And they say that Americans don't do irony.
Facebook's Zuckerberg buttonholes Obama, rages against NSA dragnet spying
Mark Zuckerberg is furious with US President Barack Obama, who - metaphorically, at least - clasped his hands over his ears and repeatedly said to himself "I can't hear you" when the Facebook boss tried to grumble about spies spying on people. The free content ad network supremo said in a public post on Facebook that he was …
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Friday 14th March 2014 18:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Although
Yes "largely" - but almos everybody has a stupid friend who uses FB or Whatsapp, and will post about you, images with you, and will let FB know your telephone number, emails, address via his or her phonebook... just FB has no legal authority of intruding into your devices - guess Zuckerberg will ask for "equal rights" to Obama...
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Sunday 16th March 2014 09:59 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
@G E Re: Although
"You can largely avoid Farcebook if you choose to. No such luck with GCHQ/NSA"
Actually you can't.
Nor Google. Unless you want to act like Stallman who doesn't use his own PC on the internet, goes to 'public' PCs at MIT, and tires to hide who he is at all times.
The issue is that even if you go to these extremes, you can't hide from FB or Google.
You have friends, right?
If they use Google or FB, and have any of your contact information... they know who you are.
You would be surprised at how much information that these companies capture, regardless of your precautions and saying no thank you.
You want to get out, you can't. They slurp everything. Every microbe of your digital footprint, no matter how small.
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Friday 14th March 2014 14:11 GMT JDX
Irony? When you sign up to FB you are voluntarily giving FB your data to use. You may not know what they want to do with that data, but it's no surprise they have the data and no great surprise - even if a disappointment - when they do use it.
FB wants your data and that's the point of their business model. Hardly the same as a government forcing them to provide your data, and trying to force them not to tell anyone this is happening.
And FB is serious about security - they don't want anyone else accessing your data because THEY want it to themselves :)
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Sunday 16th March 2014 10:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
@JDX
You would be surprised at how insecure FB really is. ;-)
FB slurps more data and from more sources than you think.
Even if you don't give them your data, they slurp it from your friend's data.
If you use FB to log in to a newspaper site... FB now tracks and monitors what you read.
There's more, but I'll let you live in your Bliss little world.
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Friday 14th March 2014 15:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
He is a hypocrite...he attempts to tag and profile people who haven't signed up; who haven't agreed to any terms and who haven't used his service in any way, shape or form. His attempted data rape is different from the spooks only because he can't strong-arm his kit into choke points and threaten to throw people into prison for non-compliance.
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Friday 14th March 2014 11:39 GMT Neil Stansbury
They are the criminals
"we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government."
More fool you - the government are the criminals.
When they're not supporting their own Kleptocracy, they're institutionalising acts of state sponsored theft in the name of "Society" or "Social Justice", as they confiscate your wealth, revoke your rights, threaten you with acts of coercive force and knock down your home to build a new runway or an HS2
Don't ever fall for the delusion that the State is here to protect your liberty.
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Monday 17th March 2014 14:55 GMT ItsNotMe
"But he's probably done more to change the world than Obama"
Ahhh...@JDX...Hitler "changed the world". So did Stalin, Mao, and a whole host of other scumbags in the history of this planet...just NOT for the better. And neither has this twenty-something little snot.
And no...he is not an "important person". He is an annoying arsehole...and THE prime example of the fact that money does not buy class.
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Saturday 15th March 2014 00:03 GMT Rick Brasche
Re: A translation
Zuckerberg and many of the Silicon Valley elite are among the largest financial contributors to the DNC. Not to mention their propaganda functions and media saturation that don't "count" even though they'd cost millions if paid for that exposure.
Prez answers the phone because he knows who gave him his seat.
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Friday 14th March 2014 12:05 GMT dan1980
Re: A translation
"Zucks angry not because of the spying, it's because he might lose a bit of cash."
Maybe the government is acting like a parent and teaching people 'the hard way' that they shouldn't share so much information with people.
Well, of course not, but if that's what comes out of it then at least it's not without ultimate benefit to society. The fact that companies lke Facebook can be worth so much means that people don't really value their private information because they can be enticed to share it in return for the digital equivalent of shiny beads.
Perhaps now that people are waking up to the kinds of things that are done with the data they part with, there'll be a more sober relationship with such sites in the future.
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Friday 14th March 2014 12:38 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Re: A translation
Zucks angry not because of the spying, it's because he might lose a bit of cash
More that it's the usual hypocrisy and moral relativism, another case of 'what I do is okay but when others do the same it is not okay'.
When they kill innocent civilians it's abhorrent terrorism. When we kill innocent civilians it's entirely acceptable and justifiable collateral damage.
Both of them, Zuckerberg and Obama, and many more ->
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Friday 14th March 2014 11:44 GMT Bronek Kozicki
Zuck has a point
Actually, two. First, he needs people to trust "Facebook" brand, because otherwise how will he sell ads? Second, his company is built by engineers who try to make it secure, but if this goes against government ideas of "security" then it makes their work more difficult. And of course he wouldn't like their productivity wasted on something that cannot be sold.
I think both are valid points, and both might be interpreted as standing on the side of (ads target) consumer. Of course, everyone is a cynic now and nobody would interpret it this way - but that does not matter. The point still stands.
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Friday 14th March 2014 12:37 GMT Slx
You can understand why all these social networks and big data / cloud companies are panicking. They're losing customers because of this kind of stuff.
How many people have shut Facebook accounts?
How many companies have opted not to use cloud services just yet that would have otherwise perhaps signed up with Google Apps, or some other hosted service?
There are plenty of companies very concerned about their IP and where an "interest" could include a financial interest as opposed to a security one that data could potentially get slurped with some degree of 'legitimacy'.
For example, a company developing an innovative technology, new drug, new device that could upset your economy by potentially knocking your national champion company out of the market through innovation. Is that a legitimate target?
Then you've got to worry about what less transparent countries like China are slurping.
This whole thing has put cloud computing into a very seriously questionable position. Can we actually trust these systems or is it safer to just have a server in your office basement?
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Friday 14th March 2014 18:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Its ok...Zucks got my back!
I worry a lot more about Google. Google-API's are on half the websites on the internet with sufficient session info sent to Mountain View to allow them build super-cookies to TRACK YOU!
And AdBlock / NoScript won't help any longer either, as websites have retaliated using Server side scripts to send all per-session info to Google for deep analytical probing! With Super and Zombie Cookies, there is absolutely no escape from tracking. Run panopticlick off the EFF website to check your exposure.
In addition, about a third of all email addresses are Gmail at present, and every gmail is lovingly scanned. And a lot of email will eventually end up at Mountain View too because of redirection. When you converse with a .com or a university address, emails may ultimately redirect to a Gmail or a Google hosted service. A lot of people have been caught off guard by this, but the Reg points this out all the time! There are lawsuits pending over this....