could momentarily release themselves from the chains of modern life and enjoy what they'd mistakenly thought to be at the shelter of observation, judgment and consequences, Facebook has also become a quarter of the world's population. turns to communicate and express themselves in what they believed to be a secure and private space.
Other web companies may know us better, but only Facebook makes its observations available to the world.
In its latest data leak, Facebook acknowledged this week that two Russian companies had mass-collected user profiles and images of its platform. Unlike the so-called Cambridge Analytica work that focused on the national political campaign, the latest case was about companies that would provide their services to the Russian government. Most troubling of all, however, is that, contrary to the textual and demographic objective of the previous flaws and leaks, this one implied an explicit focus on the mass collection of photographs to create facial recognition patterns. Specifically, Facebook stated that it "had reason to believe that your work for the government included corresponding photos of individuals' personal social media accounts in order to identify them."
However, as the company pointed out, at least some of its data came from the use of web-based information robots to collect publicly available information through Facebook site searches and that, in accordance with the Russian law, his practices were entirely legal. The ability of companies to collect data externally without connecting to Facebook is one of the challenges of Facebook's privacy model: it is a private garden in which confidentiality is paramount, while encouraging users to embrace privacy. privacy settings to make their content accessible. visible even off Facebook for foreigners beyond its walls.
The global nature of Facebook also poses unique privacy issues. As an international corporation operating in many countries, it is exposed to each of their legal systems, some of which may be profoundly different from the freedoms and protections known to those of the United States. The company has no choice but to comply with these requirements or to give in to such activities that are completely legal and lawful in those countries.
It is here that lies one of the great existential challenges of the increasingly centralized Web: when a small group of companies defines their respective corners of the "Web" for the entire planet, they expose all their users to the laws and standards of each country. In the decentralized Web as it was envisioned, a Chinese-based Chinese social media platform targeting Chinese citizens may censor any mention of Tiananmen Square, but such restrictions have no impact on a American social platform targeting Americans. As the underlying content infrastructure of the Web has been reduced to a handful of companies, we now find ourselves at a crossroads where the US social media platform must now meet the demands of Chinese censorship, potentially expanding elements globally as it attempts to design a single system. set of moderation rules applied to all countries and cultures.
These international companies are not loyal to their results. They have no financial or other incentive to fight terrorism or put an end to hate speech, no interest in preventing governments from silencing critics or conducting mass surveillance, no reason to do so. increase privacy or invest in security. Their only risk is the possibility of government intervention, while allowing each of these activities to yield an economic benefit is considerable. After all, while officially banning terrorist speeches, Facebook is ultimately getting money from the ads that people see when they consume or react to that content. The more content you have on your platform, the more you can sell to advertisers.
In Russia, FindFace hit the headlines in 2016 by mass-collecting photographs of the Russian social network Vkontakte and enabling real-time face recognition with 70% accuracy. Applications such as using her smartphone to identify a woman walking on the street and send him a message of meeting or a mass identifying everyone leaving the subway station.
Of course, Facebook itself has made an art of mass facial recognition and has even filed patent applications covering the notion of marketing their data and facial algorithms in order to provide mass facial recognition to businesses and possibly to the forces of order (although the company pointed out that she had no immediate plans to do this).
One could reasonably ask that if Facebook had at least considered opening its facial recognition platform for external use, why would it oppose what other companies do likewise? If Facebook considers that it is acceptable to file a patent application describing the use of its extensive database of images to allow companies to perform a facial recognition and refuses to do so. exclude the possibility for governments to take advantage of the same technology, why should it be allowed to prevent third-party companies from competing with that? Indeed, such arguments go to the heart of the question of whether Facebook is a monopoly, when it uses its power to prevent companies from offering precisely the same services that it was seriously considering filing a patent.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
In the end, perhaps the biggest story in this area is that Facebook has once again failed to notice or simply ignore another company that mass-collected data from the sanctity of its walled garden. . In its haste to become the hub of the modern social network, Facebook has focused all its resources on the possibility for other users to access as easily as possible the data that its users have entrusted to it, without even asking if Was a good idea or not. the privacy implications that this would create. The company's reluctance to comment on these issues and the fact that nothing seems to have changed, with another violation that occurs last month, suggests that the only hope we have for privacy protection online is that governments finally intervene and force Facebook to take concrete action. measures to secure the data of its users that go far beyond its current efforts or finally, recognize that it can not keep the information of its private users and pivot to the public model of its peers in which it presents itself as a platform for public rather than private communication. Since privacy is actually dead in today's digital world, perhaps the best option is for Facebook to accept the fact that its once quiet walled garden has become an Orwellian surveillance state and teaches its two billion dollars to Users to treat everything they do as public. After all, if we acted at all times as if the cameras were watching, the next data breach would only be a retweet giving us more publicity.
