MSGID: 1:3828/7 0e0d1058   
   CHRS: IBMPC 2   
   * Copied (from: COFFEE_KLATSCH) by Roger Nelson using timEd/386 1.10.y2k+.   
      
    Facebook's history betrays its privacy pivot   
       
   Posted: March 20, 2019 by David Ruiz   
       
   Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposed a radical pivot for his company this   
   month: it would start caring-really-about privacy, building out a new version   
   of the platform that turns Facebook less into a public, open "town square" and   
   more into a private, intimate "living room."   
       
   Zuckerberg promised end-to-end encryption across the company's messaging   
   platforms, interoperability, disappearing messages, posts, and photos for   
   users, and a commitment to store less user data, while also refusing to put   
   that data in countries with poor human rights records.   
       
   If carried out, these promises could bring user privacy front and center.   
       
   But Zuckerberg's promises have exhausted users, privacy advocates,   
   technologists, and industry experts, including those of us at Malwarebytes.   
   Respecting user privacy makes for a better Internet, period. And Zuckerberg's   
   proposals are absolutely a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there   
   is a chasm between Zuckerberg's privacy proposal and Facebook's privacy   
   success. Given Zuckerberg's past performance, we doubt that he will actually   
   deliver, and we blame no user who feels the same way.   
       
   The outside response to Zuckerberg's announcement was swift and critical.   
       
   One early Facebook investor called the move a PR stunt. Veteran tech   
   journalist Kara Swisher jabbed Facebook for a "shoplift" of a competitor's   
   better idea. Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said it would   
   believe in a truly private Facebook when it sees it, and Austrian online   
   privacy rights activist (and thorn in Facebook's side) Max Schrems laughed at   
   what he saw as hypocrisy: merging users' metadata across WhatsApp, Facebook,   
   and Instagram, and telling users it was for their own, private good.   
       
   The biggest obstacle to believing Zuckerberg's words? For many, it's   
   Facebook's history.   
       
   The very idea of a privacy-protective Facebook goes so against the public's   
   understanding of the company that Zuckerberg's comments taste downright   
   unpalatable. These promises are coming from a man whose crisis-management   
   statements often lack the words "sorry" or "apology." A man who, when his   
   company was trying to contain its own understanding of a foreign intelligence   
   disinformation campaign, played would-be president, touring America for a   
   so-called "listening tour."   
       
   Users, understandably, expect better. They expect companies to protect their   
   privacy. But can Facebook actually live up to that?   
   "The future of the Internet"   
       
   Zuckerberg opens his appeal with a shaky claim-that he has focused his   
   attention in recent years on "understanding and addressing the biggest   
   challenges facing Facebook." According to Zuckerberg, "this means taking   
   positions on important issues concerning the future of the Internet."   
       
   Facebook's vision of the future of the Internet has, at times, been largely   
   positive. Facebook routinely supports net neutrality, and last year, the   
   company opposed a dangerous, anti-encryption, anti-security law in Australia   
   that could force companies around the world to comply with secret government   
   orders to spy on users.   
       
   But Facebook's lobbying record also reveals a future of the Internet that is,   
   for some, less secure.   
       
   Last year, Facebook supported one half of a pair of sibling bills that   
   eventually merged into one law. The law followed a convoluted, circuitous   
   route, but its impact today is clear: Consensual sex workers have found their   
   online communities wiped out, and are once again pushed into the streets, away   
   from guidance and support, and potentially back into the hands of predators.   
       
   "The bill is killing us," said one sex worker to The Huffington Post.   
       
   Though the law was ostensibly meant to protect sex trafficking victims, it has   
   only made their lives worse, according to some sex worker advocates.   
       
   On March 21, 2018, the US Senate passed the Allow States and Victims to Fight   
   Online Sex Trafficking (FOSTA) bill. The bill was the product of an earlier   
   version of its own namesake, and a separate, related bill, called the Stop   
   Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). Despite clear warnings from digital   
   rights groups and sex positive advocates, Facebook supported SESTA in November   
   2017. According to the New York Times, Facebook made this calculated move to   
   curry favor amongst some of its fiercest critics in US politics.   
       
   "[The] sex trafficking bill was championed by Senator John Thune, a Republican   
   of South Dakota who had pummeled Facebook over accusations that it censored   
   conservative content, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat   
   and senior commerce committee member who was a frequent critic of Facebook,"   
   the article said. "Facebook broke ranks with other tech companies, hoping the   
   move would help repair relations on both sides of the aisle, said two   
   congressional staffers and three tech industry officials."   
       
   Last October, the bill came back to haunt the social media giant: a Jane Doe   
   plaintiff in Texas sued Facebook for failing to protect her from sex   
   traffickers.   
       
   Further in Zuckerberg's essay, he promises that Facebook will continue to   
   refuse to build data centers in countries with poor human rights records.   
       
