FREEDUMB! on the march, reports Paul Constant, at the Stranger:
Last night, I noticed that a whole bunch of my Facebook friends posted a “Privacy Notice” to their walls, or stuccoed it to their timelines, or whatever it is you do on Facebook now. The notice reads in part that “any governmental structure” does “NOT have…permission to utilize…profile information nor any of the content contained herein” and that they are “strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein.” According to the privacy notice, for some reason now that Facebook is a publicly owned company, posting the privacy notice means that the government can’t hold anything you post on your Facebook wall against you in court. This is of course bullshit….
I use the word “smarts” as opposed to “intelligence” for a reason. Some of these defiant boilerplate-flaunters are under the age of 13 25, or otherwise developmentally impaired; others no doubt are genuinely unsophisticated in the ways of governmental survelliance. But I’m sure that many of the proudest are paid-in-full MENSA members and RonPaul-for-President supporters who have no excuse but willful ignorance. I’m infinitely grateful that the Internet-as-we-know-it didn’t exist when I was young and foolish enough to be seen in public doing ridiculous things, but I was never foolish enough to believe something this ridiculous.
Raven
My brother put it on his. I don’t think he has any illusions about what it means but he is none of the things you suggest.
owlbear1
…believe something this ridiculous.
Statistically speaking, at least 80% of them believe they are a clone of the ‘creator of the universe’.
Baud
If only Poland had put up a disclaimer…
Yes, I went there.
JGabriel
Paul Constant via Anne Laurie @ Top:
If you don’t want the gov’t to use information about you, don’t put it on Facebook.
In fact, don’t put it on the internet.
Congress is not going to protect you. Congress is not going to pass a national law saying that cops must have a search warrant to do a name search on Google. The Supreme Court will not make police, or any other governmental/public entity, get a search warrant to look up your Facebook page or LiveJournal blog or AdultFriendFinder profile.
I find it mind-boggling that alleged adults need to be told this, or that they think they can stop the government from using information on the internet that they themselves made publicly available.
Jeepers. We really are a country of jackasses sometimes.
.
Scott S.
No, it’s not stupidity, it’s ignorance. Ignorance is fixable.
Culture of Truth
I know this is a hoax, but it does it have some harmful effect I’m not aware of? Otherwise, people may have posted it for no other reason than “eh, whatevs”
Raven
@Culture of Truth: Oh no! Does that mean this thread is silly?
harlana
what a bunch of self-important assholes
Southern Beale
Funny that none of these people were upset in the least when employers wanted access to prospective employees’ Facebook passwords. But the GUMMINT my God! Fascism!!!!
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
This.
The stupid. It burns.
It’s not ignorance. It’s the inability to fucking THINK.
Once you release any information AT ALL on the internet, it is out of your control. Unless you want to share it, do not post it. No notice will protect you.
My name is Anthony Weiner. I am a total dumbass.
Southern Beale
How To Bypass The New York Times Paywall.
I had no idea it was that easy.
Southern Beale
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes and no. You’re confusing content with just the basic right. I may not post anything deemed “bad” but that still doesn’t mean I want everyone — especially employers or the government — reading it. What gives them the right to look at my vacation photos?
The reality is, Facebook and personal blogs are how people communicate now. You wouldn’t allow an employer or the government to read your personal correspondence in a past era, and you shouldn’t have the expectation that they can view your Facebook wall.
To say that one form of communication should be more private than the other is stupid.
harlana
fucking idiots and one step shy of George Tierney Jr of Greenville, SC.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Hi, Anthony. Nice to meet you. Please don’t send me any pics. ktxbai.
danielx
Hey, if it gives people warm fuzzies to delude themselves, fine. In point of fact, nobody is going to particularly care about those Facebook pics of people doing body shots, aside from potential employers. Pictures of people committing crimes, different story – I’ve read multiple accounts of the police arresting people on the basis of Facebook postings/pictures. Government organizations of whatever description and level (local, state, federal) monitor Facebook, Craigslist, etc all the time, and putting that disclaimer on a Facebook page is not going to stop them from doing that and acting on what they see if they feel like it. To say nothing of the NSA, which monitors everything.
