Showing posts with label information technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label information technology. Show all posts
Thursday 5 July 2018
Turnbull and Keenan botching digital transformation policy
The
Australian Minister for Human Services, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister
for Digital Transformation and Liberal MP for Stirling, 46 year-old Michael Fayat Keenan, is
all gung-ho for digital transformation.
The problem
is that he is just not good at being transformative – rather like his prime
minister.
One could almost see the trainwreck coming down the line from the moment of then Communications Minister Turnbull's initial joint announcement with then Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2015.
Despite the obvious problems Michael Keenan will be commencing pre-rollout trials of a facial recognition program this year,
Yahoo
News, 1 July
20118:
Welfare recipients will
soon be asked to have their faces scanned before they can claim their benefits.
It is part of a new
trial of biometric security measures the government will begin within months.
Similar to how
SmartGates work at airports to check passports, government services will ask
recipients to take a photo on a computer or phone to create a MyGov ID.
The photo will then be
checked against passports and driver’s licences.
But there are questions
as to whether this information could be misused.
Australian Privacy
Foundation’s Bernard Robertson-Dunn said people needed to be assured “it works
properly” and the government “doesn’t use the technology to do things it didn’t
say it was going to do”.
Human Services Minister
Michael Keenan said on May 1 the misuse of data which could be used to “impinge
on people’s privacy” was “clearly” a concern for many Australians.
The 2016 Census is an
example of a recent government technology fail….
Uses for the MyGov ID
will trial from October – with an all-online way to get a tax file number.
Next year Centrelink
services, including Newstart and Youth Allowance, will also be trialled.
Here is the organisational and technological mess that Keenan helped create…..
The Canberra Times, 29 June 2018, p.14:
The agency charged with
guiding IT projects has been sidelined from major policies and is removed from
the Coalition's thinking about digital reform, an inquiry into the
government's $10 billion tech spend has found.
A report released on
Wednesday has called for a central vision to guide the government in its IT
reform and found changes to the Digital Transformation Agency
had left it watching on as major tech projects hit disaster.
The inquiry found the
DTA did not have the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission's botched
project to adopt biometric technology on its watchlist and that it had failed
to involve itself in determining why the Education Department's Australian Apprenticeship
Management System project was called off.
It was sidelined as the
Department of Home Affairs took charge of cyber policy, the Prime Minister's
department assumed control of data policy and the newly created Office of the
Information Commissioner was created separate from the DTA, the report said.
"The evidence heard
by this committee revealed an organisation that was not at the centre of government
thinking about digital transformation, or responsible for the
creation and enactment of a broader vision of what that transformation would
look like," it said.
News.com.au, 12 June 2018:
Australians will be able
to access government services with a single log-in under a plan to create a
"single digital identity" by 2025.
Michael Keenan, the
federal minister in charge of digital services, said face-to-face interactions
with government services would be greatly reduced.
"Think of it as a
100-point digital ID check that will unlock access to almost any government
agency through a single portal such as a myGov account," Mr Keenan said.
The minister wants
Australia to be a world leader in digital government, with almost all services
to be available online by 2025.
Mr Keenan said having 30
different log-ins for government services is not good enough.
"The old ways of
doing things, like forcing our customers to do business with us over the
counter, must be re-imagined and refined," he said.
People will need to
establish their digital identity once before being able to use it across
services.
The first of several
pilot programs using a "beta" version of what will be known as
myGovID will begin in October.
The initial pilot will
enable 100,000 participants to apply for a tax file number online, which Mr
Keenan says will reduce processing time to a day from up to a month currently.
In a pilot starting from
March next year, services including student identification and Centrelink will
be connected to the digital identity.
Also from March 2019,
100,000 people will be able to use their digital identity to create their My
Health Record online.
Mr Keenan says one
face-to-face or over-the-counter transaction costs on average about $17 to
process, while an online transaction can cost less than 40 cents.
The Human Services
department will operate as the gateway between service providers and people.
"This is key to
protecting privacy, as the exchange will act as a double-blind - service
providers will not see any of the user's ID information and identity providers
will not know what services each user is accessing," Mr Keenan said.
