— popcon sentimonies (@CohCon) March 25, 2018
Saturday, 31 March 2018
Quotes of the Week
"the average
tax evader may be financially better off even after they're caught and
penalised" [Chris Leech, writing about low tax
evasion penalties applied by the
Australian Taxation Office in an unpublished study, quoted in The Age, 24
March 2018]
“Civil
disobedience and protest are vital in a democracy. They open up political space
for communities to intervene when the doors of governments are closed to them,
and the price of entry to corporate boardrooms and political party fundraisers
is beyond reach.” [Barrister
Julian Burnside writing in The
Sydney Morning Herald, 25 March 2018]
Friday, 30 March 2018
Corporate tax cuts lead to 'jobs and growth' in Australia? Pull the other one!
This Business Council of Australia survey
was apparently mothballed when initial results indicated that it would reveal
the truth about outcomes flowing from the Turnbull Government’s planned
corporate tax cuts - a distinct lack of jobs and wages growth.
Financial
Review, 27
March 2018:
Fewer than one in five
of Australia's leading chief executives say they will use the Turnbull
government's proposed
company tax cut to directly increase wages or employ more staff,
according to a secret survey conducted by the Business Council of Australia.
More than 80 per cent
said they would either use the proceeds to boost returns to shareholders or
invest in the company.
The explosive revelation
comes as the government is
still struggling to secure the final two Senate votes needed to pass
the remainder of the $65 billion package.
The survey follows a
letter to all Senators last week by the BCA and 10 of the nation's top
chief executive officers in which they pledged to reinvest the proceeds of the
tax cuts with the ultimate aim of increasing wages.
"If the Senate
passes this important legislation we, as some of the nation's largest
employers, commit to invest more in Australia which will lead to employing more
Australians and therefore stronger wage growth as the tax cut takes
effect," the letter said.
But The Australian
Financial Review has learned that the BCA directly surveyed the chief
executives of its 130-plus members about a company tax cut this year, in the
wake of the company tax rate cut in the United States.
The chief executives
were asked which of four options they would nominate as their preferred
response to the company tax cut in Australia.
These were: returning
funds to shareholders; more investment; increasing the wages of their existing
workforce; or increasing employment.
More than 80 per cent
nominated one of the first two options while only 16 per cent to 17 per cent
nominated higher wages or employment.
The survey results are
understood to have been tightly held but were reported on internally in a memo
entitled "the good news and the bad news".
A spokesman for the BCA
confirmed the survey to the Financial Review on Monday but downplayed
its significance…….
This lobby group has now decided that 'spin' is more important than fact and senators have all received a BCA video appeal promising well-paid and meaningful jobs and wages growth that only growing investment can deliver if the comapny tax cits are passed.
A neat trick given that its members are also arguing before the Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2017-18 that the minimum wage should remain as is or only be increased by 34-35 cents an hour which represents no growth in real wages.
The vague, slyly worded non-promise to lift workers wages received by Senators
via @Tony_Burke
Thursday, 29 March 2018
Federal Liberals continue to behave badly in 2018 - Part Two
Australian
Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull
still continues (as late as Wednesday 28 March 2018) to deny any part in the Barnaby Joyce scandal…..
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
28 March 2018:
A key adviser to Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull helped to formalise a job transfer for the partner of
Barnaby Joyce, according to new details about the controversial decision to
secure the new position in a ministerial office.
The letter from Mr
Turnbull’s senior governance adviser was signed on May 9 last year and gave
official clearance to the new role for Vikki Campion, who was in a relationship
with Mr Joyce at the time and is due to give birth to their baby next month.
The role played by the
Prime Minister’s office triggered detailed questioning in Parliament last month
amid an uproar over the relationship and the way the government moved Ms
Campion from one office to another to manage the matter….
A spokesman for the
Prime Minister said on Wednesday, "The email simply confirms what we have
always said: as is usual practice, the PMO performed a purely administrative
role passing on the documents to the relevant department."
Sacked former Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Warringah,Tony Abbott, doing his best to ensure Malcolm Turnbull leads the Coalition to defeat at the forthcoming federal election. Rumour has it that he sees himself as Leader of the Opposition for a second time around.......
