I was at a party with an early FB employee once and he was bragging about how they would spy on people to see who's profiles they were looking at. He thought it was hilarious, I never used FB again. I think his exact quote was "Hot girls are like celebrities, we watch people refresh their profiles all day long LOL".
I have heard that the NSA has such a chronic problem with employees spying on their Significant Others, that they have a code word for it: LOVEINT.
I admit, in one of my very first jobs, I accessed the company DB, to find out about celebrities. I almost got fired, and learned a hard (and early) lesson about the importance of privacy and being careful about admin dashboards.
Overpowered admin dashboards are a problem. I tend to spend a lot of time on backends, locking down permissions.
These days, I am so anal about privacy and security, that it pisses people off. I just know that there’s plenty of knuckleheads like me, out there.
"Any proposal must be viewed as follows. Do not pay overly much attention to the benefits that might be delivered were the law in question to be properly enforced, rather one needs to consider the harm done by the improper enforcement of this particular piece of legislation, whatever it might be."
I was talking to I believe an FB engineer and this must have been 10+ years ago at this point, he said,
- FB found restricting access was difficult because engineers do sometimes bump into incidental user data while doing their job
- And engineers, being sufficiently motivated, can find a way around security measures
- So instead of reducing productivity with ineffective security measures, FB logs all access to private user info, and a separate team will request a reason, and if you don't have a 100% legitimate work related reason to be viewing it, you're terminated immediately
- And it does occasionally happen
- And best practice if you might incidentally see private user data is to do it on an FB profile of a dev friend also working at FB
Not only was this true at the time but it was kind of an open secret that some of the data scientists were stalking people and using "I'm a data scientist, I need unfiltered access to the production data" as a cover.
That’s so wild. Not to downplay the dudes’ grossness which is at 100%, but also imagine the shallowness of someone who would trade sex for a blue checkmark that signify arbitrarily-granted clout on social media.
I miss when “influencer” wasn’t anybody’s career goal.
It is still a problem today. I lived in SF for a stretch working at non-FANG tech companies, and I met a lot of people who worked for Apple, Facebook, and Google.
After meeting some of those people at a meditation group, they began being creepy by making obtuse, but oddly specific comments on things that I was doing online to suggest they were. I got creeped out and stopped going to that class. I began meeting friends or friends of their friends at different places.
Ultimately, it escalated to the point that an employee at Apple was leaving poisoned treats outside of my door and then listening me dealing with my dog being sick.
You cannot talk about any of this because its really easy for the stalkers to deny its happening. There are no laws in this area yet. If you try to complain or get anyone's attention, guess who is watching your every move. The exact same people that are committing the crimes.
People will look back at today at the political or social strife, and they will wonder how we never connected the dots.
Not so easy. New WiFi Camera's show up in the location maps that these people may have access to.
Desperate homeless may be coerced to do the deed, while the malevolent person sits back and watches.
Some people seem to think these things don't happen, but they do. Just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal for a perfect example, there are plenty of things that never make it to this level of harassment where there is no proof.
I'm not sure the link is making the argument you want it do.
Epstein would probably make for a better link where people endless told the FBI what he was up to and they did nothing until forced by the Palm Beach PB (who actually started to do something) and so the FBI had to settle with down playing the charges as much as they possibly could.
Your link is a demonstration of if you do collect evidence the police will prosecute.
It makes the point that was intended, which was this 'is' happening, and that without a preponderance of evidence its a he said she said with no action being taken (even if it did happen).
As for Epstein being a better link, no that is not the case for a lot of sound reasons I won't be getting into here.
> Your link is a demonstration of if you do collect evidence the police will prosecute.
No it is not. Its a demonstration that these things happen from a reputable source that has been documented.
The implication you make is quite different, and its unsupportable because its based in fallacy. Having data that something has happened doesn't mean the police will prosecute, or that any action will be taken to correct. The two are independent.
If you are some low level employee, certainly, the liability is too much.