Labor digital economy
spokesman Ed Husic said the Turnbull government was responsible for a
"dirty dozen" of failed digital transformation failures, including
the census and tax office website crashes.
"The biggest challenge
confronting the Turnbull government is to quit its addiction to glitzy digital
announcements and get stuck into properly delivering these multimillion-dollar
projects," Mr Husic said.
The Australian Crime
Intelligence Commission has suspended the contract for its beleaguered biometric
identification services project in order to renegotiate it after the contractor
failed to meet the deadline for completion and the cost ran $40 million over
budget.
It follows a
recommendation from a scathing independent review late last year that the
contract be overhauled, the project be simplified and the timeline for delivery
changed.
In 2016 ACIC (then
CrimTrac) contracted NEC Australia to deliver a program that would replace the
national automated fingerprint identification system, adding in facial
recognition, palm prints and foot prints and would be available for use by
police forces around the country.
Industry news website
InnovationAus reported on Wednesday that NEC contractors had been marched from
ACIC's premises on Monday June 4, after being told that the project had been
suspended at the start of June.
It is believed the
project has been suspended until Friday, while the negotiations over the contract
take place.
A PricewaterhouseCoopers
report last November seen by Fairfax Media said "a chain of decisions
involving all levels and stakeholders" had led to the project running
behind schedule and over budget.
It recommended that the
scope of the project be simplified and standardised, and called it "highly
challenged" and presenting a "high risk" to the commission.
"There is low
confidence in likelihood of delivery which requires focus to achieve
turnaround."
Poor communication,
operational silos, limited collaboration and a failure to estimate the
project's complexity had blown it off-track, the report said.
The report also
recommended that the existing fingerprint database contract with Morpho be
extended for 12 months after its expiry last month. It is not clear whether
this contract was extended as recommended……
NEC Australia was also
the contractor for the failed Australian apprentice management system, which
was dumped by the Department of Education and Training last month due to
critical defects, also found by a report by PwC.
InnovationAus, 12 June 2018:
NEC Australia won a $52
million tender for the Biometric Identification Services project in early 2016.
The project involved replacing the ACIC’s National Automated Fingerprint
Identification System with a “multi-modal biometric identification” service,
incorporating fingerprints, footprints and facial recognition.
But the project is
running behind schedule and is understood to be returning a high amount of
false positives.
ABC
News, 28 May 2018:
A massive case of
mistaken identity in the UK is prompting calls for a rethink on plans to use
facial recognition technology to track down terrorists and traffic offenders.
"If you have
technology that is not up to scratch and it is bringing back high returns of
false positives then you really need to go back to the drawing board,"
president-elect of the Law Council of Australia Arthur Moses told AM.
The comments follow
revelations a London police trial of facial recognition technology generated
104 "alerts", of which 102 were false.
The technology scanned
CCTV footage from the Notting Hill Carnival and Six Nations Rugby matches in
London in search of wanted criminals.
Labels:
Australia Card,
big data,
information technology,
Internet,
privacy,
safety
Sunday 1 July 2018
Oi! Malcolm Bligh Turnbull and every dumb-witted member of his federal government as well as every premier and member of a state or territory government – when are you all going to wake up to the fact that digital is bloody dangerous?
For literally hundreds of years now, first in colonial, then in dominion and later in federation periods, Australia has relied on a 'paper and ink' processes to decide major political votes by its eligible citizens.
By and large this system has produced reliable results with regards to the people's will.
This is evidence of just the
latest red flag that Australian governments have ignored ……
The Mercury online, 30 June 2018:
The personal information
of about 4000 Tasmanian voters has been leaked after a data breach on a
third-party website linked to express votes, the state’s Electoral Commission
has revealed.
Tasmanian Electoral
Commissioner Andrew Hawkey said hackers had access to the names, dates of
birth, emails and postal addresses of those who applied for an express vote at
the recent state and Legislative Council elections.
“Early today, the
Tasmanian Electoral Commission was informed by the Barcelona-based company
Typeform, that an unknown third party had gained access to one of their servers
and downloaded certain information,” he said.
