Probably , my most favorite part of Zuckerberg’s testimony , is when Sen Durbin caught him off guard.
Facebook came under intense scrutiny over how political data firm Cambridge Analytica, improperly harvested the information of up to 87 million Facebook users.
“A lot of geeks in the world are looking at Facebook as a redwood that’s starting to fall.” said David “Doc” Searls who created Project VRM, a program at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
The outcry over data privacy was so strong, it pushed Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, into testifying on Capitol Hill over the company’s failures to protect users’ information.
Protesters rallied outside the Capitol during his testimony.
The standout line of questioning came from Sen. Dick Durbin, who challenged Zuckerberg about his comfort level with his own personal information.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF YOUR DATA WAS BREACHED, MARK?
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) turned the tables on Zuckerberg yesterday by leading him on an unusual line of questioning.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?”
After the awkward pause, Zuckerberg said, “Uh … no.”
“If you’ve messaged anyone this week, would you share with us the names of the people you’ve messaged?”
Durbin added and Zuckerberg responded, “No, I would probably not choose to do that publicly here.”
The hearing room erupted in laughter and Zuckerberg himself smiled as if he, too, realized how Durbin just nailed him.
He had come to this hearing prepared.
Durbin’s approach to getting to the heart of the controversy around Facebook and privacy seemed to throw Zuckerberg off a bit.
Said Durbin, “I think that might be what this is all about, your right to privacy, the limits of your right to privacy, and how much you give away in modern America, in the name of quote “connecting people around the world.”
“The question, basically is what information Facebook’s collecting, who they are sending it to, and whether they asked in advance permission to do.
Is that a fair thing for a user of Facebook to expect?”
Said Zuckerberg: “Yes, senator, I think everyone should have control over how their information is used.”,
But was he serious?
Members of Congress prodded Zuckerberg on the common suspicion that Facebook passively listens to its users through their phones. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) was more direct, asking this question in a yes or no format.
Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), however, chose to illustrate the example using his son, who likes buying suits and then saw ads for suits online.
“If you’re not listening to us on the phone, who is? And do you have specific contracts with those companies that will provide data that is being acquired verbally?” Bucshon asked today.
“My understanding is that a lot of these cases that you’re talking about are a coincidence,” Zuckerberg responded.
Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, recalled the organization’s years of efforts to get Facebook to monitor how third parties were using data.
Yet few paid attention at the time, even though the group specifically warned about Facebook’s quizzes in 2009. (Cambridge Analytica used a third-party quiz app from an independent researcher to harvest user data.)
One US senator tried to pin down the Facebook CEO on a single question: Is Facebook a monopoly?
Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked Zuckerberg to name his biggest competitor.
Zuckerberg responded by outlining three “categories” of companies, starting with one category that included big tech companies like “Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft.”
A frustrated Graham cut him off. “If I’m upset with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product I can go sign up for?” he said. “I’m talking about real competition you face
… I’m not talking about categories.”
The Facebook CEO weaved around the question, citing a statistic that “the average American uses eight different apps to communicate with their friends and stay in touch.”
Graham finally stated the question on many people’s minds.
“You don’t think you have a monopoly?” he asked.
“It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me,” Zuckerberg responded, to some laughter in the room.
Feelings are unlikely to interest the US government if it comes time to decide whether Facebook is actually a monopoly.
Speaking of monopoly ….
A moment of a moment of magic also occurred when the camera’s panned the audience.
Amanda Werner is internet famous for her antics at congressional hearings,
so when the most famous man on the internet world testified before the Senate on Tuesday, Werner decided to try some tomfoolery again.
Amanda Werner showed up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 5 hr marathon hearing dressed as a literal Russian troll in hopes of replicating her “Monopoly Man” moment from last year.
.That didn’t work as well, But Werner isn’t sweating it.
Werner, a public interest lawyer and campaign activist, dressed as the Monopoly Man and sat right behind the witnesses at a congressional hearing in October 2017 about Equifax’s massive data breach.
All day on the cameras, there was Werner, twirling a handlebar mustache, as the witnesses from the company sweated under questioning.
I’m s total fan, Cosplay at it’s finest.
According to a news report from Buzzfeed earlier this week, there’s about 18 things , most people didn’t even know Facebook was tracking.
Congress released a massive document with written answers to those questions.
These responses were a good reminder that Facebook records a ton of information about you, including:
1. information from “computers, phones, connected TVs, and other web-connected devices,” as well as your “internet service provider or mobile operator”
2. “mouse movements” on your computer
3. “app and file names” (and the types of files) on your devices
4. whether the browser window with Facebook open is “foregrounded or backgrounded,” and time, frequency, and duration of activities
5. information about “nearby Wi-Fi access points, beacons, and cell towers” and “signal strength” to triangulate your location (“Connection information like your IP address or Wi-Fi connection and specific location information like your device’s GPS signal help us understand where you are,” said a Facebook spokesperson.)
6. information “about other devices that are nearby or on their network”
7. “battery level”
8. “available storage space”
9. installed “plugins”
10. “connection speed”
11. “purchases [users] make” on off-Facebook websites
12. contact information “such as an address book” and, for Android users, “call log or SMS log history” if synced, for finding “people they may know” (Here’s how to turn off contact uploading or delete contacts you’ve uploaded.)
13. information “about how users use features like our camera” (The Facebook spokesperson explained, “In order to provide features like camera effects, we receive what you see through camera, send to our server, and generate a mask/filter.”)
14. “location of a photo or the date a file was created” through the file’s metadata
15. information through your device’s settings, such as “GPS location, camera, or photos”
16. information about your “online and offline actions” and purchases from third-party data providers
17. “device IDs, and other identifiers, such as from games, apps or accounts users use”
18. “when others share or comment on a photo of them, send a message to them, or upload, sync or import their contact information”
Facebook sucks up a lot of personal data about you when you use Facebook, are around other people’s devices with Facebook installed, and when you sign into third-party apps or other devices (like your TV) with Facebook.
It’s fairly common for websites and apps to track things like mouse movements (that’s how Google’s “reCapcha”/”I am not a robot” verification works) or location. But Facebook is unique in how much it collects from the devices you use and the websites you visit when you’re not on Facebook, using a small piece of Javascript code called the Facebook Pixel and the “like” and “share” embed buttons on websites. This device and off-Facebook browsing information all feeds Facebook’s brain, in addition to even more personal information, such as facial recognition data and user-provided profile information like religious or political views.
In its written responses to Congress, Facebook dispelled the theory that the app is listening to your conversations by tapping into your device’s microphone, stating that the app “does not engage in these practices or capture data from a microphone or camera without consent.” But when asked, as a follow-up question, if it would commit to not doing so, it dodged the question, by referring to the previous statement.