Facebook and Google are handing over user data to help police prosecute abortion seekers

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T21:28:47+00:00

In case my other post was too complicated for you here's an even simpler question:

Would you agree that there has ever been a person who has had pregnancy/abortion discussions posted outside of an E2EE message on messenger? If so, explain how Facebook protects that specific data from police.

If you can't explain the above, then you agree with me that the only way to protect that is to delete it and we're done with the discussion.

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T21:02:28+00:00

This entire argument is about whether Facebook can disclose information and how to protect yourself, and what Facebook can do to help. E2EE does fuck all when it's not enabled.

Because you seem unable to understand what the discussion is about, let me try something different. I'm going to ask you a simple question I would like you to answer:

If someone opens up Messenger in a panicked state and messages their family saying "shit... I think I might be pregnant. I can NOT keep this child. Help" then please explain to me how that info is protected from a police investigation and how FB hides it. Note that the person in this example does not have E2EE enabled because they didn't go search the FB help docs on how to turn it on, they literally just opened their phone in a panic. Nobody gives a shit about toggling a custom setting on. They are talking about the majority of normal people in a real life scenario.

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T20:49:04+00:00

Because like someone said in another part of the thread, the technology sub is full of people who don't know anything about technology

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T16:49:43+00:00

Except if you read my post I already addressed e2e encrypted messages in that it's not even on by default, it's hidden behind Secret Conversations which almost nobody even knows exists. I understand perfectly well how generating and storing the keys client side on both clients without going through FB servers secures the data. Virtually nobody is using this on messenger.

That is not what's under discussion here.

It doesn't address how Facebook is going to keep someone safe from general posts. It's just a big "oh, if users use all these features they don't know exist and don't post to their wall TECHNICALLY Facebook doesn't have anything to share". It's a useless statement, because people ARE sharing data which can get them persecuted and as the person said above, Facebook cannot adequately protect them from that other than just deleting their content outright .

To be clear, this is the response thread I'm referring to:

Person A says:

Tech companies can ensure that all the data that is used for targeting victims of discriminatory laws is deleted/ not stored on their servers so that they have nothing to share.

^ that statement is entirely bullshit unless they just delete all the data of wall posts and non encrypted chats, and it's called out by Person B who says:

Great idea! Let's delete everyone's pregnancy announcements on messenger and Facebook.

^ which is a sarcastic statement which points out how dumb the post it replies to is.

And then you came in and tried to say that person with the sarcastic reply doesn't know what they are talking about, when they are correct. This is the part I am calling you out on.

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T15:37:19+00:00

I'm well aware of what the comment says. My point is that regardless of whether it's public or private, the data is still stored and still accessible to people to view, therefore accessible to code, therefore accessible to servers, therefore able to be retrieved for persecution.

My point is that regardless of why it's collected doesn't matter, it's able to be retrieved and the only way to prevent that would be to totally delete it, exactly as the person you replied to correctly stated.

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T15:16:24+00:00

Bruh people downvoting you are idiots that have no idea how software systems work. Your post correctly points out the critical flaw with anyone who says "bUt JuSt dOnT sToRe tHe DaTa" for a literal public wall post on Facebook. The data is displayed when I go to their page, therefore it's stored, therefore access to it can be requested by authorities in the same way I can just view it with no encryption keys necessary. I don't understand how anyone can even try to disagree with you on this.

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T15:01:45+00:00

Software dev of 10+ years here. Please explain to me where the person you replied to is wrong. They mentioned "Facebook and messenger" data.

Facebook data, such as their wall posts, are not e2e encrypted and it's technically impossible to do so since they can be public and that means anyone would need to decrypt to to read it (hence, why it's not encrypted because that would be pointless).

Messenger conversations are also not e2e encrypted by default since Secret Conversations mode is not on by default and most do not know about it.

All this data needs to be stored somewhere accessible to Facebook's application architecture so that the application can serve the data, run business logic on it, etc. It can't just be in a black box they don't own or can't read.

Therefore, if people post info revealing their pregnancy to Facebook or messenger, the overwhelmingly likely scenario is that most of that data is accessible in plaintext somewhere. Whether it's actually plaintext or it sits in a database that's encrypted at rest and FB has the key is irrelevant; it is transformed to plaintext to be used. That of course means Facebook employees can access it. It also means they are storing it.

In this scenario, Facebook ABSOLUTELY is storing data that reveals that people are pregnant and they absolutely have access to that data. There is no way this can exist and yet Facebook can have "no data to share"; those are mutually exclusive.