“Typeform online forms
have been used on the TEC website since 2015 for some of its election services.
The breach involved an unknown attacker downloading a backup file.
“Typeform’s full
investigation of the breach identified that data collected through five forms
on the TEC website had been stolen.”
The breach was
identified by Typeform on June 27 and shut down within half an hour of
detection, Mr Hawkey said.
“The Electoral
Commission will be contacting electors that used these services in the coming
days to inform them of the breach,” Mr Hawkey said.
“The Electoral
Commission apologises for the breach and will re-evaluate its collection
procedures and internal security elements around its storage of electoral
information for future events. The breach has no connection to the national or
state electoral roll.”
Mr Hawkey said some of
the stolen information had previously been made public, such as candidate
statements for local government by-elections.
Typeform said it had
responded immediately and had fixed the source of the breach to prevent further
hacks.
“We have since been
performing a full forensic investigation of the incident to be certain that
this cannot happen again,” a statement on the Typeform website read.
“The results that were
accessed are from a partial backup dated May 3, 2018. Results collected since
May 3 are therefore safe and not compromised.’
Typeform reportedly
provides services for some pretty big names, including Apple, Uber, Airbnb and
Forbes.
The hack comes after up
to 120,000 Tasmanian job seekers may have had their personal information
compromised following a data breach reported by human resources company PageUp
in early June.
That site was linked to
the Tasmanian Government and the University of Tasmania.
The State Government is
still waiting for a further response from PageUp but it is believed the breach
was limited to names, addresses, emails and phone numbers.
Friday 15 June 2018
What I learnt about NBN Co this week
It is easy to lose track of what federal government-owned NBN Co is up to these days, so I did a quick search of mainstream media reports and the company website. This is what I found.
In the nine months up to 31 March 2018 NBN Co listed $1,413 million in revenue, up from $665 million for the same period last year. Nevertheless it appears the company is operating at a loss.
NBN Co’s CEO
earns est. $3.62 million per annum — approximately six times more than Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull.
Million-dollar
salary packages are paid to another four top executives.
More than 480
of NBN Co’s staff are on $200,000-plus salaries and 120 earn more
than $300,000.
NBN Co
paid $66 million in bonuses to its staff last financial year.
In February
and March 2018 the company’s three top executives spent almost $40,000 on
business-class flights and accommodation during a trip to Spain to attend a
conference.
Although NBN plans are advertised with speeds such as 25Mbps or 50Mbps, performance on fixed wireless drops in the evening and the CEO has stated that "We don't have the money to invest in this to take it above 6Mbps” – which means that many customers cannot get a decent image when streaming videos or live entertainment.
NBN Co has
fobbed off customers 80,000 times since July last year – nine per cent of
all scheduled appointments.
There were at
least 42,510 formal complaints made about NBN services from January to December
2017.
More than one
third of NBN users wish it had never happened, according to new research by finder.com.au released
on 8 June 2018. Only 43 per cent of respondents still on an ADSL or cable
Internet connection said they were looking forward to switching to NBN.
The basic NBN service is being redefined and entry-level retail prices for NBN broadband are set to rise.
Labels:
#TurnbullGovernmentFAIL,
information technology,
Internet,
NBN
Thursday 7 June 2018
Only 39 days to go until concerned Australian citizens can opt out of the Turnbull Government's collection of personal health information for its national database
Apparently this email is currently being sent out to registered Australian citizens.
Australian Digital Health Agency, email, 5 June 2018:
Hello,
You are receiving this email because you registered your email address at myhealthrecord.gov.au to find out more information about how to opt-out of the My Health Record system.
If you do not want a My Health Record, you must register your choice between 16 July and 15 October 2018 during the opt-out period. It is not possible to opt-out of having a record before the opt-out period starts.
The opt-out period will not apply to individuals who have previously chosen to have a My Health Record, or were included in the Nepean Blue Mountains or North Queensland opt-out trials in 2016. Individuals who have an existing My Health Record can cancel their record at any time. Instructions on cancelling a record can be found on the My Health Record website.
