rigorousintuition.ca

Beware, Facebook users: No matter what your privacy settings, what you post can be used against you in a court of law — by an ex-spouse, someone whose car you damaged, or the government itself.

While most of the debate over online surveillance has involved anti-terrorism efforts, online activity can be used as evidence in everyday legal proceedings, too.

“We almost don’t see cases anymore without Facebook,” criminal defense lawyer Stanton Levenson said.

Frequently, he said, those charged with crimes “aren’t the least bit careful,” about what they put online. “They think that nothing is going to get back to them, and that we have privacy in this country.”

Prosecutors can use such material even if it doesn’t directly address criminal activity. Last year, a client of Mr. Levenson’s had the uncomfortable experience of being on the witness stand while a federal prosecutor read derisive Facebook comments he had made about his girlfriend, a fellow accused drug dealer. (“I love her as a friend but — did you look at any pics of her?” read one post used in court.)

“He was professing to love this girl, but then he’s talking behind her back,” Mr. Levenson said. “It couldn’t have had a good effect on the jury.”

It’s no secret that social media sites are great places to hunt for evidence. There’s even a Facebook page to handle information requests from law enforcement.

According to an online “transparency report,” Facebook received 14,274 requests involving 21,731 accounts from U.S. law enforcement agencies in the second half of 2014. That’s far more than companies like Twitter, which received just 1,622 requests in that period.

Facebook provided information for nearly 80 percent of those requests. But the practice remains controversial, especially when law enforcement casts a wide net.

In 2013, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney for New York City’s borough of Manhattan, demanded a slew of information — ranging from photos to private messages — from 381 Facebook accounts. The government also obtained a gag order that barred Facebook from telling customers about the search warrant.

The warrant was part of an investigation that led to 134 public employees being charged with faking disability claims. Some had posted online photos of themselves engaged in activities like karate, despite claiming to be disabled.

Facebook said charges were filed against 62 of its users. But that, a Facebook attorney said, left more than 300 users “whose data was sought by the government without prior notice,” and who had no chance to challenge the intrusion.

After a judge ruled that Facebook didn’t have standing to defend its users’ privacy rights, the company provided the information. But it has appealed the ruling in hopes of limiting future requests.

Its briefs argue that the warrants “would be unthinkable in the physical world” — the online equivalent of “seizing everything in someone’s home. Except here, it is not a single home but an entire neighborhood.”

The prosecutors, meanwhile, countered that “these search warrants are not the first step in some generalized … inquiry” but “part of the culmination of an exhaustive three-year investigation.”

The case is pending before a panel of appellate judges, who heard oral arguments late last year.

For some, Facebook may seem an unlikely champion of privacy rights. Previously, the company has caused controversy by making default privacy settings more open. But the firm has also openly criticized government surveillance and has called for more transparency about its information requests. This past winter, Facebook offered new tools to help users better manage their privacy settings.

“People want control over their information, so we’re focused on building products that help people make informed decisions and better control their experience,” said a company spokesman who said the statement should be attributed to an unnamed “Facebook spokesperson."

Asked how the Allegheny County district attorney’s office uses Facebook, spokesman Mike Manko said he couldn’t comment for fear of compromising investigative techniques. But in Pennsylvania, the debate about Facebook has centered less on how government officials are acquiring social media data and more on what they are doing with it.

The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, has fought school officials’ efforts to discipline students for Facebook posts. Mary Catherine Roper, Pennsylvania ACLU deputy legal director, said another concern involves prosecutors bolstering criminal cases by using rap lyrics a defendant posts online.

“Because it’s on Facebook, it’s [taken as] a first-person statement,” Ms. Roper said. But “for a lot of people, it’s a place for trash-talking, and not meant to be taken literally.”

A case that raises such issues, involving YouTube rap videos about drug dealing created by a Philadelphia man charged with the crime, is pending before the state’s Superior Court.

Meanwhile, social media frequently plays a role in civil court proceedings.

“Whenever we meet with a new client, we always ask about their involvement with social media,” said Robert N. Peirce III, of the firm Robert Peirce & Associates. “We advise them not to discuss their case [online]. And to the extent that there is anything that may be objectionable — not as it relates to a particular case but to a person’s habits or personal views — we advise them to remove that.”

Judges have dealt with requests for access to social media accounts for years, though there has been little guidance from higher courts.

One of the earliest Pennsylvania cases, involving a race-car driver who sued over injuries stemming from a racetrack accident, produced a 2010 opinion by Jefferson County Judge John Foradora.

“Whoever else a user may or may not share certain information with, Facebook’s operators have access to every post,” he wrote. Such access, he ruled, meant users couldn’t expect their Facebook activities to be private.

In general, as Judge R. Stanton Wettick of Allegheny County Common Pleas Court wrote in a 2012 opinion, Pennsylvania judges have allowed parties access to Facebook accounts if they can plausibly argue that “relevant information may be contained within the non-public portions of the profile.” A photo posted on the public portion of an account, for example, may allow access to more private information.

