Leaked Document
“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” Facebook engineers say in leaked documents.
Facebook is facing what it describes internally as a “tsunami” of privacy regulations all over the world, which will force the company to dramatically change how it deals with users’ personal data. And the “fundamental” problem, the company admits, is that Facebook has no idea where all of its user data goes, or what it’s doing with it, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard.
“We’ve built systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well described with an analogy: Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand. This bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data (Third party data, First party data, Sensitive categories data, Europe, etc.) You pour that ink into a lake of water (our open data systems; our open culture) … and it flows … everywhere,” the document read. “How do you put that ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, such that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake?”
“We can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’ And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do”
The document was written last year by Facebook privacy engineers on the Ad and Business Product team, whose mission is “to make meaningful connections between people and businesses,” and which “sits at the center of our monetization strategy and is the engine that powers Facebook’s growth,” according to a recent job listing that describes the team.
This is the team that is tasked with building and maintaining Facebook’s sprawling ads system, the core of the company’s business. And in this document, the team is both sounding an alarm, and making a call to change how Facebook deals with users’ data to prevent the company from running into trouble with regulators in Europe, the US, India, and other countries that are pushing for more stringent privacy constraints on social media companies.
It didn’t take long for the political backlash” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who is a member of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, told Motherboard in a statement that “leaked document after leaked document show that Big Tech continues to play fast and loose with users’ personal information.”
“I’m concerned that these revelations are much more than simply a breach of consumer trust but an open door for specific threats of harmful data uses,” he added in the emailed statement.
Markey isn’t the only lawmaker concerned by the news.
“Facebook has lost control of what they are doing with your data. This is reckless and threatens the privacy and security of Americans. We need a national privacy standard,” Sen. Martha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who’s a ranking member of the same subcommittee.
The subcommittee is part of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and its mission is to protect American consumers’ privacy.
Read the entire story here:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbqqm/lawmakers-call-for-better-facebook-user-data-use-oversight
Thanks to The Hustle