Once the opt-out period starts you will receive another email letting you know that the opt-out period has started and what to do if you still want to opt-out.
A My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual’s key health information. 1 in 5 Australians already have one. It’s an individual’s choice who sees their My Health Record, what’s in it and who it is shared with. My Health Record has safeguards in place to protect an individuals’ information including encryption, firewalls and secure login.
For further information about the My Health Record, please visit the My Health Record website.
Thank you,
The My Health Record System Operator
www.digitalhealth.gov.au
You are receiving this email because you registered your email address at myhealthrecord.gov.au to find out more information about how to opt-out of the My Health Record system.
If you do not want a My Health Record, you must register your choice between 16 July and 15 October 2018 during the opt-out period. It is not possible to opt-out of having a record before the opt-out period starts.
The opt-out period will not apply to individuals who have previously chosen to have a My Health Record, or were included in the Nepean Blue Mountains or North Queensland opt-out trials in 2016. Individuals who have an existing My Health Record can cancel their record at any time. Instructions on cancelling a record can be found on the My Health Record website.
Once the opt-out period starts you will receive another email letting you know that the opt-out period has started and what to do if you still want to opt-out.
A My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual’s key health information. 1 in 5 Australians already have one. It’s an individual’s choice who sees their My Health Record, what’s in it and who it is shared with. My Health Record has safeguards in place to protect an individuals’ information including encryption, firewalls and secure login.
For further information about the My Health Record, please visit the My Health Record website.
Thank you,
The My Health Record System Operator
www.digitalhealth.gov.au
[my yellow highlighting]
Friday 11 May 2018
File this under "Yet Another National Database" cross referenced wih "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
6 May 2018:
A massive breach of
Commonweath Bank data exposed last week has raised security fears around a new
national database of Australian bank customers, as Labor pushes for a
delay to part of the scheme's scheduled introduction in less than two months.
The database - set to go
live on July 1 - will include the details of every person who has taken
out a loan or a credit card, along with their repayment history.
The Mandatory
Comprehensive Credit Reporting scheme was a recommendation of the 2014
financial system inquiry and is designed to give lenders access to a
deeper, richer set of data to ensure loans are only being approved for
people who can afford to repay them.
The new requirements
will first apply to the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ Bank, Westpac and National
Australia Bank, given they account for up to 80 per cent of lending to
households.
But the collection of
sensitive data by private companies has raised concerns in the wake of several
high-profile data breaches, including the disappearance of 20 million
customers records from the Commonwealth Bank.
The Financial Rights
Legal Centre and the Consumer Action Law Centre claim the financial
details of millions of Australians will be vulnerable under the new scheme -
which includes positive and negative credit histories.
Financial Rights Legal
Centre policy officer Julia Davis said the development "was a major
intrusion into our financial privacy".
"I don’t think
Australians realise this is about to happen," she said.
The legislation states
all credit reporting bodies must store the information on a cloud service that
has been assessed by the Australian Signals Directorate. It also contains a
provision allowing banks to stop supplying customer data to credit providers
should there be a major security breach.
Ms Davis said the
oversight was welcome but the internal systems of credit reporting bodies
remained "completely opaque."
"Once that data
goes live in the one place you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube,"
she said.
Equifax, one of the
companies which will have access to the data, had its systems in the US hacked
last year, exposing the personal information of 143 million Americans and
triggering to the resignation of its chief executive.
It is also being sued by
consumer watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over
allegations it misrepresented its product to consumers by asking them to pay
for their own credit histories which are usually available online for free.
The company's general
manager of external relations, Matthew Strassberg, said Equifax had "only
been a marquee above the door for six months," after the US giant took
over the Australian operation formerly known as Veda.
He said the credit
reporting business would provide "a 360 degree picture."
"A bank will have a
very deep insight into what they know of you," he told Fairfax Media.
Mr Strassberg said he
recognised that Australians were concerned about data security…..
Tuesday 8 May 2018
Ballina not happy with second-rate NBN installation plans
The
Northern Star,
4 May 2018:
BALLINA'S deputy mayor
is calling on residents to speak out against about the NBNCo's plans to deliver
"second class technology" to local residents.