But very higher level employees and Zuck himself? I would have to see actual proof of very secure lockout and segregation policies and procedures with zero exceptions or higher level administration access across the entire company to even have a chance to believe it. And that is way more effort and organizationally burdensome and costly than just trusting a few people to not be morons and be available when needed because you pay them enough money to not blab or give out access to others.
Zuck has bigger things to care about. But in-aggregate they're checking all of that stuff; it's how Meta knew to buy Instagram (a ton of their users were using it).
yup, and if it wasn't for all the leverage these guys have, despite NDAs, there'd be more influx due to abuse of access to sensitive data. LLMs can come up with bunches of ways how to leak info without revealing one's identity, so it's safe to assume people in higher level positions have bunches of actionable strategies already in place
This "would get you immediately fired" at Facebook 10 years ago. It happened a lot. It only gets you fired if you get caught and you only get caught if someone complains; the security teams aren't so much asleep at the wheel as there's a mannequin at the wheel so nobody notices what nobody notices.
> Why do you think he got hunted to the ends of the earth?
Because of what the guys at the top were doing.
If it had just been the LOVEINT stuff, I think the NSA would've said "oh, right, yes that's not meant to happen, few bad apples, nothing to see here".
But showing a large systemic attitude, lying to congress… and specifically that America works with foreign partners to circumvent constitutional rights everywhere, that will have upset the people in charge.
Plus getting most big tech to use E2E encryption for chat so wiretapping their servers stopped being useful.
That, and also because they can. Hell, extrajudicially destroying people for threatening the system is basically the entire reason for the national security apparatus.
Big corp doesn’t get to do that (generally), hence actually having to (eventually) stop it.
> extrajudicially destroying people for threatening the system is basically the entire reason for the national security apparatus.
This is a great take . . . if you're a liberal arts major in undergrad. It is literally sophomoric. Abuses in the intelligence community do not obviate the legitimate reasons why the government collects intelligence.
So you’re saying the folks responsible for ruining Snowden and others… saw consequences? COINTELPRO and MKULTRA resulted in… people getting prosecuted?
Obviating or not, when the abuses see no real consequences, at what point do you say the abuses are just… part of the story too?
Frankly, saying otherwise is the Sophomoric take, isn’t it?
Those would be excellent examples of "Abuses in the intelligence community"
Even though I strongly dislike the abuses I learn of in the intelligence community, I don't see how these abuses "obviate the legitimate reasons why the government collects intelligence", nor do I see how you could go from that to the much stronger claim "extrajudicially destroying people for threatening the system is basically the entire reason for the national security apparatus."
Do they extrajudicially destroy people for threatening the system? I have every reason to assume so. Is that the "entire reason" for them? No. Each agency in each nation also has the completely lawful purpose of protecting their own citizens from the agencies of other nations.
The FSB, if they are acting against the US, is certainly not acting lawfully in the US. Just like if the CIA is not operating lawfully against, say, the FSB in Russia.
Literally the entire point of a foreign intelligence service is to operate outside the rules, or they wouldn’t be secret agencies. The ‘secret’ part is there, so they can do what they want without getting in trouble. Otherwise they’d be like NASA and publish everything they do.
And people operating on behalf of those agencies are of course people - who will be targetted, and if found, destroyed by competing agencies. That is literally their job. And it’s done extrajudically, because they are targetting people outside of their home country in most cases, hence no applicable judiciary. The CIA isn’t going to take anyone to court, because there is nowhere they are allowed to operate legally (per US standards) which wouldn’t want to throw them in jail for existing (by foreign standards). Hence extra-judicial.
And if you think, once they become accustomed to operating outside the rules, and have extensive mechanisms for maintaining secrecy, and finding and then destroying ‘enemies’, they will be ‘scouts honor’ following the rules in their home country, then that just isn’t how this clearly all works. As shown by numerous examples, a few I linked to earlier. And when those examples are found, nothing bad happens to those agencies, near as I can tell.
And ‘a threat to the system’ is called a threat to National Security. What else do you think it means?
