I wouldn't trust the US government any more than I would trust Facebook the company(Speaking as a non US citizen). Many countries governments are less transparent than publicly traded companies. Governments often act with shady 'national security' and geopolitical interests, or sometimes even elections in mind, but at least public companies more or less motivated towards increasing shareholder value.

I do rue the dominant narrative in much of HN and the mainstream media, who is the more dangerous actor, FB vs NSA? My bet is on the NSA.

>at least public companies more or less motivated towards increasing shareholder value.

Is that supposed to be reassuring?? Increasing shareholder value for a lot of companies means destroying manipulating human lives

Speaking as a European, I would trust the US government over the German government at least.

Could you please elaborate on what aspects you’re referring to and provide some links?

From one perspective, as far as pervasive mass surveillance and exchange of surveillance information are concerned, the U.S. in the Five Eyes group has more influence and impact than Germany in the Fourteen Eyes group.

> Facebook the company needs to be changed drastically by strong external forces (maybe governments, though the effects could include some harm too)

It seems most can only imagine a government-led punitive solution. I would like to see more efforts (they can be government led) that educate users and encourage alternatives. You can't win going against the people's wants and unfortunately to many in the tech circle they don't recognize that FB is what the people want right now (it's not so "forced" or "they are too stupid" as many delusionally hope/believe).

PSA's, populace education/curriculum, grants, coalitions/communities, public-sector development, transparency requirements (w/out other large-sweeping data requirements for now), etc are all reasonable compared to existing efforts of large-scale-legislation/requirements + fines. We can get to where we want without large legislative internet interference that won't ever be reduced. It just takes people, the tech and journalism community particularly, to stop seeing FB as only a nail and the legal hammer as their only tool in the shed. It's like everyone forgets the failures of historical law-based attempts to curb each generation's bogeyman (alcoholics, communists, druggies, terrorists, capitalists, etc).

Stealing call and contact data off a phone is hacking, it's theft, it's criminal activity. It's what they and their chief engineers did. Prosecute them. Clawback all their earnings. They belong in prison for systemic phone hacking.

Would courts consider it hacking if it was allowed in the terms we accepted?

In the EU, it really depends. I think per country, even. It's not as simple as whatever you wrote in the terms gets to hold, or even not as straightforward as equating clicking with accepting.

It's for courts to decide when it gets challenged, but the general idea is, the less obvious or expected the agreement is for normal usage, the less likely it'll hold. So burying some text that amounts to "we get to hack your device" is about as likely to hold as "we get your first born child" (which has been done multiple times by different companies, for fun, and no it doesn't hold).

Contracts can be voided if they show serious vices the person signing was not aware of. Moreover, afaik. contracts are not above law and constitution, so if they violate individual rights they can also be voided.

I guess it this must depend on the jurisdiction and the precise rights in question because in the US contracts regularly ask you to give up some of your rights and I'm pretty sure they're enforceable as such.

I found this answer (https://law.stackexchange.com/a/13374) though I cannot advocate for the source reliability, it does corroborate with the little research I did in this matter in which as long as the subject of a contract is under the law, the contract is valid, although this is all in context of the seventh amendment.

I come to believe, therefore if the subject of a contract, in the facebook case information theft and violation of privacy, the contract can be nullified in favour of the citizen

In germany a contract can be null and void (in whole, meaning the contract was never valid to begin with or after the fact, meaning the contract was invalidated) without the contract specifically breaking any single law.

Unconscionability in german law may occur in a Knebelvertrag (oppressive contract) or in contracts that abuse power differences between the contractual parties or even usury (immoral monetary loans for example). In that case the contract can become invalid.

In case of any disagreement, the spirit of a contract weighs harder than the wording in textform, if it is possible to determine.

A contract can also not place any part of the agreement outside the reach of a court (ie via arbitration clauses. You can still fight your agreement outside court but you can't forbid someone from going to court). You can't waive most of your rights either and even if you do, a court may determine that contract to be invalid and the other party having violated a right will then be prosecuted.

Contracts themselves are largely a specific case of a legal transaction (negotium juridicum) and aren't specifically regulated (all above is basically just about any legal transactions ranging from contracts over last wills to verbal agreements).

Under the GDPR, I guess explicit content at the moment it is done would be required.