Edward Snowden: Facebook Is A Surveillance Company Rebranded As "Social Media"

NSA whistleblower and former CIA employee Edward Snowden slammed Facebook in a Saturday tweet following the suspension of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and its political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, over what Facebook says was imporoper use of collected data. 

In a nutshell, in 2015 Cambridge Analytica bought data from a University of Cambridge psychology professor, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who had developed an app called "thisisyourdigitallife" that vacuumed up loads of information on users and their contacts. After making Kogan and Cambridge Analytica promise to delete the data the app had gathered, Facebook received reports (from sources they would not identify) which claimed that not all the data had been deleted - which led the social media giant to delete Cambridge Analytica and parent company SCL's accounts. 

“By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data.” -Facebook

Of note, Cambridge Analytica worked for Ted Cruz and Ben Carson during the 2016 election before contracting with the Trump campaign. Cruz stopped using CA after their data modeling failed to identify likely supporters. 

Cambridge Analytica has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in a statement. 

In response to the ban, Edward Snowden fired off two tweets on Saturday criticizing Facebook, and claimed social media companies were simply "surveillance companies" who engaged in a "successful deception" by rebranding themselves.

Snowden isn't the first big name to call out Silicon Valley companies over their data collection and monitoring practices, or their notorious intersection with the U.S. Government. 

In his 2014 book: When Google Met WikiLeaks, Julian Assange describes Google's close relationship with the NSA and the Pentagon.

Around the same time, Google was becoming involved in a program known as the “Enduring Security Framework” (ESF), which entailed the sharing of information between Silicon Valley tech companies and Pentagon-affiliated agencies “at network speed.” Emails obtained in 2014 under Freedom of Information requests show Schmidt and his fellow Googler Sergey Brin corresponding on first-name terms with NSA chief General Keith Alexander about ESF Reportage on the emails focused on the familiarity in the correspondence: “General Keith . . . so great to see you . . . !” Schmidt wrote. But most reports overlooked a crucial detail. “Your insights as a key member of the Defense Industrial Base,” Alexander wrote to Brin, “are valuable to ensure ESF’s efforts have measurable impact.” -Julian Assange

Kim Dotcom has also opined on social media's close ties to the government, tweeting in February "Unfortunately all big US Internet companies are in bed with the deep state. Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. are all providing backdoors to your data."

In 2013, the Washington Post and The Guardian revealed that the NSA has backdoor access to all major Silicon Valley social media firms, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple - all through the notorious PRISM program which began in 2007 under the Protect America Act. PRISM's existence was leaked by Edward Snowden before he entered into ongoing asylum in Moscow. Microsoft was the first company to join the PRISM program.

The NSA has the ability to pull any sort of data it likes from these companies, but it claims that it does not try to collect it all. The PRISM program goes above and beyond the existing laws that state companies must comply with government requests for data, as it gives the NSA direct access to each company's servers — essentially letting the NSA do as it pleases. -The Verge

After PRISM's existence was leaked by Snowden, the Director of National Intelligence issued a statment which stated that the only people targed by the programs are "outside the United States," and that the program "does not allow" the targeting of citizens within US borders. 

In 2006, Wired magazine published evidence from a retired AT&T communications technician, Mark Klein, that revealed a secret room used to "split" internet data at a San Francisco office as part of the NSA's bulk data collection techniques used on millions of Americans.

During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabins were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, he said.

The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, Klein said. -Wired

 "They are collecting everything on everybody," Klein said.

Comments

Bag of Magic Sun, 03/18/2018 - 17:15 Permalink

What he says is true. People need to learn not to comply. They need to learn to fight the corrupt so called government authority. The laws do not apply to them and that is obvious, so they don't apply to anyone. 

toady SethPoor Sun, 03/18/2018 - 19:14 Permalink

"During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabins were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, he said."

I installed a lot of the hardware in the closet where the internet split went into the Mesa, AZ, IDC... I also worked on the DB that records all the information  (not content) on all calls everywhere.

In reply to by SethPoor

toady Endgame Napoleon Sun, 03/18/2018 - 21:07 Permalink

Yeah, call origination, call destination, call duration... lotsa various data for 800/900 business lines... we kept it all for 24 months in case of billing disputes, but, after 911, we kept it all. They have all the way back to mid-97, as far back as I could get in the old backup tapes....

They started selling it to a bunch of .gov entities in the middle of the 2000's, and automated the new data loads in near real-time feeds.

Ah, the good old days... sorry, I tend to ramble sometimes...

In reply to by Endgame Napoleon

Endgame Napoleon toady Sun, 03/18/2018 - 20:50 Permalink

I think the resistance to AI will be more like that moment when the parents tell the kids that it is time to leave their grandoarents’ house, where they reign supreme over all technological gadgetry and are all-powerful humans. 

There is a moment of choice when the parents start telling them to put on their shoes and their coats. This is the point where even kids have the existential option of passive resistance. They can make their feet like rocks, refusing to cooperate with parents trying to get them to put on their shoes, etc. 

The problem that AI has is that they do not have the built-in authority of those parents—the ability to say, hey, put on your shoes right now. It is time to go, with the possibility of punishment hanging over the little resistors. 

The AI half of the AI / user relationship in a non-employment situation is more like I was during my babysitting years, with the duty to get the kids to put on their shoes, but with no built-in authority to compel it.

I had to figure out ways to make them cooperate in a less authoritarian manner so as not to alienate them and my employers, their parents.

WE humans are the customers in this smartphone / human relationship; it is not the other way around. Mind your manners. 