Hanni Fakhoury, a senior staff attorney with the online privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said judges have often granted too much access to online information. Courts have found that no right of privacy exists to material a person communicates to someone else. But privacy settings should count for something, he said.

“Secrecy and privacy aren’t the same thing,” Mr. Fakhoury said. “You might want to keep your Social Security number private even though it exists in your employer’s [human resources] records or your tax filings. And just because you turn information over to some people doesn’t mean you want to turn it over to everyone.”

divideandconquer » Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:38 am wrote:The DARPA designed proprietary Internet is creepy.

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Meanwhile, Uber, Amazon, etc., are making billions

JackRiddler » Tue Jul 21, 2015 2:02 pm wrote:

divideandconquer » Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:38 am wrote:The DARPA designed proprietary Internet is creepy.

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Meanwhile, Uber, Amazon, etc., are making billions

Nice post, to think about. However, Amazon ain't never made billions. Bezos, yes. As far as I know Amazon is a great economy-sucking black hole that has never registered a profit.

And then there are the third party sales. Just as AWS is a platform both for Amazon's own internal technologies and for thousands of start-ups, so too the logistics and commerce infrastructure themselves are a platform for lots and lots of different Amazon businesses, and also for lots of other companies selling physical products through Amazon’s site. Third party sales of products through Amazon’s own platform are now 40% of unit sales, and the fees charged to these vendors are now 20% of Amazon’s revenue.

This means, in passing, that for close to half of the units sold on Amazon.com, Amazon does not set the price, it just takes a margin. This alone should point to the weakness of the idea that Amazon’s growth is based on selling at cost or at a loss.

The tricky thing about these third party (‘3P’) sales is that Amazon only recognizes revenue from the services it provides to those companies, not the value of the goods sold. So if you buy a pair of shoes on Amazon from a third party, Amazon might collect payment through your Amazon account and ship them from its warehouse using its shipping partners - but only show the shipping and payment fees it charged to the shoe vendor as revenue. It does not disclose the gross revenue (‘GMV’). Given that (as it does disclose) third party sales tend to have a higher unit value, this means that the total value of goods that pass though Amazon with Amazon taking a percentage is perhaps double the revenue that Amazon actually reports. So, the revenue line is not really telling you what's going on, and this is also one reason why gross margin is pretty misleading too. Gross profit has risen from 22.4% in 2011 to 27.2% in 2013, but this does not really reflect a change in consumer pricing and margins thereof, but rather this change in mix.

In any case, profits as reported in the net income line are a pretty bad way to try to understand a business like this - actual cash flow is better. As the saying goes, profit is opinion but cash is a fact, and Amazon itself talks about cash flow, not net income (Enron, for obvious and nefarious reasons, was the other way around). Amazon focuses very much on free cash flow (FCF), but it’s very useful to look also at operating cash flow (OCF), which is simply what you get adding back capital expenditure (‘capex').

So here is a scenario that I will try and cover all the bases for, but facebook suggested a very recent 'people you may know' that happens to be someone that I dealt with for the very first time the day before and have no common links that facebook mines that I am aware of. So the bottom line is as follows: a: How did facebook make this association for me and b: How do I turn that shit off.

Technical information:
I have a facebook account I use relatively lightly, but probably a decent amount over average usage (past the age of 12). It had my old (Canadian) cell phone number on it, but not my new (US) cell phone number.
I have a client that doesn't use facebook at all and I have had zero interaction with him through facebook. He introduced me to a third party for some consulting this week (Wednesday) and I texted the third party maybe 5 times (from my unknown to facebook US number) and emailed him a couple of times from a gmail account that is also unknown to facebook as far as I know. This email routes through a gmail account but is for my own domain. The only link between the two accounts is that the facebook one is also on my domain (but a different actual email address).

So, at least one degree of 'not on facebook' separation. No link that I can think of between facebook and my contact with this guy. Have i unwittingly made some link between gmail somehow that I can remove? How on earth did this happen and how can I stop this other then deleting my facebook account? I have ended up making some very advantageous contacts (and re-contacts) through facebook for business so am loath to stop using it, but this freaks me the fuck out.

Any ideas?



I think that Facebook must have your phone number and or "unknown" email address. My guess is that someon in your friend circles has given Facebook pretty unlimited access privileges, perhaps on a mobile device, and Facebook has mined their address book, found you with your other phone number and email, and correlated that with the version of you they have in their database.


It could be a simple as, that guy looked at your Facebook page. If he looked at you recently, and you guys have some friends or friends of friends in common (not unlikely if you both use it for business and are in the same industry), then Facebook could have guessed that you guys may have been recently introduced. It's not necessarily nefarious.

(As evidence that this is not unlikely, I signed up for Facebook recently with locked down privacy settings, a fake name, an email address no one has, fake date of birth, etc. but because I was trying to find someone, I let Facebook check my address book on my phone for potential contacts (which I then didn't friend. A day later, when I still had no friends on Facebook at all, so no possible third party connections, I was fielding friend requests from my entire family and friends. So clearly Facebook suggested me as a friend to all the people in my address book, even though I never gave it that option. That means they are storing the info of people in my address book and correlating it with the info it already has about them. It's only a tiny step to assume it is also adding any new email addresses and phone numbers my address book has for those people to its own records.)

