Joe Lipari, a well-known American comedian took to the extremely common social media site Facebook to share the frustrating experience he had at the Apple Store. Lipari, using Facebook as it was intended, responded to the prompt ‘What’s on your mind?’ and updated his status accordingly. Lipari posted an aggressive quote from the movie Fight Club targeted towards the Apple Store, in an attempt to de-stress from his unsatisfying experience. Moments later an NYPD Swat team occupied his apartment, “their guns drawn” already starting to “tear the place apart”(Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). Only after the fact did Lipari realize that this was in response to his aggressive Facebook status. The authorities flagged the status and Lipari’s address was immediately retrieved prompting the instantaneous search of his apartment. This begs the question of personal privacy on the Internet. While Facebook users believe the information they post is private, and only accessible according to their personal privacy settings, in reality it seems that no information put on the Internet is private at all.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, the popular social media site, in 2004. Since then, the site has grown exponentially to be the world’s most popular social media site, used as a database for people’s personal information. Initially a benign web database for exclusive users with Harvard.edu email addresses, the site opened to the public and “people [began] willingly publiciz[ing] where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal email addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment” (Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). Christopher Startinsky, the Deputy Director of the CIA claims this “is truly a dream come true for the CIA… after years of secretly monitoring the public”; this information is voluntarily made accessible. This begs the question of personal privacy. Taking a closer look at Facebook’s Terms and Agreements, users seem to not realize their diminishing privacy when they use Facebook as it was intended.
While we brainlessly click through privacy settings and privacy policy agreements when we sign up for Facebook, users are missing the very important fine print. After years of operation, it is clear that Facebook now has the largest database of collected information on any given person. Trudy Howels, a professor of Computer Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology cautions “privacy considerations become an issue as soon as any data are made public; one could argue that simply the collection and storage of the data presents some level of risk” (Data, Data Quality, and Ethical Use, 8). Howels poses a very important point that once data is public, the modes that this information could be used are unforeseeable to the common Facebook user. Howels also points out that the mere storage of such data implies a desire to use this information for ulterior reasons to why it was put online in the first place. Derek S. Witte, a commercial litigator and eDiscovery lawyer, writes in Journal of Internet Law: Privacy Deleted, “once an individual posts information on Facebook, neither the courts, nor Facebook itself, can promise that the information will remain private and confidential” (19). In its current Privacy Policy, Facebook promises law enforcement that they would respond to requests seeking information on any given profile in its database. Facebook’s current privacy policy details that they “[do] not actually require any particular criminal subpoena or warrant simply provided that ‘we review each request for records individually’” (Witte, 18). Facebook could not essentially deny the NSA or CIA a request to access a profile as Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks notes, “US Intelligence is able to bring legal and political pressure to Facebook” (Facebook, Google, Yahoo are Spying Tools). The ease at which a person’s information from Facebook can be accessed is eye opening and should pose a red flag to all Facebook users.
Most users are under the assumption that they can altar their Facebook privacy settings giving them a greater sense of control on their privacy. Each aspect of the profile can be adjusted to the users comfort level, which is presumably totally private. In 2009 Facebook changed their privacy settings, and changed the defaults of sharing, without notifying its users in advance. Facebook “turned what was once private information into totally public information” overnight (Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). The default setting was changed so that ‘everyone’ could view and search a given users information. Zuckerberg explained, “the way we’ve designed the site is that it’s a community thing. So people want to share with just there friends but a lot of people also want to share with the community around them”. However, Dana Boyd, Senior Research Manager rightfully states “the problem with defaults is that you get comfortable with whatever the default is” and “as time passed, more and more information was being shared by default”(Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). This desensitizes Facebook users on the whole notion of privacy and makes it acceptable to publicize this information so freely without understanding the consequences, later described in this article.
