As an ex-employee, I feel much more confident in Facebook's processes than the company you're describing. Facebook would have no problem terminating people who do what you're describing.
The 'We will log your access and fire you' line of defense prevents nothing from someone who only has a job for the purpose of moving data out.
Someone in that position would be much better off building a back door into the system. But if they could also build a backdoor into iCloud, or scrape Gmail data from within Google.
I assume that Facebook has mechanisms to check that new hires (especially foreign nationals) are legitimate.
Ironically, you're undermining your own point. The fact that they would be fired afterwards in no way contradicts the notion that they could access such data, and in fact suggests they can (hence the firing policy).
Everything is logged, so if you might have looked at anything you shouldn’t have, it’s flagged and you’re audited; if you didn’t have permission (from a user and/or manager) and a valid business reason, then (we were told during onboarding) you’re likely to be fired and possibly sued.
The reality is that huge amounts of personal data were harvested by third parties through app permissions - apparently with FB’s knowledge and support.
No one needs back door hacks to get into a vault when the front door is wide open.
You asked about the "average employee" having access to user data, and the answer is unequivocally "no", with both technical and disciplinary safeguards.
There are only a few roles (moderation) who can access the relevant tools, and while engineers may technically have programmatic access (how would you expect things to work if nobody did ?), this is thoroughly logged and you'd better have an ironclad justification not to get fired on the spot.
> You asked about the "average employee" having access to user data, and the answer is unequivocally "no", with both technical and disciplinary safeguards.
(a) How do you know, and (b) so what is your explanation of stories like [1]? They're just hoaxes?
> and while engineers may technically have programmatic access (how would you expect things to work if nobody did ?)
Again you are wording this in quite a vague, lawyer-y manner, which again raises my eyebrows. "May" as in "might", or as in "do"? And "engineers" as in what fraction of them? There is a lot of wiggle room between "nobody" and "all engineers". It's quite strange that I can't get a straightforward, crystal-clear denial to a non-weasel-worded claim from you who seem to be confidently contesting what I'm saying. Please don't keep muddying the waters.
As for why no one is giving you a clear answer it is because there is no reason for anyone to tell some random person deep details about security policy and procedure. The people building the internal controls and defenses are smarter than you, they know what needs to be protected and are rather devious about thinking up attack scenarios and possible paths of compromise, and eventually get tired of repeating the same answers. Want to know more? Too bad.
Where did I ask for "deep details about security policy and procedure"?
> Want to know more? Too bad.
No, but thanks.
> There is some data that an average employee just cannot get to.
"Some data" means nothing. I'm sure this is true in many, many companies, ranging from the most competent to the most incompetent.
> For some data a dev can access it but the pattern of access and amount of data accessed will be audited and anomalies will raise an alarm.
This is yet again consistent with what I've said.
At the end of the day, the data is there - they have it. Possession is arguably MORE than 9/10 of the law in this situation. They can access it whenever they want -- trivially if they are rogue or have no concern for keeping their job. but this is true of just about any huge company that employs a lot of people-- but they're not going to say they can. Why would they?
For goodness's sake, please stop these straw-man arguments. I said this above once, but it seems I have to say it again: nobody ever asked for that level of detail. People have been struggling with far more basic issues. No current or ex-employee or intern has even come along to try to say something simple like "as far as I know, the average Facebook intern simply cannot access private user data regardless of any business reasons"; indeed, we've gotten anecdotes that that the opposite has actually happened. How you suddenly deduce that I'm looking for specific descriptions of what teams can access what data is just beyond me.
That could be answered with something vague like "yes, this requires permissions from a small team of trusted individuals, which are granted only if the issue is severe/cannot otherwise get immediate attention/cannot be addressed by that team/etc., and it's never granted to most interns". No need for jumping to "X-dev-team #1 has access to X, Y, and Z".
This is the best resource I've found for protecting such things:
Translucent Databases: Confusion, Misdirection, Randomness, Sharing, Authentication And Steganography To Defend Privacy http://a.co/eLgQACC
Maybe differential privacy stuff will supersede, compliment these techniques. I'm keeping an open mind.