I never said the abuses of the system were the purpose of the system.
I said the abuses of the system fell within the types of actions that were the purpose of the system. Presumably there are also non-abusive ways to destroy people who are threats to national security, and those are included in their toolbox too.
The national security apparatus’s purpose is to destroy people (and organizations) which are a threat to ‘the nation’.
The national security apparatus itself is considered part of the nation, and somewhat plausibly important for national security, so a threat to it is a threat to national security eh?
Hence any threat to the national security apparatus is a threat to national security, and fair game to be destroyed by it.
Just because you or I consider that abusive doesn’t mean they do, and they’re the ones with the tools - and the apparent ability to- to get away with it.
Them using the same tools for stuff like LOVEINT is abusive to others of course, and outside their remit as those people were (usually) not plausibly threats to national security, but anyone who noticed they were doing it all the sudden became fair game because they were a threat to the system eh?
After all, taking away those tools would remove their ability to do the same thing to someone like a FSB agent who had dirt on someone at the Company, or who was trying to get close to someone at the NSA by dating them.
And the people acting on that have seen no consequences for doing so, eh?
Is it fucked up and corrupt? Yes. Is it self perpetuating? Yes. Is it inherent to the nature of the system and what they are doing? Yes.
Ethics aren't objective anyway, so it's not useful to rely on them. The US prides itself on being a melting pot full of diverse entrepreneurs. Diversity means different sets of ethics, sometimes varying greatly. I'm hopeful the US can get to a place where we expect everyone to agree on ethics and only reward those that operate with american ethics in mind. Which interestingly enough, I find the ethics that america loves to espouse with their words, more often reflects the enacted ethics of many immigrants when compared to the people who have many generations in this country.
What a timeline! We only need ever more corrupt and criminal people, to normalize all kinds of behavior and ultimately justify everything!
I think Zuck likes the riches, but not the supposed responsibility of being the boss of it all. Very typical for management actually. Very few ever stand up and say: "It was my mistake! I should have managed this better! I should have placed better safeguards.".
Instead Zucky goes in front of the court and acts all stupic uninformed android. Basically, a master class in denial and lying. Not a shred of taking responsibility for what happened.
Many of us cared ever since Musk announced to buy Twitter. But we were shitstormed and downvoted into oblivion here and on Reddit for sounding the alarm bells... and now, look where we stand.
The salute made people care because it was completely and utterly undeniable evidence. Of course, people still try to excuse even that, but a lot of the Musk apologists got pretty silent after it.
Yeah, he cycled through spouses, smoked pot live on a podcast and had a sometimes ... reckless attitude, but constantly delivered in exchange - without Musk, we'd still be stuck getting fleeced by ULA/EADS, ICE car manufacturers bribing politicians to soften emissions regulations and satellite internet being GEO only.
"Old Musk" was a bit much at times, but acceptable in exchange for how society profited from his unwillingness to accept a "no". "New Musk" has that same unwillingness but is willing to destroy democracy itself, and that makes him orders of magnitude more dangerous.
Old musk called a guy a pedo for daring to tell him that a submarine wouldn't help in a cave rescue.
Musk didn't learn from getting sued, nor from the permanent harm to Musk's reputation, possibly because people kept acting like it was a small price to pay for the EV transition.
Now he supports a president who doesn't care about EVs, who dislikes renewables, who is restricting market access to the biggest and cheapest EV manufacturers.
And, while I like space tech, to be blunt, Musk's reputation is now so low that I will not only not buy Starlink hardware, but also want to make sure I don't accidentally pay a Musk tax in the form of buying goods or services that paid extra to interoperate with anything Musk owns.
This is a poor signal, at least in my experience. It is possible that no one looks at my profile, but I have a semi-famous acquaintance (we've had dinner but not at one's house) and 80% of my friend suggestions are 1 mutal with that person.
I do interact a lot so maybe people click to see if I also look touched? Either way I have a unique enough name that I'd notice if anyone was viewing my profile via that side-channel.
