As Assange said in his interview with Russia Today Facebook can easily yield to the pressure of US Government to hand over user information. Even Facebook users themselves are making voluntary work for the US intelligence by posting personal data and inviting friends to their social networks.
From Assange point of view Google, MSN, Yahoo and other major internet companies are a part of US intelligence network.
However according to Facebook spokesman Facebook doesn’t respond to pressure.
We don’t respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process. There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data — we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.
Matthew Panzarino published in his blog post the document, showing what requests an investigation office has to fulfill in order to achieve Facebook user information. The information possible to aquire consists of:
User ID number
Email address
Date and Time of your account’s creation
The most recent logins, usually the last 2-3 days
Your phone number, if you registered it
Profile contact info
Mini-feed
Status update history
Shares
Notes
Wall posts
Friends list
Groups list
Future and past events
Videos
Photos
Private messages
IP logs (computers and locations you logged in from)
Just about everything you ever posted on Facebook.
Again the salient issue behind this is the privacy issue in online environment.
As Evans in his article “The Online Advertising Industry: Economics, Evolution and Privacy” states, the online audience can be divided into three major groups. First group is aware of the privacy issue and practices control over their private information – they either don’t use sites that insert “cookies” or they delete them on a regular basis. The second group consists of the ignorant users, who don’t know that private information on them is being gathered, and finally the third group consists of users who agree with information gathering.
The privacy issue is a thin line. Sometimes we cross it voluntarily, sometimes a third party intrudes in our lives. However, it is not a new concept that, what one wishes to keep private, one should not write down.
Resources:
Matthew Panzarino (2.5.2011) http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/02/heres-what-happens-when-the-police-subpoena-your-facebook/
Brad McCarty (3.5.2011) http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/03/facebook-fires-back-at-assange-we-dont-respond-to-pressure/
Matt Brian (1.5.2011)http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/02/wikileaks-founder-facebook-is-the-most-appalling-spy-machine-that-has-ever-been-invented/
Kashmir Hill (3.5.2011) http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/05/03/facebook-responds-to-julian-assanges-spying-machine-allegations/
Nina Mandell (2.5.2011) http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-05-02/news/29521537_1_julian-assange-facebook-users-facebook-spokesman
David S. Evans (2009). The Online Advertising Industry: Economics, Evolution, and Privacy. Journal of Economic Perspectives. Accessed at SSRN http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1376607
Although this is indeed news to me (and very much surprising), I feel like any or all of this data, since it was voluntarily rendered, could do me no harm if delivered into the hands of the government. Naive on my behalf perhaps? :)
OdgovoriIzbrišiI think all the sensitive data - name, birthday, address, etc. can be gathered with the help of different measures.
OdgovoriIzbrišiThe scary part is, when things like identity theft and internet scams are starting to occure (much like the movie "The Net" with Sandra Bullock). Is it possible or is it fiction?
I heard of an occurence in London, where a person stayed inprisoned for 3 days just because he looked suspicious on the tube's survailance cameras.