In reply to by toady

HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 Leakanthrophy Sun, 03/18/2018 - 18:49 Permalink

The NSA data storage center in Bluffdale, Utah, uses several million gallons of water, each day, to stay cool. (Not the smartest place to put a data center, but it's not their money).

Cut off the water keeping that place cool and all that data goes, poof! A team of a dozen, or less, could make that happen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

In reply to by Leakanthrophy

Endgame Napoleon gatorengineer Sun, 03/18/2018 - 20:06 Permalink

Snowden was just trying to look out for the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution, like the Seals. He released the information in careful ways through credible journalists, using offline methods that did not allow sensitive data to be poured onto the internet. That is what I read, anyway. It does not sound like he endangered people. It sounds like he did it as carefully as possible. Most people lack the technical ability to do that. I can see why government protects some information and why companies protect some information, especially since some people just go haywire, releasing stuff without the technical background to do it in the safer way that Snowden did it. 

In reply to by gatorengineer

Endgame Napoleon IH8OBAMA Sun, 03/18/2018 - 19:48 Permalink

People knew, but they did not know in the level of detail that he is providing, and before the Snowden scandal, average citizens had no idea that big governent was collecting raw metadata on every person in the USA: the noncitizens and the citizens. Some point out that the information was out there, but it was not out there in a form accessible to non-experts.

It is interesting that Cruz chose to discontinue using that service. I wondered how effective that was, because from the way it was described, I do not think it would have identified me as a potential Trump voter, not unless it could pull up a 2012 anon post, where I said I would change parties to vote for Trump if he actually challenged the Establishment on mass offshoring of jobs to China.

Trump considered running in 2012, and for those of us who wish we had voted for Perot back in the Nineties, it was refreshing to hear someone taking on this long-neglected issue. Once the 2012 Trump started laying the China-trade unfairness solely on currency manipulation, abandoning his focus on the job losses of American citizens, I lost some interest in his 2012 floating of a potential run.

But when he remerged as a candidate in 2016, he added a compelling Perot-like anti-mass-welfare-buttressed-immigration theme, doubling his appeal. I decided to vote for him right then, even though the crime theme was not my main concern. My concern is mostly the economic angle, but I am concerned about a lot of things, like everyone else. Trump talked more about crime when addressing the illegal immigration issue, but if you notice, he gets it all in, elliptically addressing almost every angle of every issue of concern to large numbers of likely voters. 

From just personal data, minus ideas about policy, I do not see how this type of analysis could be accurate, pinpointing the thing that is likely to get most people to the polls. It might get someone like me to post a treatise, with a lot of different issues addressed and one bigly issue, but I doubt that an app could pull out one sentence from this maze that predicts my vote, any more than it could determine it if I were posting catch-all one liners on here. 

People have all kinds of personal life associates via work, via school and via interaction with customers. Some are just acquaintances. Many contacts these apps track do not share the beliefs of the user. Do those apps pull data from people you just chat with online, separating them somehow from emails from your real-life associates? 

Even if the programmers were able to do this sorting task, it is not going to tell them whether or not a single issue might get me to the polls to stand in another 2-hour line to vote for a Swamper to have a $175k job. It might tell them if I am still a die-hard yellow-dog Democrat, but it won’t tell them how committed I am to my party switch.

That would require a live conversation with a voter or maybe a phone call. Tone of voice contains a lot of information in sales transactions, as does body language. A vote is like a closed sale. If I were a candidate, I would not trust that app, either, and I think they are deemphasizing humans in sales too much as well.

For one thing, humans are starting to resent being displaced by machines, and while many of us do participate online, we still are passively resisting in some ways, even those of us who are the mouthiest.

There is likely to be an AI backlash, and one article on here mentioned that Peter Thiel was not betting 100% on AI, partially because he thinks people are not going to ‘go quietly into that good night’ of being displaced by AI, unlike the way we just rolled over and took it when they displaced us with low-cost off-shored workers and illegal aliens with welfare-boosted wages. Thiel is a human with a good betting record.

How could apps predict the multi-faceted thought process that determines a vote, which includes everything from family party affiliation to your own life experiences? How would they get that mountain of life input? They would need access to data bases that show the professions you have worked in, the books you have read....ugh, well, I guess they have your posted resumes and any books you ordered from Amazon, etc. 

The thing that is missing is the likely voter element; the people who show up to vote more than they show up to protest are older. Many middle-aged and older voters are leery of putting too much information on the internet. Many even hesitate to upvote or downvote things, as do many other humans, the more we learn about the online tracking.

So, they are not getting a pure response from that tactic. 

Aside from the creepy surveillance-state aspect, and aside from the fact that they’ll probably start tracking our body language, too, through facial recognition (scary), it just does not seem like an accurate way to judge turnout of likely voters. It would not identify voters motivated mostly by economic issues, particularly those who are resentful of being displaced by machines. 

It seems especially unlikely to identify the Republican voters with even an ounce of libertarianism in them and, for Democrats, the true liberals, the civil liberties-focused Democrats that just vanished into the mush of progressivism. If Democrats do not tone down some of their progressive authoritarianism and intolerance for free speech, they might end up losing the silent [minority] of true liberals in their party due to that. 

 

In reply to by IH8OBAMA

Sudden Debt cossack55 Sun, 03/18/2018 - 18:53 Permalink

As long as people think they've got nothing to hide, these spiderweb will get bigger.

 

The only reason the American government wants more and more data on it's citizens is to keep them under control.

Nothing wrong with that besides the fact that America is supposed to be a democracy and that it doesn't rime AT ALL by installing the police state infrastructure.

Americans should also realise that it's just confirmation that America has already failled.

 

In reply to by cossack55