Cr Keith Williams said
he had been contacted by residents in East Ballina, Skennars Head and Lennox
Head to say they would be getting "inferior" fibre to the node NBN
connections.
But he said fibre to the
kerb should be the minimum installation standard across the shire.
"We know that fibre
to the node places more reliance on the copper network, limits potential speeds
and is more expensive to upgrade," Cr Williams said.
"This places a real
limit on the economic potential of the area, not just now, but potentially for
years to come.
"It makes no sense
whatsoever when you consider that all these areas are close to the coast and
more exposed to the effects of salt water.
"This is precisely
the areas where you want less reliance on copper."
Cr Williams said failure
to oppose NBN rollout plans now, risked leaving residents in these areas with a
second class NBN.
"NBN Co have
insisted this is not second class technology, being essentially the same
technology as fibre to the kerb," he said.
"In this they are
correct, but they avoid the central point.
"The greater
reliance on the old copper network means it is a second rate service, slower,
more prone to dropouts and more expensive to upgrade.
"From my enquiries
to date it seems there is no formal mechanism to seek a review of the NBN Co
rollout plans.
"The only way these
things change is by community pressure and adverse publicity.
"I'm asking
everyone in the area to go to the NBN website, check what the rollout plans are
for your house and if it says Fibre to the Node, let NBN Co know that it just
isn't good enough.
"You deserve
better."
Thursday 26 April 2018
Well hoorah, NBN Co is to roll out its inbuilt obsolescence across Yamba commencing in June 2018
It has been
reported in local media that NBN Co
will be commencing the Yamba rollout
of its allegedly high speed broadband in June 2018, with Maclean and Grafton rollouts
to commence in January 2019.
This news is
quite frankly underwhelming.
Whatever
information NBN Co was giving out obviously didn’t include the type of
connection that was on offer, as this important point was not mentioned by
journalists and there is contradictory information on the company's website.
These three urban
areas in the Clarence Valley are yet to hear if households and businesses are
being offered fibre-to-the-curb, fibre-to-the-node or fixed wireless.
Because it is
certain that the best option fibre-to-the-premises isn’t on offer to regional second cousins of the big metropolitan areas.
Personally I
will carefully refuse to look at any construction works taking place in Yamba
come June, July and August.
The sight of
all those water-filled trenches will be too depressing.
Who starts extensive
in-ground construction in winter at the low-lying, high water table mouth of a floodplain, I ask you?
* Image from Hakuri Sad Party
Monday 23 April 2018
Away from the spotlight of congressional hearings Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc. show their true colours – implementing weaker privacy protection for 1.5 billion users
The Guardian, 19 April 2018:
Facebook has moved
more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a
promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally.
In a tweak to its terms
and conditions, Facebook is shifting the responsibility for all users outside
the US, Canada and the EU from its international HQ in Ireland to its main
offices in California. It means that those users will now be on a site governed
by US law rather than Irish law.
The move is due to come
into effect shortly before General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into
force in Europe on 25 May. Facebook is liable under GDPR for fines of up to 4%
of its global turnover – around $1.6bn – if it breaks the new data protection
rules.
The shift highlights the
cautious phrasing Facebook has applied to its promises around GDPR. Earlier
this month, when asked whether his company would promise GDPR protections
to its users worldwide, Zuckerberg demurred. “We’re still nailing down details
on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing,” he said.
A week later, during his
hearings in front of the US Congress, Zuckerberg was again
asked if he would promise that GDPR’s protections would apply to all
Facebook users. His answer was affirmative – but only referred to GDPR
“controls”, rather than “protections”. Worldwide, Facebook has rolled
out a suite of tools to let users exercise their rights under GDPR,
such as downloading and deleting data, and the company’s new
consent-gathering controls are similarly universal.
Facebook told Reuters
“we apply the same privacy protections everywhere, regardless of whether your
agreement is with Facebook Inc or Facebook Ireland”. It said the change was
only carried out “because EU law requires specific language” in mandated
privacy notices, which US law does not.