The
Conversation,
27 March 2018:
Former prime minister
Tony Abbott has said that if people had been more willing to heed the message
of those like Pauline Hanson over the last two decades, “we would be a better
country today”.
In a speech loaded with
praise for the controversial One Nation leader, Abbott described her as “a
remarkable and a resilient presence in our public life for more than two
decades”.
He also said the only
way the Coalition could win the next election was to harvest Hanson
preferences. “If I can make that more likely, that is a very positive
contribution that I can make to the prospects of the Turnbull government.” He
said the Coalition should preference One Nation above Labor and the Greens,
because the government had been able to work constructively with it in the
Senate.
Launching a book of her
speeches, Pauline: In Her Own Words, Abbott referenced a “lot of dirty water
under the bridge” between them in the past. When he was a member of the Howard
government, Abbott was involved in moves that ended in Hanson being jailed for
electoral fraud. She said after
she was released: “Heaven help this country if Tony Abbott is ever in
control of it. I detest the man.”
At the launch Abbott
praised Hanson’s “willingness to let the past be the past”.
While over in Western Australia a nasty Liberal mano a mano war has erupted.....
The
West, 28
March 2018:
A factional war inside
the WA Liberals has boiled over with Federal MP Ian Goodenough suggesting a
rival should face criminal charges for misleading the Australian Electoral
Commission.
The AEC confirmed it had
removed long-time Liberal player Simon Ehrenfeld from the electoral roll after
complaints from Mr Goodenough and his allies about Mr Ehrenfeld not actually
living at the address he had registered.
Mr Ehrenfeld is the
vice-president of the party’s Moore division and president of the Liberals’
Hillarys branch.
Mr Goodenough claimed Mr
Ehrenfeld could face investigation for misleading the AEC.
He said other senior
Liberal Party members could also face action for giving statements to the
commission asserting Mr Ehrenfeld lived at the Kallaroo address.
“The AEC should take
steps to prosecute him if they deem it necessary,” Mr Goodenough said.
“Obviously it is more
serious if two or three people have conspired.”
Mainstream media continues to amplify racist dog whistles in 2018
In September
2017 the Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia (NMBA) published the new Code of Conduct for Nurses and Code of
Conduct for Midwives. The codes took effect for all nurses and midwives in
Australia on 1 March 2018.
These codes
set out the
legal requirements, professional behaviour and conduct expectations for all
nurses and midwives in all practice settings.
The new codes
for nurses and midwives can be found here.
These codes
passed without much comment until far-right Senator Cory Bernardi began to bay about “political correctness” on
31 January 2018 and claim that Nurses must acknowledge
white privilege and voice this acknowledgment if asked.
According to
ABC Media Watch
he was followed by the Murdoch media running with this blatant dog whistle,
followed by Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and various radio shock
jocks.
Misleading
media coverage culminating in a truly appalling piece of journalism by Channel
7 which elicited this response…………..
Luke Pearson writing at @IndigenousX on 24 March
2018:
“BUT FIRST TONIGHT, THE
CONTENTIOUS NEW CODE TELLING NURSES TO SAY ‘SORRY FOR BEING WHITE’ WHEN
TREATING THEIR INDIGENOUS PATIENTS..
That’s how Today Tonight Adelaide
began last night.
Catch Up: Having to apologise for being white – the controversial new code for nurses treating Indigenous Australians. #TTAdelaide pic.twitter.com/yViiqkw67F— TodayTonightAdelaide (@TodayTonightSA) March 23, 2018
It continued:
“Now, it’s the latest in a string of
politically correct changes for the health industry, but this one has led to
calls for the Nursing Board boss to resign.”
It was followed by a five minute story
with the new code being condemned by someone you’ve probably never heard
of, Graeme Haycroft,
explaining that: “According to how the code is written, the white nurse would
come in and say, ‘before I deal with you, I have to acknowledge to you that I
have certain privileges that you don’t have” followed by Cory Bernardi calling
it divisive.
It goes on in this vein for a full
five minutes before it cuts back to the presenter, who finally says, “The
Nursing and Midwifery Board has told us that the code was drafted in
consultation with Aboriginal groups and has been taken out of context as it’s
not a requirement for health workers to declare or apologise for white
privilege”.