   Zuckerberg's concern is welcome and his cautions are well-placed. As the   
   Internet has evolved, so has data storage. Users' online profiles, photos,   
   videos, and messages can travel across various servers located in countries   
   around the world, away from a company's headquarters. But this development   
   poses a challenge. Placing people's data in countries with fewer privacy   
   protections-and potentially oppressive government regimes-puts everyone's   
   private, online lives at risk. As Zuckerberg said:   
       
   "[S]toring data in more countries also establishes a precedent that emboldens   
   other governments to seek greater access to their citizen's data and therefore   
   weakens privacy and security protections for people around the world,"   
   Zuckerberg said.   
       
   But what Zuckerberg says and what Facebook supports are at odds.   
       
   Last year, Facebook supported the CLOUD Act, a law that lowered privacy   
   protections around the world by allowing foreign governments to directly   
   request companies for their citizens' online data. It is a law that, according   
   to Electronic Frontier Foundation, could result in UK police inadvertently   
   getting their hands on Slack messages written by an American, and then   
   forwarding those messages to US police, who could then charge that American   
   with a crime-all without a warrant.   
       
   The same day that the CLOUD Act was first introduced as a bill, it received   
   immediate support from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Oath (formerly   
   Yahoo). Digital rights groups, civil liberties advocates, and human rights   
   organizations directly opposed the bill soon after. None of their efforts   
   swayed the technology giants. The CLOUD Act became law just months after its   
   introduction.   
       
   While Zuckerberg's push to keep data out of human-rights-abusing countries is   
   a step in the right direction for protecting global privacy, his company   
   supported a law that could result in the opposite. The CLOUD Act does not   
   meaningfully hinge on a country's human rights record. Instead, it hinges on   
   backroom negotiations between governments, away from public view.   
       
   The future of the Internet is already here, and Facebook is partially   
   responsible for the way it looks.   
   Skepticism over Facebook's origin story 2.0   
       
   For years, Zuckerberg told anyone who would listen-including US Senators   
   hungry for answers-that he started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. This   
   innocent retelling involves a young, doe-eyed Zuckerberg who doesn't care   
   about starting a business, but rather, about connecting people.   
       
   Connection, Zuckerberg has repeated, was the ultimate mission. This singular   
   vision was once employed by a company executive to hand-wave away human death   
   for the "*de facto* good" of connecting people.   
       
   But Zuckerberg's latest statement adds a new purpose, or wrinkle, to the   
   Facebook mission: privacy.   
       
   "Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally,   
   which is why we build social networks," Zuckerberg said.   
       
   Several experts see ulterior motives.   
       
   Kara Swisher, the executive editor of Recode, said that Facebook's re-steering   
   is probably an attempt to remain relevant with younger users. Online privacy,   
   data shows, is a top concern for that demographic. But caring about privacy,   
   Swisher said, "was never part of [Facebook's] DNA, except perhaps as a   
   throwaway line in a news release."   
       
   Ashkan Soltani, former chief technology officer of the Federal Trade   
   Commission, said that Zuckerberg's ideas were obvious attempts to leverage   
   privacy as a competitive edge.   
       
   "I strongly support consumer privacy when communicating online but this move   
   is entirely a strategic play to use privacy as a competitive advantage and   
   further lock-in Facebook as the dominant messaging platform," Soltani said on   
   Twitter.   
       
   As to the commitment to staying out of countries that violate human rights,   
   Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at   
   Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, pressed harder.   
       
   "I don't know what standards they're using to determine who are human rights   
   abusers," Pfefferkorn said in a phone interview. "If it's the list of   
   countries that the US has sanctioned, where they won't allow exports, that's a   
   short list. But if you have every country that's ever put dissidents in   
   prison, then that starts some much harder questions."   
       
   For instance, what will Facebook do if it wants to enter a country that, on   
   paper, protects human rights, but in practice, utilizes oppressive laws   
   against its citizens? Will Facebook preserve its new privacy model and forgo   
   the market entirely? Or will it bend?   
       
   "We'll see about that," Pfefferkorn said in an earlier email. "[Zuckerberg] is   
   answerable to shareholders and to the tyranny of the #1 rule: growth, growth,   
   growth."   
       
   Asked whether Facebook's pivot will succeed, Pfefferkorn said the company has   
   definitely made some important hires to help out. In the past year, Facebook   
   brought aboard three critics and digital rights experts-one from EFF, one from   
   New American's Open Technology Institute, and another from AccessNow-into lead   
   policy roles. Further, Pfefferkorn said, Facebook has successfully pushed out   
   enormous, privacy-forward projects before.   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge (SR41)   
    * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LoUiSiAna (1:3828/7)   
   SEEN-BY: 15/2 123/1970 226/16 17 229/107 354 426 452 1014 240/5832   
   SEEN-BY: 249/206 317 400 317/3 322/757 342/200 393/68 3828/7 12   
   PATH: 3828/7 229/426