Max Schrems, a 24 year old Austrian law student, had been a Facebook member for three years when, prompted by some disquiet about how much "deleted" personal data Facebook was retaining, he asked Facebook to provide details of the personal data it was holding about him.
After some stalling, they sent him a CD, containing what seemed to be his entire Facebook history, including deleted messages from years back, along with masses of other personal data, divided into 57 categories. Printed out, the contents of the CD covered 1,200 sheets of A4 paper.
I don't want to get too paranoid about this. After all, Facebook operatives haven't ever knocked on anybody’s door in the middle of the night and bundled them off to a Siberian labour camp for ten years, or had them flown half way round the world by private jet to be roughed up by Middle Eastern security goons.
But this off-the-cuff comment about the security services does leave me with a little conspiracy theory of my own; namely that governments and bureaucracies have left it to individuals like Max Schrems to challenge Facebook about data retention and security, and dragged their own feet on the issue, because they rather like poking around in Facebook's mother lode of personal data and information about who talks to whom. It's a free gift for politicians and securicrats who'd like to keep an eye one activists and the disaffected. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but I'll give this one the time of day because:
There are people on whom it would be perfectly reasonable to spy; criminals and that tiny subset of society in the spreading-violent-hatred-and-blowing-stuff-up business. The worrying thing is that most people don't fall into that category, but a lot of them are on Facebook. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear, right? Well, I'm not so sure.
The UK headlines are full of stories about undercover police officers infiltrating protest groups, acting as agent provocateurs and even going to court under false names, so as not to blow their cover. Think what you like about Reclaim The Streets (I think they've got a point, but I've no particularly strong feelings), but they're overwhelmingly non-violent and hardly Al Qeada. UK police already have extensive powers to curtail protests.
There are, in short, a lot of people out there who don't fall into the spreading-violent-hatred-and-blowing-stuff-up category, but who are still "of interest" to the authorities. Often quite law-abiding people who become activists, organise demonstrations, or try to draw attention to this issue or that injustice. Not all of them are right, by any means, but they all ought to have the right to freely organise and to protest. And right now there are a hell of a lot of things to protest about and to get politically active about.
Given the proven lengths the authorities have gone to in order to spy on activists and to keep the lid on protests, I don't imagine they've overlooked Facebook's massive potential as a tool for tracking dissenters and their activities. The worrying thing is that the sort of people vulnerable to this sort of spying and the sort of protests and campaigns that can be disrupted by Facebook watchers aren't started by dangerous extremists. Hardcore terrorists, at least competent ones, will be aware of data security. A law-abiding activist could be merrily putting all sorts of information onto Facebook, unwittingly grassing up fellow campaigners without even considering the possibility that spooks, police officers and their political masters might be hoovering up every detail in order to thwart what they have unilaterally deemed to be subversion.
It wouldn't be the first time that surveillance initially intended to protect the populace from hardened terrorists has moved quickly down the food chain. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) envelope has famously been pushed to accommodate not only spooks trying to catch terrorists, but local councils investigating dog fouling, fly tipping and school catchment area fiddles.
Being snooped on by the authorities is less of a clear and present danger to Facebook users than criminal identity theft, but it's another reason to think twice about putting your information out there. As it stands, it's down to awkward individuals like Max Schrems to initiate action to protect their personal data, as I suspect that there are plenty of nation states with a vested interest in their citizens leaving a massively insecure data trail.
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After some stalling, they sent him a CD, containing what seemed to be his entire Facebook history, including deleted messages from years back, along with masses of other personal data, divided into 57 categories. Printed out, the contents of the CD covered 1,200 sheets of A4 paper.
I was like WOW 1,200 pages! No KGB or CIA ever had 1,200 pages about an average citizen.
I don't want to get too paranoid about this. After all, Facebook operatives haven't ever knocked on anybody’s door in the middle of the night and bundled them off to a Siberian labour camp for ten years, or had them flown half way round the world by private jet to be roughed up by Middle Eastern security goons.
But this off-the-cuff comment about the security services does leave me with a little conspiracy theory of my own; namely that governments and bureaucracies have left it to individuals like Max Schrems to challenge Facebook about data retention and security, and dragged their own feet on the issue, because they rather like poking around in Facebook's mother lode of personal data and information about who talks to whom. It's a free gift for politicians and securicrats who'd like to keep an eye one activists and the disaffected. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but I'll give this one the time of day because:
1. It doen't require a massive conspiracy to hide the truth, sucking in thousands who must be sworn to silence. All it requires is for those who'd like to keep an eye on dissenting elements to sit back and do nothing whilst Facebook and Facebook users do the heavy lifting required to create and populate a massive database of personal information about large portions of the population.
2. National and trans-national bodies are clearly quite keen to spend a lot of time and legislative and bureaucratic effort on slurping up personal data. Britain has its Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), (not to mention the last Labour government's failed attempt to introduce identity cards, complete with a £1,00 fine for the crime of not keeping your data up to date) the USA has the Patriot Act, the EU has Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC, etc, etc.
There are people on whom it would be perfectly reasonable to spy; criminals and that tiny subset of society in the spreading-violent-hatred-and-blowing-stuff-up business. The worrying thing is that most people don't fall into that category, but a lot of them are on Facebook. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear, right? Well, I'm not so sure.
The UK headlines are full of stories about undercover police officers infiltrating protest groups, acting as agent provocateurs and even going to court under false names, so as not to blow their cover. Think what you like about Reclaim The Streets (I think they've got a point, but I've no particularly strong feelings), but they're overwhelmingly non-violent and hardly Al Qeada. UK police already have extensive powers to curtail protests.
There are, in short, a lot of people out there who don't fall into the spreading-violent-hatred-and-blowing-stuff-up category, but who are still "of interest" to the authorities. Often quite law-abiding people who become activists, organise demonstrations, or try to draw attention to this issue or that injustice. Not all of them are right, by any means, but they all ought to have the right to freely organise and to protest. And right now there are a hell of a lot of things to protest about and to get politically active about.
Given the proven lengths the authorities have gone to in order to spy on activists and to keep the lid on protests, I don't imagine they've overlooked Facebook's massive potential as a tool for tracking dissenters and their activities. The worrying thing is that the sort of people vulnerable to this sort of spying and the sort of protests and campaigns that can be disrupted by Facebook watchers aren't started by dangerous extremists. Hardcore terrorists, at least competent ones, will be aware of data security. A law-abiding activist could be merrily putting all sorts of information onto Facebook, unwittingly grassing up fellow campaigners without even considering the possibility that spooks, police officers and their political masters might be hoovering up every detail in order to thwart what they have unilaterally deemed to be subversion.
It wouldn't be the first time that surveillance initially intended to protect the populace from hardened terrorists has moved quickly down the food chain. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) envelope has famously been pushed to accommodate not only spooks trying to catch terrorists, but local councils investigating dog fouling, fly tipping and school catchment area fiddles.
Being snooped on by the authorities is less of a clear and present danger to Facebook users than criminal identity theft, but it's another reason to think twice about putting your information out there. As it stands, it's down to awkward individuals like Max Schrems to initiate action to protect their personal data, as I suspect that there are plenty of nation states with a vested interest in their citizens leaving a massively insecure data trail.
via
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