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Or talking to a friend on your mobile phone. Your phone company is not allowed to wire tap the conversation.

Or when you send your friend a letter, the post office isn't expected to open the envelope to read your communication.

Not even isn't expected. Isn't legally allowed.

Unless you're the NSA / CSIS / Etc.

Yeah, this is the most apt comparison, and is barely even a metaphor. Shocking that it's not applied to FB.

Your phone company can actually record your conversations so long as they ensure all parties to the conversation are aware they are doing so.

Only if the parties agree and continued use of the service argument isn’t fair.

I believe these protections are related to voice specifically, from what I recall. The law on record has to do specifically with voice data and excludes textual forms of data.

If you were voice chatting over Facebook they would probably have to make you aware if they were listening/processing the data for words. By make you aware, it probably means bury it in the ToS on page 784 in a generic and ambiguous way and that is sufficient for court should someone litigate.

Now when you start looking at voice assistants like Alexa, GA, etc. the waters could get muddier.

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