Someone on Slashdot asked the key question: If an individual did this, they would be prosecuted for hacking under one law or another. Why is Facebook not facing criminal charges?
Plenty of people liked to use a VPN that pays you to use it. It was great. They knew that they were giving up their privacy to a big corporation, but chose to do that because they were getting paid.
Today's big corporations slurp up your data and don't pay you.
If you work for a large employer in the United States, they are probably decrypting all of your TLS traffic to every site on the internet from your (their) work devices without the consent of the other party. This is a part of any good security architecture. There is no other way to ensure it isn't actually malware command and control traffic, for example.
You consent to this by using the employer-provided device and only your consent is needed. Same deal here. I am sure Snapchat doesn't like it (I think some of Meta's internal messaging around it said as much) but I can't think of how it would be illegal in the U.S., though I can't speak for every jurisdiction in the world. Not a lawyer, though.
Sure they did. I’m sure they didn’t just click “I agree” or ticked the boxes to “Accept the Privacy Policy” and “Accept Terms of Service” without really reading and understanding all the legalese. I mean, who would do that, especially as they’re getting paid? We all know the average user has an academic understanding of how their data is collected and its consequences. And it was Facebook doing it, so it’s a given there were zero dark patterns or trickery involved. This is absolutely the user’s fault, all hail corporations doing whatever shit they want.
Are you assuming that Facebook only read traffic between two mutually-consenting parties? I assume Snapchat did not consent to this. What if you're in a state that requires two-party consent?
I think that just applies to phone calls or conversations, not all internet traffic, unless you think that using wireshark or the chrome developer tools to save network traffic / http requests is a crime?
California Penal Code § 632 seems applicable: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Other laws may also be applicable depending on where the victims were.
https://www.kelleydrye.com/viewpoints/blogs/commlaw-monitor/...
Also another article I read says the CIPA has a civil statute $5,000 per violation, so if you're Meta, who cares. Not exactly the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.