The Challenge of Privacy

Everyone has heard about the Federal Trade Commission fining (tentatively) Facebook $5 billion for sharing your data – with Cambridge Analytica  – without your permission.

The FBI has sought proposals for third parties to hoover up everything that is visible on social media and build a database so the FBI can search it for information on activities that you do that they think is sketchy.

The FBI wants to search your stuff by location (neighborhood), keywords and other functions.

Which seems to me precisely what cost Facebook $5 billion for allowing Cambridge Analytica to do.

Except the FBI wants to do this not just with Facebook, but with all social media platforms combined.

Not to worry.  I am sure that it will be secure.  And not abused.  And not used for political purposes.  After all, we are from the government and…..

The FBI wants to capture your photos as well.

Of course, doing so would violate the terms of service of every social media platform, so unless the do it secretly or Congress passes a law nullifying the social media terms of service, it is likely that social media platforms will terminate the accounts if they detect it.  *IF* they detect it.  Given the relationship between social media and DC, they may be motivated to stop it.

However, it is already being done by private companies, in spite of the prohibition, to sell to marketers, so who knows.

Facebook and Instagram actually have a ban on using the platform for surveillance purposes.

From a user perspective, there is likely nothing that you can do other than stop using social media.  It is POSSIBLE that if you stop making posts public (and instead only make them visible to your friends), that MIGHT stop them from being hoovered up.

If you stop using the platforms, that will make Facebook, Twitter and other platforms sad.

Smart terrorists will shift to covert platforms to make detection harder.

The good news is that there are not very many smart terrorists.

Source: ZDNet

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