And just to reinforce that point, the
entire premise for the segment was false. There is no requirement for nurses to
apologise for being white, which would be very awkward for the more the more
than 1500 Indigenous nurses across Australia, and the countless others who also
aren’t white to begin with. But, even for the nurses who are – THERE IS NO
REQUIREMENT FOR THEM TO APOLOGISE FOR BEING WHITE.
So, why on Earth would Today Tonight
run such a story?
Why would they base a story off the
demonstrably false allegations of this Graeme Haycroft person?
To answer that, it might useful to cut
back to a 2005
Sydney Morning Herald story about Mr Haycroft:
“A member of the National Party and
the H.R. Nicholls Society, he (Mr Haycroft) boasts that, because of a tussle he
had with the Australian Workers Union 15 years ago, the union does not have a
single member shearing sheep in south-western Queensland today.
Now he runs a labour hire firm with a
thriving sideline in moving small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.
…Mr Haycroft’s business stands out
because he is targeting lower-skilled, lower-paid workers, often with poor
English – the people unions say have much to fear from individual contracts.”
Cut back to 2018, and Graeme Haycroft
now runs the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland, which promotes
itself as an alternative to the Qld Nurses Union.
So, a man with a long history of
fighting Unions, who ‘saved’ the mushroom farming business by showing
businesses how to move “small-business employees off awards and collective
agreements and onto the Federal Government’s preferred individual contracts,
Australian Workplace Agreements.”
According to the 2005 article, “Mr
Haycroft said workers had been more than happy to sign on, most with their
penalty rates, holiday pay and other conditions being rolled into a flat rate.”
“However, [there is always a
‘however’], Mr Haycroft was stripped of his preferred provider status with the
Office of the Employment Advocate on Thursday, after a Sydney picker, Carmen
Walacz Vel Walewska, said she was sacked after she contacted the Australian
Workers Union for advice on AWAs.”
With that track record, it’s hard to
imagine why nurses would want to leave their current union in favour of his
‘professional association’.
It seems as though, once again,
Indigenous people have become a political football and a convenient scapegoat
for issues that have nothing to do with us.
Queensland has a long history of
political success found through anti-Aboriginal sentiment, so what better way
to undermine a Union and recruit new members to a professional association than
to accuse the Union of ‘racism against white people’ and ‘political correctness
gone made’ by spreading the blatantly false and misleading accusation that
white nurses now have to apologise to Aboriginal people for being white?
And just like Dick Smith’s
anti-immigration campaign, Blair Cottrell’s anti-African ‘community safety
group’, and Prue McSween’s call for a new Stolen Generation, it seems Channel 7
is always more than happy to ignore the facts and sensationalise issues about race
and racism.
There is always one more
thing.
We, and others, will soon publish
articles explaining what the Code of Conduct actually calls for, and explain
why cultural competence and cultural safety are important (editor’s note: we
did, here’s
one of them), but I can’t help but be reminded of this quote from Toni
Morrison:
“The function, the very serious
function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps
you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you
have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says
your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that
it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you
have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will
always be one more thing.”
So, instead of working on the very
real business of ensuring best practice within the nursing industry, our
Indigenous experts in this area will have to take a few days away from this
important work to explain that no one is asking for white nurses to apologise
for being white.
Just like we have to explain that not
all Aboriginal parents abuse their children, or that we don’t want to steal
white people’s backyards, or that we had (and have) science, or that Australia
wasn’t Terra Nullius, or, as Malcolm Turnbull suggested last year, that
acknowledging Indigenous history and addressing the issue of colonial statues
and place names across Australia is not a “Stalinist exercise of trying to wipe
out or obliterate or blank out parts of our history”.
So long as Australian media and
politics finds value, profit and opportunity in promoting racism, there will
always be one more thing.
So, I might as well clear up a few
others while I’m here, and empty a few more buckets out of the endless ocean of
racist misinformation.
Child abuse isn’t a ‘cultural’ thing.
Police are not scared to arrest
Aboriginal people out of fear of being called racist.
We don’t get free houses.
Aboriginal people using white ochre on
their faces in dance and ceremony is not the same thing as white people
dressing up in blackface.
We don’t get free university.
The Voice to Parliament is not a third
chamber of parliament.
