The same week we were provided documents signed by NSA/CIA officials claiming that Google is not even forced to do it, they provided extra interface for NSA so they can grab data whenever they want: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/12/google-prism-...
Some recent emails with Clinton showed that top Google employers helped with surveillance in Arab countries a couple of years ago, more journalists described that Google is in relationship with NSA. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/6610/20140507/google-cahoo...
Facebook was accused of working FOR NSA to spy on Belgium: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/facebook-...
One of Facebook financial founders was PayPal CEO who... supports global surveillance by NSA http://www.globalresearch.ca/nsa-and-facebook-work-together/...
Question: why should I trust what you say?
Didn't the NSA hack Google's own internal fiber? Why would they need to do that if they had the keys to the kingdom anyway?
Yes, google started encrypting the intra-datacenter traffic once it learned what the NSA was doing.
This issue was quite hot on HN a month ago.
Definitely the corporate culture wouldn't allow anything like this. Believe it or not, many FB engineers have some kind of free software / civil liberties background in their past, and most people don't seem to realize that A) they have options, they can and would walk out if they witnessed anything shady B) the company has enough fake scandals wound up by the press as it is, to risk doing something genuinely evil for short term gain, and have a former employee eventually blow the whistle on.
One controversy after the other, during my time at Facebook I witnessed the chasm between the mostly innocent motivations behind a product feature, and what the press / outside world made of it. This experience probably taught me as much about media cycles and conspiracy theory dynamics, as it did about engineering.
I'd like to add "and will not do it in the future"
You work for a company with 1000s of employees. How are you exactly in a position to confirm this doesn't happen?
I'm sure a Facebook engineer COULD find out if Facebook is doing this - but just working at Facebook is not sufficient enough to say for certain it does not happen, you need to actually do the required investigation.
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I don't personally think Facebook is listening in the way suggested here, key word would be _think_ though. And unless you're saying you've audited the code repositories, you're limited to your _opinion_ based on the context you have from working within the company.
You cannot say it doesn't happen with any level of certainty (as you've tried) just because you have access to the code repositories.
There are internal groups where features are discussed and debated all the time, and even all hands Q&A sessions with Zuck (weekly IIRC) where sometimes hard questions are raised.
Someone amongst the many engineers with access to the repo will eventually end up spotting shady code if it exists. They might raise this with a colleague first, or in an internal group, and the matter might even bubble up to the Zuck Q&A if it's intentional and particularly controversial.
This level of internal openness is unusual at this company size, and since there are people joining & leaving all the time (including interns who AFAIK have the same level of access to the code) it would take just ONE disgruntled whistleblower to ignite a scandal that the press will be instantly all over like piranhas smelling blood, this being Facebook.
Therefore, doing evil covertly like you suggest just isn't worth the risk for FB, period. Not happening, won't happen. When you see headlines like "Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?", Occam's razor is always your best friend.
I can't find it anywhere on Facebook's site. I don't believe it exists, or if it exists it was expunged some time ago. I'd like to know from which website ABC News 10 has located this information!
Genuinely curious as the page he's referred me to seems to document a U.S. only feature you need to specifically turn on when you update your status.
"No, we don't record your conversations. If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update."
So, not as bad as the news article suggests, but still extremely creepy.
https://m.facebook.com/help/iphone-app/1499418503612943
Got this from someone else's Google search, apparent it took them less than a minute to find this, their Google-fu is clearly greater than my own :-)