Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone’s Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories
newsroom.fb.com
newsroom.fb.com
“What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails.” President Obama, June 16, 2013, on the Charlie Rose Show
During a March 12, 2013, Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden asked DNI Clapper if the NSA collected any type of data on millions of Americans. Clapper said: “No, sir.”
“We don’t hold data on U.S. citizens.” DNI Clapper speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on July 9, 2012
“Provides the government the same authority in national security investigations to obtain physical records that exits in an ordinary criminal case, through a grand jury subpoena.” Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaking on the Senate floor on May 22, 2011
I just met George Packer (writer @Atlantic) who said the greatest failure of Obama may end up not dramatically downscaling the scope of the Oval office while he still had the chance. The office has grown so powerful it's a dangerous tool in the hands of anyone less benevolent than the current officeholder.
Why not just say "Does not use your microphone without tapping a record button" (and make sure it's implemented like that).
Because it does. From the article:
"We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates."
"Might include..."
They want you understand that without having to be pinned to having said it. This is really carefully worded to get you to think exactly what you did. Why not just say "Doesn't use your microphone without tapping a record button"? It's reasonable to assume because that statement would be false.
Like when Target knew the guy's daughter was pregnant before he did: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-t...
This much power, I'm surprised that people are surprised. At this scale, I'd put a high estimation that there are multiple abuses from: 1) Private citizens who work there 2) Hackers with undisclosed access to their infrastructure 3) Governments around the world that have jurisdiction to suboena them 4) Governments that they want curry favor with (ie Germany, EU, USA)
I would guess that there were breaches that would be a scandal but, were caught quietly and handled internally and never made it out.
They have billions of dollars in the bank, some of the smartest people on the planet and a CEO that wants to change the world.
It's not like a conspiracy. It's just simple math. With software written by humans being as fragile and imperfect as it is and that much information as centralized as it is, it's crazy to trust that it's always stayed safe in the hands of Facebook and that your view of the world through Facebook's filter isn't being changed at all.
That being said, it is unsettling they have the feature. A lot of people, me included, were upset when Google started reading our emails for ads. Slowly, people started accepting that was the norm, and there is a lot less fuss over it now, bigger other battles to fight with the NSA and other privacy issues.
Whose to say what we say out loud is more private than emails? It really could be a matter of time until that expectation of privacy of the spoken word is diminished with the rise of Alex and the like.
What feature do they have?
It could be pretty awesome, if only we could trust anyone to do this kind of thing.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-sca...
If I want a mic, I'll plug in a goddamned headset.
Audio processing is handled by a third party.
...right now.
That's awfully specific.
Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb f*cks.
And in fairness, there are very few people from 18-25 who would not be classified as "dumb" when it comes to thinking through privacy, consequences, and boundaries.
After removing the FB app, FB Messenger app, Instagram (which I never used anyway) and WhatsApp (ditto), I've gone from 20-30 hours between charges to 60-70 hours between charges. This is on an iPhone 6 that admittedly isn't used for much more than SMS, RSS, music in the car, and light browsing. Now, I can't say with certainty that removing those apps removed any battery-hogging 24/7 microphone monitoring, but no matter what it's clear the FB apps were draining the battery. Again, I'm still accessing FB just as much as I did before (about twice a day, for about 10 minutes at a time) but it's via the web browser.
Also, my data use has dropped, though not as significantly as battery life; where I was using about 1.5GB of data per month, now I'm just under 1GB/month (estimated based on the ~450MB used in the two weeks I've been FB-free)