Seater of judges, ratifier of treaties, chider of Facebook.com! Is nothing beneath their notice?
Four Democratic senators called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday to reconsider the recent changes in its privacy settings and asked the Federal Trade Commission to streamline guidelines regarding privacy on all social networks.
Tomorrow, the Honorable Robert Byrd will be calling on little Suzy Jablonski to remind her to wash up really good before dinner.
16 comments:
Oh damn... coffee through the sinuses hurts... But that was TOO funny!!!
Ah, and so we creep, bit by bit into the abyss where once-mighty England stood. Now look at her; she's a nanny clucking over her flock of lemmings as they waddle over the edge.
Micromanagement?
Not when you consider Jimmy Carter used to control the scheduling of the White House tennis court.
How much longer with that whole, "train of abuses and usurpations," bit, with all their wonderful laws, "pursuing invariably the same Object evinc(ing) a design to reduce them (us)under absolute Despotism?"
How much longer?
Gee, how can those critters of ours keep up, what with constantly finding new things into which to stick their noses?
Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. - Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Let us never forget that the time they spend fiddling with trifles and declaring "National Powdered Toast Recognition Month" is time they DON'T spend monkeying with important stuff.
gvi
I think you missed on this one, Tam. Any change in security policies should be opt-in, not opt-out. This is a pure money grab by Facebook.
By default the Facebook settings share your info with various vendors who are now allowed to store it as long as they want, and the process to change that isn't as simple as changing one setting from yes to no. I'm not a big fan of the senators listed, but considering the loss of privacy of millions, somebody needs to take it seriously.
This from the same bunch of lying socialist bastids(but I repeat myself) who have made every bit of your personal banking and health info available to any .gov puke who wants to look at it.
Anon @12:01. what is it that makes Facespace's or MyBook's or BlogPress's or WordSpot's security settings or protocols any of the Senate's business?
wv: dialatti. Starbuck's new delivery service.
"what is it that makes Facespace's or MyBook's or BlogPress's or WordSpot's security settings or protocols any of the Senate's business? "
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we already have federal privacy laws? Doesn't this information cross state and even national lines? Don't the feds already regulate these telecommunications networks as a result of their interstate commerce? So how is this some sort of unconstitutional power grab?
Facebooks has repeatedly played fast and loose with users's vital data. I've been on the service for about a year and this is at least the third major privacy grab by the the site. I'd be fine with a federal law that says websites must keep data private without user opt-in.
Sorry, but if your info gets put up online, that is YOUR fault, and yours alone. Facebook isn't putting a gun to your head and telling you to put your real info up online, nor are they putting a gun to your head and keeping you from opting out of their annoying policies.
You should always think before putting ANY of your info online, because you should always assume that some asshole with too much time on their hands will somehow get a hold of it. Facebook is no different.
Honorable
Senator
Robert Byrd
Everybody sing with me now!
"One of these things is not the like the other thing..."
"Sorry, but if your info gets put up online, that is YOUR fault, and yours alone. Facebook isn't putting a gun to your head and telling you to put your real info up online,"
Not true any more. They're not tracking only members. They're tracking everyone. And as Jeff the Baptist noted, Facebook has pushed the envelope of what's legal more than once. People join under one set of rules ("your info will be protected") and then Facebook changes the rules ("you are now public unless you stop us") and notifies you after the fact.
I don't belong to Facebook and never have, yet I'm still in their database because one of their recent tricks was to "share" members' email (not FB) address books. I found out when someone I knew sent me an invitation to visit them on Facebook, and FB helpfully listed "other people you might know on FB" - people who don't know each other but all know me. So don't feel so smug, Silver, they probably have you too. All it takes is one long-forgotten great aunt ...
It's apparently going to take a law to force these sites to make data-sharing opt-in rather than opt-out. Laws are made by Congress. So yes, senators should take notice, even senators I don't normally agree with.
People join under one set of rules ("your info will be protected") and then Facebook changes the rules ("you are now public unless you stop us") and notifies you after the fact.
That's completely untrue. Not the changing rules. They do that all the time. But they never notify you. You find out when a friend notices and posts the information on their Wall.
The next Senate Bill chastises twitter for having a character limit of 140 and strongly request that it raise it to 2000.
Yeah, no, Anonymous.
What kind of "money grab" involves settings applied to three hand-picked websites who only even get to look at the already-public profile information (without explicit permission)?
"Data sharing" is also not what you actually described with your "friend of a friend" thing. That other people know you and told FB that they knew you is not an invasion of your privacy.
There's no Federal mandate or purpose to make sharing already public data "opt-in only".
The State doesn't need to be involved because you're upset that your aunt told a website that she's your aunt.
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