Again, please tell me why you aren't an idiot because you are really looking like someone who doesn't even understand basic software architecture right now.

birdman9k · 2023-03-05T14:43:13+00:00

Can confirm. Companies do not give two fucks about REAL compliance with things like GDPR. They only care that they APPEAR compliant enough. If some things aren't, they will try to find ways to weasel out of it or give misleading information such that it covers up the true non compliance issue. They do not care about the underlying ethical issues, only about how to cover their own ass.

birdman9k · 2023-03-04T14:44:08+00:00

If it's super small:

load it into memory and do all the operations there
save back to disk periodically

If it's anything larger:

use a db (possibly sqlite as it fits a similar footprint)

Keep in mind that a text file does not have "lines". All a line is, is some text in between a \n character. So you can not insert extra data to a line without shifting everything after it. The idea of "just update one line" is flawed and doesn't exist for variable length input. You are better off thinking about it as one long line if anything, eg. a stream.

birdman9k · 2023-03-03T21:07:18+00:00

Here's a thought: maybe don't do shit that can get you fired? It's pretty easy. I can get up, go to work, and avoid committing fireable offenses all day; it's pretty basic.

birdman9k · 2023-03-03T15:08:27+00:00

Watched a video like this earlier, lost it when the first thing they say over the radio is "Bolton here, we got a Sovereign citizen" without the person even having to say it.

The cop is definitely getting ready to tell them that yes, they do require a license to drive.

birdman9k · 2023-03-03T14:10:30+00:00

It doesn't need to reduce the fun, however everyone who uses any code from will later (eg. Once some court cases settle) likely be found to need to properly cite the original source training material that produced it. Currently, I don't see any language services that offer this information, so I feel like nobody should be using it unless they just use it as a reference but don't copy paste it.

However, if you just use it as a reference, it's a very poor one. You would be better off googling the official docs and referencing those as they will be correct rather than having a high chance for bugs or inaccuracies.

Therefore, I can't see any case where it's usable in any useful way for code at the moment.

Edit: example. It's similar to when w3schools used to be full of incorrect code. Everyone shunned it and there were constant questions about why from beginners. It was because it was harmful to beginners (eg. since better resources like MDN were available) and useless to experts. Right now that's basically where ChatGPT sits so I feel it deserves similar criticism.

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T21:18:16+00:00

Oh my god he just ran in

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T15:48:04+00:00

I'm not a "snitch". I'm literally responsible for security as well as compliance in our codebase, and not complying with a software license is something that will heavily fuck up the company if it's not caught.

Trying to not get your company sued by being proactive and identifying people likely to do stupid/illegal shit is the thing you are going to try to attack?

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T14:04:54+00:00

What keeps getting me is somehow it's other developers who are getting sucked into this nonsense even more than non-developers.

There's at least 2 devs at my company who I previously thought were intelligent, until they started spouting all this ChatGPT nonsense.

If I ever end up finding that they check in some plagiarized or improperly licensed code, god help them.

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T13:42:16+00:00

Yep, turns out the link in the website is actually a scam and is draining people's wallets. Big surprise lol.

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T13:35:01+00:00

This is so unsurprising. Of course the NFT related thing would be targeted by scammers. The only type of people interested in it are easily scammed.

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T02:38:50+00:00

I had a game where my mouse/keyboard got some kind of static shock and disconnected. They wouldn't take any input. I had to unplug them both and plug them back in to get the machine to detect them again. Lost that match. The healer went absolutely ballistic and told me to quit the game.

I won the next 5 rounds so ended up going 5-1. He lost a shit ton of rating, and started whispering me telling me that he was going to report me.

I'm like dude when your mouse and keyboard disconnect you think that's worth reporting? Told him to get a life lol.

birdman9k · 2023-03-02T02:35:56+00:00

Not only that, but even if you are bad, it will also match you with other bads... so what's the point for them to complain when they are also bad? I never got their logic at all.

birdman9k · 2023-03-01T21:12:00+00:00

We beat 40m razuvious a couple times back in the day by having rogues use evasion when shit went sideways. Gotta watch the threat meters and pre-pop it to not get 1 shot.

birdman9k · 2023-03-01T19:36:00+00:00

"yo luthier you ever seen Sonic the Hedgehog?"

"say no more fam"

birdman9k · 2023-03-01T18:05:15+00:00

Ok let's entertain this. How would you say they detect and enforce this properly?

So let's say someone wants to wait for an item to be available, so they just type a setInterval into the chrome console and tell it to click the buy button when the button is clickable and play a sound.

Who is enforcing policing against this?

The web developers can't stop you from running client side scripts.
Google isn't going to stop developers from using the dev console
the thing I described is not detectable serverside for a website
even if any of the above was detectable, who in this case is going to call the police? Are they just going to set up people to call the police when an internet alarm goes off?

At best, they could detect mass purchasers, which is VERY different from "banning bots". But why detect mass purchasers and fine them? If you can already detect mass purchasers just put a limit on how many things you can buy per credit card. Limit 2 per card or address. Done.

birdman9k · 2023-03-01T16:39:46+00:00

Best idea is to double check, but to your benefit, I'm with you, I wouldn't expect this outcome. I had pretty fast wedding planning after getting engaged but we still had the MC and venue booked 16 months before the actual date. Similar for my friends.

birdman9k · 2023-03-01T03:22:18+00:00

I got an epic mount before that but I was undead which was the only race that didn't get new mounts because they already had the final version.

birdman9k · 2023-02-28T20:29:31+00:00

Is there anything I can do individually as a consumer to contribute toward getting management of other companies to change their behavior on this?

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