We are not the problem.
Anything else?
We aren’t vampires?
We don’t shoot laser beams out of our
eyes?
We aren’t secretly developing a
perpetual motion machine that runs on white tears?
I’m sure I, and countless others, will
undoubtedly need to keep adding to this list because, as Toni Morrison tells
us, there will always be one more thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do
nurses under the new code have to announce their ‘white privilege’ before
treating indigenous patients?
It is not a requirement of the codes of conduct for nurses and midwives
to announce or apologise for white privilege. Any claim that nurses and
midwives need to announce or apologise for white privilege is completely
untrue. The recent criticisms from Mr Haycroft are based on completely untrue
statements. The requirements for nurses when working with Aboriginal and/or
Torres Strait Islander Peoples are clearly outlined in section 3.1 of the code.
Are nurses encouraged to
announce their ‘white privilege’ before treating indigenous patients?
No.
Is there any requirement
to acknowledge or announce ‘white privilege’ before treating a patient?
No.
Can a nurse be sacked
for NOT declaring or addressing their ‘white privilege’ to a patient?
No.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUSTRALIAN NURSING AND MIDWIFERY
FEDERATION, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF NURSING, AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE OF MIDWIVES AND
CONGRESS OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER NURSES AND MIDWIVES
JOINT
STATEMENT, 23 March
2018:
In response to Graeme Haycroft’s recent
comments, we welcome the opportunity to provide further information on how
important cultural safety is for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
It is clear from the 2018 Closing the Gap
Report tabled by Prime Minister Turnbull in February 2018 that Aboriginal
and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples still experience poorer health outcomes
than non-Indigenous Australians. It is well understood these inequities are a
result of the colonisation process and the many discriminatory policies to
which Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians were subjected to,
and the ongoing experience of discrimination today.
All healthcare leaders and health
professionals have a role to play in closing the gap.
The approach the NMBA has taken for
nurses and midwives (the largest workforce in the healthcare system) by setting
expectations around culturally safe practice, reflects the current expectations
of governments to provide a culturally safe health system. (For more
information please see the COAG Health Council 4 August 2017 Communiqué).
Culturally safe and respectful
practice is not a new concept. Nurses and midwives are expected to engage with
all people as individuals in a culturally safe and respectful way, foster open,
honest and compassionate professional relationships, and adhere to their
obligations about privacy and confidentiality.
Many health services already provide
cultural safety training for their staff. Cultural safety is about the person
who is providing care reflecting on their own assumptions and culture in order
to work in a genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Peoples.
Nurses and midwives have always had a
responsibility to provide care that contributes to the best possible outcome
for the person/woman they are caring for. They need to work in partnership with
that person/woman to do so. The principle of cultural safety in the new Code of
conduct for nurses and Code of conduct for midwives (the codes) provides
simple, common sense guidance on how to work in a partnership with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The codes do not require nurses or midwives
to declare or apologise for white privilege.
The guidance around cultural safety in
the codes sets out clearly the behaviours that are expected of nurses and
midwives, and the standard of conduct that patients and their families can
expect. It is vital guidance for improving health outcomes and experiences for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
The codes were developed through an
evidence-based and extensive consultation process conducted over a two-year
period. Their development included literature reviews to ensure they were based
on the best available international and Australian evidence, as well as an analysis
of complaints about the conduct of nurses and midwives to ensure they were
meeting the public’s needs.
The consultation and input from the
public and professions included working groups, focus groups and preliminary
and public consultation. The public consultation phase included a campaign to
encourage nurses and midwives to provide feedback.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery
Federation, the Australian College of Nursing, the Australian College of
Midwives and the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and
Midwives all participated in each stage of the development and consultation of
the new codes. The organisations strongly support the guidance around cultural
safety in the codes for nurses and midwives.
Lynette Cusack Chair
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
Ann Kinnear CEO
Australian College of Midwives (ACM)
Kylie Ward CEO
Australian College of Nursing (ACN)
Janine Mohamed CEO
Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives
Annie Butler A/Federal
Secretary Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation
Wednesday, 28 March 2018
Turns out that Facebook Inc is the biggest baddie of all on the Internet
“The
FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the
privacy of consumers. Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against
companies that fail to honor their privacy promises, including to comply with
Privacy Shield, or that engage in unfair acts that cause substantial injury to
consumers in violation of the FTC Act. Companies who have settled previous FTC
actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data
security requirements. Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press
reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook.
Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into
these practices.” [US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Statement,
26 March 2018]
It may have been the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook situation as first set out by Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian & The Observer (UK) that recently alerted the average Internet user to the issue of digital privacy on social media and, it was certainly the situation which caught the eye of the US Federal Trade Commission which is now investigating.
The story of that data harvest so far.....
The
Guardian UK,
25 March 2018:
The story of how those
data made the journey from Facebook’s servers to Cambridge Analytica’s is now
widely known. But it is also widely misunderstood. (Many people were puzzled,
for example, by Facebook’s vehement insistence that the exfiltration of a huge
trove of users’ data was not a “breach”.) The shorthand
version of what happened – that “a slug of Facebook data on 50 million
Americans was sucked down by a UK academic named Aleksandr Kogan, and wrongly
sold to Cambridge Analytica” – misses an important point, which is that in
acquiring the data in the first place Kogan was acting with Facebook’s
full knowledge and approval.
In 2013, he wrote an app
called “Thisisyourdigitallife” which offered users an online personality test,
describing itself as “a research
app used by psychologists”.
Approximately 270,000 people downloaded it and
in doing so gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city
they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited
information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it. This
drew more than 50 million unsuspecting Facebook users into Kogan’s net.
The key point is that
all of this was allowed by the terms and conditions under which he was
operating. Thousands of other Facebook apps were also operating under similar
T&Cs – and had been since 2007, when the company turned its social
networking service into an application platform.
So Kogan was only a bit
player in the data-hoovering game: apps such as the insanely popular Candy
Crush, for example, were
also able to collect players’ public profiles, friends lists and email
addresses. And Facebook seemed blissfully indifferent to this open door because
it was central to its commercial strategy: the more apps there were on its
platform the more powerful the network effects would be and the more personal
data there would be to monetise.
That’s why the bigger
story behind the current controversy is the fact that what Cambridge
Analytica claimed to have accomplished would not have been possible
without Facebook. Which means that, in the end, Facebook poses the problem that
democracies will have to solve.
Now we find out that Facebook Inc is scraping information from Android devices such as mobile phones and adding phone logs to its Big Brother database.
Global
News, 25
March 2018:
In the same week Facebook found itself in
the middle of a massive data scandal, recent reports indicate that the social
media giant has also scraped records of phone calls and SMS data from its users
with Android devices without explicit permission.
New Zealand-based
software developer Dylan McKay tweeted earlier this week that upon downloading
his Facebook data in zip file (which is
an option for all users) he claims to have discovered records of phone
calls and a historical data of every contact on his phone., including contacts
he no longer had, from a period between 2016 and 2017.
Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018
Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD
After he made the
discovery, McKay set up a Google poll to gather evidence from other users who’ve
been affected.
So far, just under 900
people have responded to the poll, and more than 20 per cent confirmed they
found call records and/or text metadata in their Facebook data archive. Another
74 people responded to the poll saying that MMS data was collected, 106 people
responded saying that SMS data was collected, and 104 responded saying that
cellular calls were collected.
The story was first
published by the tech news website Ars
Technica on Saturday, who interviewed several Facebook users, and had
a member of its staff download their Facebook data archive. Following, this,
the site could confirm that the data file downloaded by the staff member
contained call logs from a device that individual used between 2015 and 2016,
as well as SMS and MMS message data.
Several Global News
staff members also requested their data archives as well in the preparation of
this story and some found that the contact lists from their mobile devices were
recorded in the file. No one noted any text message or call logs in the data
files they downloaded.
Ars Technica reached out to Facebook for comment before the publication of its story, who said that the practice was a common one among social networking and messaging apps.
“The most important part
of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find
the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your
phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by
uploading your phone contacts.”
Following McKay’s
tweets, other users came out on social media expressing similar concerns about
what they discovered after downloading their data archives.