FB suggests people who search for you in the "People you may know" section.

This is best explained to people in person because then you can see the colour drain from their face when they remember searching for that ex/crush/nemesis.

Facebook tracks your web browsing. Is it possible you searched for this person or visited a web page of theirs? As mentioned if you use the "find friends" feature on Facebook it scans (and stores) contacts as a part of the reams of data that they keep on all of us. Here's how to stop that behavior on an iPhone. As you can see by the article Facebook Messenger also accesses your contacts - and stores that info as a part of your Facebook profile.

Do you have the app on your phone? I have seen suggestions elsewhere that facebook may be using location services to suggest people you may know. If you and the other person both have the app it's feasible that facebook could pick up on you both being in the same place at the same time. I don't know for a fact that this happens (a quick web search didn't turn up much) but it's a pretty creepy notion.

When you "dealt with" the person for the first time, was it in person? I'm wondering if possibly you both had smart phones logged into FB with location services activated & FB associated you with each other for being in the same place at the same time.



Ok, some more information. Good suggestions, but I think I'd already thought of all of these (except searching for me):

1: I don't have the app (for various reasons re: facebook being creepy). I have location services disabled for Safari (which is how I use facebook). I don't tag places with location very often, either. Even by a search.

2: There is zero overlap with this guy in friends lists that I can see. Not even one degree of separation because this is very much a tangential link in my (very large) industry.

3: The part of my field I work in is a separate, very little interaction, area of motorsport to this guy. Also, he is regional and I very rarely work in this area and national motorsport is very rarely crossed over with regional. he has not worked at the same levels as I have. I haven't been to the track we met at in 7 years, for instance. It's just a random and unusual link through a mutual contact with two stages of weirdness - my client by chance got to know this guy recently and then I happened to be in the area last week. Under normal circumstances we'd never have met and if it was logical or we had mutual friends, that'd be obviously the way.

4: "When you "dealt with" the person for the first time, was it in person?". Yes, but relevant location stuff is turned off on my phone as far as I can tell. UNLESS there is some way I don't know about (iphone).

5: Is it possible you searched for this person or visited a web page of theirs? No. I had no need to. I'm not even sure if they have a web presence.

6: "My guess is that this person Facebook stalked your name." I have asked them, but I doubt it. Possible, though. But my profile is entirely locked down (as far as I know) to anyone not on my friends list so they'd have no way of knowing it was me. Even if he searched for me, clicking through blank profiles seems unlikely.

7: I have not given facebook access to my contacts at all. I installed messenger maybe 2 years ago but removed it, and I have zero relevant contacts that haven't been added since then.


I think that Facebook must have your phone number and or "unknown" email address. My guess is that someon in your friend circles has given Facebook pretty unlimited access privileges, perhaps on a mobile device, and Facebook has mined their address book, found you with your other phone number and email, and correlated that with the version of you they have in their database

That's REALLY creepy. That's just.... obnoxiously intrusive if so. Is that a thought experiment, or is that something that has been validated somewhere?

Also: It has been confirmed that the guy did NOT search for me at all.

Former server, current bartender. I've seen a lot of awkward dates. Usually just a couple not clicking and sitting in silence, or someone not looking like their profile picture.

The worst one was when I had a date get broken up by about ten cops rushing the table. Turns out the guy was a big time drug dealer who the cops had been looking for for quite some time. He got tackled, cuffed and taken outside. Meanwhile I'm standing there holding their food and a tray of drinks. All I could think of to say was "Sooooo.. Should I box this stuff up for you?"

One of the cops came back in to apologize, and told me they caught him because the girl had tagged herself with him at the restaurant on Facebook. So, I guess always ask your date if they have any warrants out for their arrest before you tag them anywhere.

'Dislike' button coming to Facebook BBC News 15 sep 2015

Facebook is to add a "dislike" button to its social network, founder Mark Zuckerberg has said.

In a Q+A session held at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, the 31-year-old said the button would be a way for people to express empathy.

<snip>
However he went on to say he did not want it to be a mechanism with which people could "down vote" others' posts.

Instead, it will be for times when clicking "like" on "sad" posts felt insensitive.
<snip>

more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34264624

This is weird.

I was sitting here at my work. My iphone6 was sitting on the table in front of me. In conversation I happened to mention Panera Bread. He didn't quite hear me and said "what"? So I repeated, a little louder and very clearly "Panera bread".

A few minutes later I was checking my Instagram feed, and there appears an ad for Panera bread. That I've never seen before on IG or anywhere else.

Are they now using our phone's microphones to send us ads? Well why wouldn't they?

Yes it could be a coincidence.

I wonder if exposing such a spying function would provoke public outrage or just a shrug.

Camera algorithms are very sophisticated and can even detect your pulse and heart rate from across the room. See a free program at "source forge" named "Webcam Pulse Detector" that can beam in on your forehead and read your pulse from across the room.