In a statement to the
Guardian, it added: “We have been clear that we are offering everyone who uses
Facebook the same privacy protections, controls and settings, no matter where
they live. These updates do not change that.”
Privacy researcher
Lukasz Olejnik disagreed, noting that the change carried large ramifications
for the affected users. “Moving around one and a half billion users into other
jurisdictions is not a simple copy-and-paste exercise,” he said.
“This is a major and
unprecedented change in the data privacy landscape. The change will amount to
the reduction of privacy guarantees and the rights of users, with a number of
ramifications, notably for consent requirements. Users will clearly lose
some existing rights, as US standards are lower than those in Europe.
“Data protection
authorities from the countries of the affected users, such as New Zealand and
Australia, may want to reassess this situation and analyse the situation.
Even
if their data privacy regulators are less rapid than those in Europe, this
event is giving them a chance to act. Although it is unclear how active they
will choose to be, the global privacy regulation landscape is changing, with
countries in the world refining their approach. Europe is clearly on the
forefront of this competition, but we should expect other countries to
eventually catch up.” [my yellow highlighting]
NOTE:
The Australian Dept. of Human Services still continues to invite those who use its welfare services to visit its five Facebook pages on which it will:
* post about payments and services
* answer questions
* give useful tips
* share news, and
* give updates on relevant issue
All associated data (including questions and answers) will of course be captured by Facebook, then collated, transferred, stored overseas, monetised and possibly 'weaponised' during the next election campaign cycle which occurs in the area visitors to these pages live.
Monday 16 April 2018
In Febuary-March 2018 there were 63 Notifiable Data Breaches in Australia involving the personal information of up to 341,849 individuals
In the 2016–17 financial year, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) reported that it received 114 data breach notifications on a voluntary basis.
On 22
February the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme came into force.
Between 22
February and 31 March 2018 there were 63 mandatory notifiable data breaches reported involving the personal information of up to est. 341,849 individuals, with 55 of these breaches reported in March alone.
Of these breaches:
24 were
the result of criminal or malicious attack;
32 were
the result of human error;
2 were
system fault; and
1 was
classified as “Other”.
The type of personal information involved in the data breaches:
The type of personal information involved in the data breaches:
Three of
these data breaches involved the personal information of between 10,000 and 999,999 people in each instance.
At least
15 of the 63 data breached involved personal information held by “health service providers”. Health service providers are considered to be any organisation that provides a health service and holds health
information.
Every individual whose personal information was breached was supposed to be notified by the entity holding their information, however the OAIC Quarterly Statistics Report: January 2018 - March 2018 did not specifically state that this had occurred.
Every individual whose personal information was breached was supposed to be notified by the entity holding their information, however the OAIC Quarterly Statistics Report: January 2018 - March 2018 did not specifically state that this had occurred.
Labels:
big data,
data retention,
information technology,
privacy,
safety,
statistics
Sunday 15 April 2018
It is getting harder and harder to believe Facebook Inc's denials of intentional harm
The fact that Facebook Inc. re-named the street in which it is headquartered "1 Hacker Way" should have been a clue to this social media giant's business ethos but it obviously didn't register with national governments and everyday Internet users.
By the time All tech reported this on 11 November 2016 we were all a little more informed, but Facebook was still trying to pull the wool over our eyes:
Mark Zuckerberg says the
notion that fake news influenced the U.S. presidential election is "a
pretty crazy idea."
The Facebook CEO is
finding himself in a unique position in this election cycle. Many news
organizations have come under fire for their coverage of the campaign. Now
Facebook is getting it too, as a modern media company that does not vet fake
news from its News Feed and that, critics argue, allows users to stay in information
bubbles that reinforce existing prejudices.
Zuckerberg took both
these criticisms head-on yesterday, at a conference called Techonomy. (You can find the
full interview on his Facebook feed.)
He says hoaxes existed
before his platform was created. They aren't new, and people who say
misinformation is why Donald Trump won simply do not get it. "There's a
profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could
have voted the way that they did is because they saw some fake news,"
Zuckerberg says.