Oh wow my deleted Facebook Zip file contains info on every single phone cellphone call and text I made for about a year- cool totally not creepy.— Mat Johnson (@mat_johnson) March 23, 2018
I’ve just looked at the data files I requested from Facebook and they had every single phone number in my contacts. They had every single social event I went to, a list of all my friends (and their birthdays) and a list of every text I’ve sent.— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) March 25, 2018
…In recent years, the
company has updated this process to clarify that when requesting access to your
contact list, it intends to access all call logs and SMS text messages as well,
but Android users in the past may have unknowingly given Facebook access to
this data. [my yellow highlighting]
It is also wise to remember that even Internet users who do not have a Facebook account have their PC or other digital device scanned for information each time they click on a link to Facebook. 
Facebook image via ZDNet, 3 January 2014
ZDNet on 3 January 2014: By "content"
Facebook means “anything you or other users post on Facebook”. By
"information" Facebook means “facts and other information about you,
including actions taken by users and non-users who interact with Facebook”. [my yellow highlighting]
Nor should we ignore this report about Facebook's surreptitious activities.......
Law360
(March 2, 2018, 7:02 PM EST) -- A California federal judge held Friday that
Facebook can’t shake a proposed class action over its allegedly unlawful
collection and storage of non-users’ facial scans, declining to toss the matter
for lack of standing, just as he recently did in a related suit involving users
of the site.
U.S. District Judge James Donato rejected Facebook Inc.’s renewed motion to dismiss litigation led by Frederick William Gullen for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, pointing to his Feb. 26 decision in a related proposed class action accusing the social media...
Then there is the lobbying to discourage federal regulation of Facebook.......
U.S. District Judge James Donato rejected Facebook Inc.’s renewed motion to dismiss litigation led by Frederick William Gullen for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, pointing to his Feb. 26 decision in a related proposed class action accusing the social media...
Then there is the lobbying to discourage federal regulation of Facebook.......
According to SOCIAL MEDIA CASEROUNDUP (selected cases) in April 2015, by 2013 Facebook Inc had spent more than US$1 million on lobbying efforts to water down the US Children's
Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It was particularly concerned about any change of status of third party "add ons"/"plug-ins" which might by default make platforms like Facebook legally liable for any harm to a minor/s which occurred, as well asbeing resistant to any increase in general protections for minors or any expanded definition of protected "personal information" being included in the Act.
Quartz, 22 March 2018:
Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday that the
company welcomes more regulation, particularly to bring transparency
to political advertising online. But in recent months, Facebook has been
quietly fighting lawmakers to keep them from passing an act that does exactly
that, campaign transparency advocates and Congressional staff tell Quartz.
The Honest Ads Act was introduced
last October to close a loophole that has existed since politicians
started advertising on the internet, and was expected by many to sail through
Congress. Coming as Congress investigated how Russia used tech companies to
influence the 2016 election, it was considered by many in Washington DC to be
the bare minimum lawmakers could do to address the problem.
The act introduces
disclosure and disclaimer rules to online political advertising. Tech companies
would have to keep copies of election ads, and make them available to the
public. The ads would also have to contain disclaimers similar to those
included in TV or print political ads, informing voters who paid for the ad,
how much, and whom they targeted.
“The benefit of having
disclaimers on all political ads [is] the more suspicious ads would be more
identifiable,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal and Federal
Election Commission reform at theCampaign Legal
Center (CLC) in Washington.
In a vote of confidence
from bitterly-divided Washington, the act was rolled out by a bipartisan group
of senators—John McCain, the Republican from Arizona, and Democrats Amy
Klobuchar from Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia—and it currently
has the support of 18 senators. But it hasn’t moved from the committee on
“Rules and Administration” since was first introduced, thanks in part to
Facebook’s lobbying efforts.
Fischer, who is a
co-author of a CLC
report on US vulnerabilities online after the 2016 election, accuses
Facebook of “working behind the scenes using the levers of power to stop any
legislation from moving forward.”
Facebook’s lobbying
clout
Lobbyists for the
company have been trying to dissuade senators from moving the Honest Ads Act
forward, some Congressional aides say.
Facebook’s argument to
Congress behind the scenes has been that they are “voluntarily complying” with
most of what the Honest Ads Act asks, so why pass a law, said one Congressional
staffer working on the bill. Facebook also doesn’t want to be responsible for
maintaining the publicly accessible repository of political advertising,
including funding information, that the act demands, the staffer said.