While it is understood that the mere collection of data posses a threat to personal privacy and security, more troubling is the way this data is used. Users should pay attention “not that data are collected and stored, often without knowledge or permission, but how the data stored and collected are used” (Howels, 7). Julian Assange sat down with Russia Today and explained that there is a blurred line between the interest of the state and the interest of commercial business in the West (Facebook, Google, Yahoo are Spying Tools). Assange believes that “Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented” with “the worlds most comprehensive database about people… all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence” (Facebook, Google, Yahoo are Spying Tools).
This would only be an issue if US intelligence wanted to use this type of data, however it is a fact that they do. With this large amount of data, “according to the department of homeland security, Facebook has replaced almost every other CIA information gathering program since it was launched in 2004” (Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). Derek S. Witte, a commercial litigator and eDiscovery lawyer, writes in Privacy Deleted, a Journal of Internet Law, “it is difficult to understand how Justices of the US Supreme Court can openly oppose the creation of an American “Big Brother” when “Big Brother” already exists in the guise of Google, Facebook and, now it seems, the NSA” (13). Whistle blower, Edward Snowden was the first to bring the NSA’s spying database to light, to which “the government responded to Snowden’s allegations by contending that Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows for this indiscriminate collection of data because it could be relevant to a terrorism investigation at some point in time” (Witte, 13). This preventative clause that gives the NSA cause to continuously monitor web and cell traffic, including Facebook activity, is not only a violation of privacy but is strongly misleading as seen in the Joe Lipari case.
As anxieties about the constant collection of data arise, “the NSA continues to justify its massive data collections by stressing that the majority of the data is only collected and never used” (Witte, 14). What Facebook users might do upon reading this information is delete all the information they find on their profile they no longer want accessible to the public or government organization. However, information put on Facebook stays in their database even after it has been deleted. Countries other than the US have laws that allow citizens to access any information a given company has on them, including Facebook (Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). An Austrian law student delved deeper into his own Facebook catalogue and found that “if you hit the remove button, it just means it’s flagged as deleted. So you hide it, actually, from yourself. But anyone, like Facebook or any Government Agency that wants to look at it later can still retrieve it and get it back” (Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply). Data and information put online lingers behind a screen that the general public can’t see. It waits for the opportunity to be used against you, otherwise why would government agencies feel the need to retain it? The consequences for trusting Mark Zuckerberg with, in essence, your whole life may be extremely detrimental, that is if you have something to hide.
Most could argue that they do not care their information is being harbored as they have nothing to hide. Zeynep Tufeki, Professor of Sociology at the University of Baltimore responds to this question saying, “You have nothing to hide, until you do. And you are not necessarily going to know what you have to hide or not” (Hoback, Terms and Conditions May Apply).
What Facebook really does, to the educated user, is manifest a sense of anxiety within society about never knowing what will be used against you. The information that is put on Facebook is etched in stone the moment you press Agree and Publish. The notion that there is a shred of privacy online contradicts Facebook’s whole purpose, to share information with others. Even now this technology has been valued as the most important database of information for the sole purpose of violating privacy in return for safety. But is this constant fear and anxiety really safe? It seems now that Facebook’s opaque privacy policy has turned transparent, displaying is complete lack of privacy for users.
Works Cited:
Willis, Lauren E.1, lauren.willis@lls.edu. “Why Not Privacy by Default?” Berkeley Technology Law Journal 29, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 61–134.
Witte, Derek S.1. “Privacy Deleted: Is It Too Late to Protect Our Privacy Online?” Journal of Internet Law 17, no. 7 (January 2014): 1–28.
Howles, Trudy, tmh@cs.rit.edu. “Data, Data Quality, and Ethical Use.” Software Quality Professional 16, no. 2 (March 2014): 4–12.
Facebook, Google, Yahoo Are Spying Tools. Interview. Accessed October 13, 2014. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/assange-facebook-google-yahoo-spying-tools/.
Hoback, Cullen. Terms and Conditions May Apply. Documentary, 2013. http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70279201?trkid=13462100.