He also says his company
has studied fake news and found it's a "very small volume" of the
content on Facebook. He did not specify if that content is more or less viral
or impactful than other information.
Denials of a dangerously lax attitude to risk in Facebook Inc.'s business model continued to be made as more information surfaced......
BuzzFeed, 30 March 2018
The
Age, 31 March
2018:
In a 2016 employee memo
that was leaked this week, a Facebook executive defended the company's
questionable data mining practices and championed the growth of social media at
any cost - apparently even death.
Users in the US sue
Facebook for not protecting personal data of the 50 million social network
account owners whose data ended up at the political consulting firm Cambridge
Analytica.
"Maybe it costs a
life by exposing someone to bullies," company vice president Andrew
Bosworth wrote in the memo, according to BuzzFeed News, which published it
Thursday. "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our
tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in
connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people
more often is *de facto* good."….
Bosworth, who oversaw
Facebook's advertising and business platform at the time and is now in charge
of the company's virtual reality department, has acknowledged writing the
message but said he intended only to start a debate. "I didn't agree with
it even when I wrote it," he wrote on Twitter after BuzzFeed published its
report.
Facebook chief executive
Mark Zuckerberg, who is already facing a public relations crisis over
accusations that the company
mishandled millions of users' private data, disavowed the memo.
"Boz is a talented
leader who says many provocative things," Zuckerberg said in a statement,
using Bosworth's nickname. "This was one that most people at Facebook
including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify
the means."…….
The 418-word memo is
framed around Zuckerberg's often-stated mission to connect the entire world
through Facebook, which Bosworth cites as the company's ultimate and
unchangeable goal - whether those connections let users fall in love, attack
each other or, in the memo's most extreme example, coordinate a terrorist
attack.
"That's why all the
work we do in growth is justified," Bosworth wrote. "All the
questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps
people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more
communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of
it."
BuzzFeed noted that the
memo was written almost immediately after a man was shot to death while
streaming live video of himself with Facebook Live, and a few days before a
Palestinian teenager was accused of killing an Israeli girl after praising
terrorists on Facebook.
These deaths were a
prelude to a string of other gruesome and violent incidents that appeared in
videos and live streams on the social network. A man posted a Facebook video of
himself killing someone last April. A month later, a man soaked himself in
kerosene, lit himself on fire and used Facebook Live to stream video of his
self-immolation.
Then we saw Zuckerberg donning a suit as he did the rounds in Washington DC. Appearing before a Joint Senate Committees on the Judiciary & Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data hearing and a House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee's Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data hearing.
There was an expectation that during these hearings Zuckerberg would reveal the full extent of Facebook's data collection and retention, as well as explain why he allowed third party apps to collect data without the knowledge and/or fully informed consent of up to est, 2 billion Facebook users.
His disingenuous witness statement published ahead of his appearances contains this gem:
Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring.....
Then we saw Zuckerberg donning a suit as he did the rounds in Washington DC. Appearing before a Joint Senate Committees on the Judiciary & Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data hearing and a House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee's Facebook: Transparency and Use of Consumer Data hearing.
There was an expectation that during these hearings Zuckerberg would reveal the full extent of Facebook's data collection and retention, as well as explain why he allowed third party apps to collect data without the knowledge and/or fully informed consent of up to est, 2 billion Facebook users.
His disingenuous witness statement published ahead of his appearances contains this gem:
Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring.....
But it’s clear now that
we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.
That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as
well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our
responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I
started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here. So now
we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure
we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility.
However, if one reads through the full witness statement it is clear that Facebook Inc. is not responding out of a genuine realisation of its ethical failures or wrongdoing, but is essentially responding to the sharp fall in its stock value which began last month.
It clearly intends to still allow third party apps access to Facebook user accounts and there is no guarantee that the amount of personal data that can be extracted by these apps will be limited to a digital version of 'name, rank and serial number' or that Facebook users will have given fully-informed consent for this data extraction.
This reading of Facebook Inc.'s intentions was reinforced by Mark Zuckerberg testimony before both the Senate and House committees.
He came obviously rehearsed by lawyers and tightly scripted......