Facebook spent nearly
$3.1 million lobbying Congress and other US federal government agencies in the
last quarter of 2017, on issues including the Honest Ads Act according to its latest
federal disclosure form. It also signed on Blue Mountain Strategies, a
lobbying firm founded by Warner’s former chief of staff, an
Oct. 30, 2017 filing shows.
It’s part of a massive
uptick in lobbying spending in recent years.
Despite all its lobbying Facebook Inc is not immune from official censure for its deceptive business practices.
Take this analysis of a 2011 binding agreement between the US Federal Trade Commission and Facebook Inc.....
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION [File No. 092 3184], 2 December 2011:
Despite all its lobbying Facebook Inc is not immune from official censure for its deceptive business practices.
Take this analysis of a 2011 binding agreement between the US Federal Trade Commission and Facebook Inc.....
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION [File No. 092 3184], 2 December 2011:
The Federal Trade
Commission has accepted, subject to final approval, a consent agreement from
Facebook, Inc. (‘‘Facebook’’)……
The Commission’s
complaint alleges eight violations of Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, which
prohibits deceptive and unfair acts or practices in or affecting commerce, by
Facebook:
*
Facebook’s Deceptive Privacy Settings: Facebook communicated
to users that they could restrict certain information they provided on the site
to a limited audience, such as ‘‘Friends Only.’’ In fact, selecting these
categories did not prevent users’ information from being shared with Apps that
their Friends used.
*
Facebook’s Deceptive and Unfair December 2009 Privacy Changes:
In December 2009, Facebook changed its site so that certain information that
users may have designated as private— such as a user’s Friend List —was made
public, without adequate disclosure to users. This conduct was also unfair to
users.
*
Facebook’s Deception Regarding App Access: Facebook represented
to users that whenever they authorized an App, the App would only access the
information of the user that it needed to operate. In fact, the App could
access nearly all of the user’s information, even if unrelated to the App’s
operations. For example, an App that provided horoscopes for users could access
the user’s photos or employment information, even though there is no need for a
horoscope App to access such information.
* Facebook’s Deception Regarding Sharing
with Advertisers: Facebook promised users that it would not share their
personal information with advertisers; in fact, Facebook did share this
information with advertisers when a user clicked on a Facebook ad.
*
Facebook’s Deception Regarding Its Verified Apps Program:
Facebook had a ‘‘Verified Apps’’ program through which it represented that it
had certified the security of certain Apps when, in fact, it had not.
*
Facebook’s Deception Regarding Photo and Video Deletion: Facebook stated to
users that, when they deactivate or delete their accounts, their photos and
videos would be inaccessible. In fact, Facebook continued to allow access to
this content even after a user deactivated or deleted his or her account.
*
Safe Harbor: Facebook deceptively stated that it
complied with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework, a mechanism by which U.S.
companies may transfer data from the European Union to the United States
consistent with European law.
The proposed order
contains provisions designed to prevent Facebook from engaging in practices in
the future that are the same or similar to those alleged in the complaint.
Part I of the proposed
order prohibits Facebook from misrepresenting the privacy or security of ‘‘covered
information,’’ as well as the company’s compliance with any privacy, security,
or other compliance program, including but not limited to the U.S.-EU Safe
Harbor Framework. ‘‘Covered information’’ is defined broadly as ‘‘information
from or about an individual consumer, including but not limited to:
(a) A first
or last name;
(b) a home or other physical address, including street name and
name of city or town; (c) an email address or other online contact information,
such as an instant messaging user identifier or a screen name;
(d) a mobile or
other telephone number;
(e) photos and videos; (f) Internet Protocol (‘‘IP’’)
address, User ID, or other persistent identifier; (g) physical location; or
(h)
any information combined with any of (a) through (g) above.’’
