A lawyer for Facebook argued in court Wednesday that the social media site’s users “have no expectation of privacy.”
According to Law360, Facebook attorney Orin Snyder made the comment while defending the company against a class-action lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
“There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy,” Snyder said.
In an attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out, Snyder further claimed that Facebook was nothing more than a “digital town square” where users voluntarily give up their private information.
“You have to closely guard something to have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Snyder added.
Zuckerberg really is one of the most dangerous people on the planet. He has taken well-founded criticism against his company, its failings, and its past misrepresentations and somehow morphed that into a campaign to gain totalitarian government regulation of online speech. Incredible.
Step 2: Regulation results -- e.g. European GDPR (though it predates the most recent Facebook snafu, it was triggered by similar outrages in the past we have forgotten by now so I use the more recent example)
Step 3: Large, high-profile companies that triggered the regulation by their actions in the first place are the major beneficiaries (because they have the scale and power to comply the easiest).
GDPR, the European Union’s new privacy law, is drawing advertising money toward Google’s online-ad services and away from competitors that are straining to show they’re complying with the sweeping regulation.
The reason: the Alphabet Inc. ad giant is gathering individuals’ consent for targeted advertising at far higher rates than many competing online-ad services, early data show. That means the new law, the General Data Protection Regulation, is reinforcing—at least initially—the strength of the biggest online-ad players, led by Google and Facebook Inc.
This is utterly predictable, so much so that many folks were predicting exactly this outcome months ago.
Remember the sloppily written "for the children" toy testing law that went into effect last year? The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) requires third-party testing of nearly every object intended for a child's use, and was passed in response to several toy recalls in 2007 for lead and other chemicals. Six of those recalls were on toys made by Mattel, or its subsidiary Fisher Price.
Small toymakers were blindsided by the expensive requirement, which made no exception for small domestic companies working with materials that posed no threat. Makers of books, jewelry, and clothes for kids were also caught in the net. Enforcement of the law was delayed by a year—that grace period ended last week—and many particular exceptions have been carved out, but despite an outcry, there has been no wholesale re-evaluation of the law. Once might think that large toy manufacturers would have made common cause with the little guys begging for mercy. After all, Mattel also stood to gain if the law was repealed, right?
Turns out, when Mattel got lemons, it decided to make lead-tainted lemonade (leadonade?). As luck would have it, Mattel already operates several of its own toy testing labs, including those in Mexico, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and California.
The million bucks was well spent, as Mattel gained approval late last week to test its own toys in the sites listed above—just as the window for delayed enforcement closed.
Instead of winding up hurting, Mattel now has a cost advantage on mandatory testing, and a handy new government-sponsored barrier to entry for its competitors.
I have a small bit of experience with Congressional hearings (I have been a witness at two) so I wanted to answer a question asked at Engadget after the Facebook hearings:
Throughout the hearings, Congressional leaders repeated questions that had already been asked. We heard them ask again and again whether the company would work with Congress on legislation that would impose regulations on social networks like Facebook and others. We also heard many leaders ask when exactly Facebook learned that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained user data. This repetition continued with questions about changes to policy, Facebook's dense terms of service and whether users have been notified if their data were purchased by Cambridge Analytica. If time was so precious to these individuals -- and it should be, four minutes flies by and this is an important topic -- wouldn't they try to avoid repeating the same questions ad nauseam?
I have two answers for this
Congresspersons don't really care what the answer is to these questions. OK, they may care a little, but probably only a little because they seldom leave any time for answers after they are done with their public posturing. What they really care about is that their constituents back home see that they CARE and are DOING SOMETHING about a timely issue of concern to ordinary people. Representative Loony is playing to his local media in East Random, WV. The Representative from East Random doesn't care if four other Representatives have asked the same hard-hitting question. Those other repetitions are not going to show up on the local news in East Random. What is going to show up is Representative Loony asking the question. He will look like he CARES and like he is DOING SOMETHING. He is likely not really concerned that he is mocked in the Washington Post for wasting his questioning time, because no one who is going to vote for him in East Random reads the Washington Post anyway.
Many (but not all) Congresspersons are not that bright. I remember sitting in the committee hearing listening to the questions they were asking me and the other folks testifying and thinking, "how did these folks get here?" I decided the only common denominator had to be pure will. Because they were not all smart, not all charismatic -- not even as a group particularly impressive**. Anyway, whether bright or not, most do not really understand technology and related issues. And so their staffers write their questions for them. And if someone else asks the questions first? Some have the ability to improvise but I can tell you for a fact that for some, all they can do is just proceed and read the questions their staffers gave them.
** Postscript: Ayn Rand used to write that everyone assumes that people in power got that way by beating out everyone else, such that they must be excellent at something. Rand always said this was false, that people in power were the zero where conflicting forces cancelled out. Their being in power (vs. someone else being there) was a happenstance due to external factors and having little to do with that particular individual. I never really understood this the first few times I read it but in modern times I am starting to understand it better. Donald Trump strikes me as following Wesley Mouch's career arc.