Although in his spoken testimony Zuckerberg commenced with yet another apology, in my opinion he frequently dissembled, mislead, misdirected, contradicted a number of his own and Facebook management's public previous statements, lied by omission and sometimes almost defiantly told what appeared to be bald-faced lies.
NOTE: Readers can form their own opinion of Zuckerberg's testimony courtesy of The Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.032d3cf2a0e8
& https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/transcript-of-zuckerbergs-appearance-before-house-committee/?utm_term=.cd5f1228fec4.
However Facebook Inc. is not just relying on its founder and CEO's recent testimony to ward of further regulation of its businss practices.
Since 2011 Facebook Inc. has had a registered Political Action Commttee (PAC) which has donated to the 2012, 2014, and 2016 US election campaigns.
As well as in-house and paid lobbyists who spent in total US$11.5 million in 2017 alone fighting against further Internet regulations including any proposed strengthening of privacy protections. Add that to the company's US$8.6M lobbying spend in 2016, $9.8M in 2015, $9.3M in 2014, $6.4M in 2013, $3.8M in 2012, $1.3M in 2011, $351,390 in 2010 and $207,878 in 2009 and one can see that Facebook Inc. is increasingly determined to have the ear of US lawmakers.
Although how successful the social media giant's lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill will be in 2018, it is clear that in has been partially successful in protecting the market value of its shares.
To date this year Facebook Inc.'s ordinary share price has gone from a closing high of US$193.09 (01.02.18) to a low of $152.22 (27.03.18) in the wake of revelations about the company's business practices and, then gradually climbed over the course of 17 days by $12.3 to close at $164.52 (13.03.18), according to Yahoo! Finance.
As for the number of active Facebook users - only time will tell if current figures hold over time. With trust in Facebook Inc. at a new low it will not be surprising to find the number of accounts showing daily activity falling over time as users become more wary of this platform.
This reading of Facebook Inc.'s intentions was reinforced by Mark Zuckerberg testimony before both the Senate and House committees.
He came obviously rehearsed by lawyers and tightly scripted......
Time Magazine, Facebook aide closing notes during hearing recess,11 April 2018
Brief summary of Mark Zuckerber notes here.
Although in his spoken testimony Zuckerberg commenced with yet another apology, in my opinion he frequently dissembled, mislead, misdirected, contradicted a number of his own and Facebook management's public previous statements, lied by omission and sometimes almost defiantly told what appeared to be bald-faced lies.
NOTE: Readers can form their own opinion of Zuckerberg's testimony courtesy of The Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.032d3cf2a0e8
& https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/11/transcript-of-zuckerbergs-appearance-before-house-committee/?utm_term=.cd5f1228fec4.
However Facebook Inc. is not just relying on its founder and CEO's recent testimony to ward of further regulation of its businss practices.
Since 2011 Facebook Inc. has had a registered Political Action Commttee (PAC) which has donated to the 2012, 2014, and 2016 US election campaigns.
As well as in-house and paid lobbyists who spent in total US$11.5 million in 2017 alone fighting against further Internet regulations including any proposed strengthening of privacy protections. Add that to the company's US$8.6M lobbying spend in 2016, $9.8M in 2015, $9.3M in 2014, $6.4M in 2013, $3.8M in 2012, $1.3M in 2011, $351,390 in 2010 and $207,878 in 2009 and one can see that Facebook Inc. is increasingly determined to have the ear of US lawmakers.
Although how successful the social media giant's lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill will be in 2018, it is clear that in has been partially successful in protecting the market value of its shares.
To date this year Facebook Inc.'s ordinary share price has gone from a closing high of US$193.09 (01.02.18) to a low of $152.22 (27.03.18) in the wake of revelations about the company's business practices and, then gradually climbed over the course of 17 days by $12.3 to close at $164.52 (13.03.18), according to Yahoo! Finance.
As for the number of active Facebook users - only time will tell if current figures hold over time. With trust in Facebook Inc. at a new low it will not be surprising to find the number of accounts showing daily activity falling over time as users become more wary of this platform.
Labels:
Facebook,
information technology,
privacy,
risk,
safety
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