Part II of the proposed
order requires Facebook to give its users a clear and prominent notice and
obtain their affirmative express consent before sharing their
previously-collected information with third parties in any (a) through (g)
above.’’ Part II of the proposed order requires Facebook to give its users a
clear and prominent notice and obtain their affirmative express consent before
sharing their previously-collected information with third parties in any way
that materially exceeds the restrictions imposed by their privacy settings. A
‘‘material . . . practice is one which is likely to affect a consumer’s choice
of or conduct regarding a product.’’ FTC Policy Statement on Deception,
Appended to Cliffdale Associates, Inc.,
103 F.T.C. 110, 174 (1984).
Part III of the proposed
order requires Facebook to implement procedures reasonably designed to ensure
that a user’s covered information cannot be accessed from Facebook’s servers
after a reasonable period of time, not to exceed thirty (30) days, following a
user’s deletion of his or her account.
Part IV of the proposed
order requires Facebook to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy
program that is reasonably designed to:
(1) Address privacy risks related to
the development and management of new and existing products and services, and
(2) protect the privacy and confidentiality of covered information. The privacy
program must be documented in writing and must contain controls and procedures
appropriate to Facebook’s size and complexity, the nature and scope of its
activities, and the sensitivity of covered information. Specifically, the order
requires Facebook to:
* Designate an employee
or employees to coordinate and be responsible for the privacy program;
* Identify
reasonably-foreseeable, material risks, both internal and external, that could
result in the unauthorized collection, use, or disclosure of covered
information and assess the sufficiency of any safeguards in place to control
these risks;
* Design and implement
reasonable controls and procedures to address the risks identified through the
privacy risk assessment and regularly test or monitor the effectiveness of these
controls and procedures;
* Develop and use
reasonable steps to select and retain service providers capable of appropriately
protecting the privacy of covered information they receive from respondent, and
require service providers by contract to implement and maintain appropriate
privacy protections; and
* Evaluate and adjust
its privacy program in light of the results of the testing and monitoring, any
material changes to its operations or business arrangements, or any other
circumstances that it knows or has reason to know may have a material impact on
the effectiveness of its privacy program.
Part V of the proposed
order requires that Facebook obtain within 180 days, and every other year
thereafter for twenty (20) years, an assessment and report from a qualified,
objective, independent third-party professional, certifying, among other
things, that it has in place a privacy program that provides protections that
meet or exceed the protections required by Part IV of the proposed order; and
its privacy controls are operating with sufficient effectiveness to provide
reasonable assurance that the privacy of covered information is protected.
Parts VI through X of the proposed order are reporting and compliance
provisions. Part VI requires that Facebook retain all ‘‘widely disseminated
statements’’ that describe the extent to which respondent maintains and
protects the privacy, security, and confidentiality of any covered information,
along with all materials relied upon in making such statements, for a period of
three (3) years. Part VI further requires Facebook to retain, for a period of
six (6) months from the date received, all consumer complaints directed at
Facebook, or forwarded to Facebook by a third party, that relate to the conduct
prohibited by the proposed order, and any responses to such complaints. Part VI
also requires Facebook to retain for a period of five (5) years from the date
received, documents, prepared by or on behalf of Facebook, that contradict,
qualify, or call into question its compliance with the proposed order. Part VI
additionally requires Facebook to retain for a period of three (3) years, each materially
different document relating to its attempt to obtain the affirmative express
consent of users referred to in Part II, along with documents and information
sufficient to show each user’s consent and documents sufficient to demonstrate,
on an aggregate basis, the number of users for whom each such privacy setting
was in effect at any time Facebook has attempted to obtain such consent.
Finally, Part VI requires that Facebook retain all materials relied upon to
prepare the third-party assessments for a period of three (3) years after the
date that each assessment is prepared.
Part VII requires dissemination of the
order now and in the future to principals, officers, directors, and managers,
and to all current and future employees, agents, and representatives having
supervisory responsibilities relating to the subject matter of the order. Part
VIII ensures notification to the FTC of changes in corporate status. Part IX
mandates that Facebook submit an initial compliance report to the FTC and make
available to the FTC subsequent reports. Part X is a provision ‘‘sunsetting’’
the order after twenty (20) years, with certain exceptions.
The purpose of the
analysis is to aid public comment on the proposed order. It is not intended to
constitute an official interpretation of the complaint or proposed order, or to
modify the proposed order’s terms in any way.
By direction of the Commission.
Donald S. Clark, Secretary. [FR Doc. 2011–31158 Filed 12–2–11; 8:45
am [my yellow highlighting]
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