You’d think that people would have figured out by now that whatever you say on the Internet is permanent, to all intents and purposes, and mostly public to boot.
amk
internet privacy – a perfect oxymoron.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
SoBe, sorry, but once it’s out there, it’s out there. If you post anything on Facebook, anything, you’ve lost its privacy.
While I appreciate your position that some courtesy should be anticipated, the reality is there are people out there (anyone who sends spam, for example) who are not courteous. I might be, but you have no way to guarantee that.
When the internet got started, people who had some self restraint, academics and military types, built it with an assumption that people would be responsible and respectful of others. Then AOL happened, and just anyone could access the internet. The result is the bane of the internet: spam. Now EVERY COMMERCIAL ENTITY IN THE UNIVERSE uses email marketing (that is, spam) to shove their crap at you. Likewise, they harvest any email address they can find to sell to others interested in spamming.
The Ferengi are not respectful of others. You are a resource to be exploited. They will do so without the slightest hesitation.
The threat is not from the government, which is why this is so fucking stupid. It’s from people trying to make a buck without the slightest ethical restraint whatsoever. Which means the monsters called corporations, not to mention grifters, fraudsters, and who knows what else.
danielx
Also. Too. Off topic but since it’s an open thread…
I’ll tell ya, when I read about McMegan getting hired by Tina Brown it gave me a warm feeling. There really is no limit on the heights to which a complete tool may rise, as if I needed confirmation of this after reading about the many accomplishments of Douglas Feith…this absolutely restores my faith in the American economy and capitalism in general.
Tina, if I make up enough shit will you hire me too?
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: No offense, but you may not be enough of a complete tool for the job.
Michael Bersin
@Scott S.:
Stupidity may be inherited, but ignorance is a personal choice.
Bean Tooth
And if you ask an undercover cop is he’s a cop, by law he has to tell you.
PeakVT
Random: a great post on the 100th anniversary of the Novarupta (né Katami) eruption in Alaska.
Spaghetti Lee
@Southern Beale:
This. People may be ignorant about how the internet actually works, but I’m personally a bit tired of Facebook-snooping busybodies. I think it’s kind of amazing how the general rule just somehow became “Anything you say or do on the internet can be used against you by anyone who can find it”, and everyone just basically said “Well, OK.”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
From the last link:
I have never unmarked snopes. My parents have started using it.
Kilkee
Th best part of the notice is the very offical-sounding citation to the Uniform Commercial Code (?) at the end, followed by “all rights reserved without prejudice.” Also.
Omnes Omnibus
OT: FWIW, in the cold, hard light of day, I think that the failure of the recall in WI comes down to three things:
1. Dislike of the recall process. Some see it as unfair and think that someone, once elected, is entitled to serve out his term. Others found the process to be too expensive.
2. Guns. There is a sizable faction in Wisconsin who are single issue voters on guns. Probably the most effective adds that were out there were the Sportsmen for Walker signs. It is virtually impossible to convince some of these people that Dems have no interest in taking their guns. Hell, some of them hunt with Dems but still think that their lifelong hunting buddy is the dupe of the Madison liberals who really are going to take the guns this time, just you wait and see well not me they’ll get my gun when they pry it from my ….
3. Liberals, Unions, Madison, and Milwaukee. In rural and northern Wisconsin, there can be a palpable dislike of anything to do with the big cities (sports teams excepted). Farmers can be very anti-union and the anti-liberal campaign of the past 40 years has taken root in many parts of the state.
I tThink it took a combination of the three factors for Walker to win. This is one reason I am not all that worried about Obama’s chances in the state. Factor 1 will not be in the mix. Factors 2 and 3 are always there and are one explanation of why the GOP wins some statewide and national races in the state.
Peregrinus
I filed it away in a note, figuring I would never, ever need to use it – my profile is clean, damn near unfindable, and I knew full well what Facebook’s privacy guidelines were like anyway, hence the reason it’s clean and damn near unfindable – but also figuring it couldn’t hurt.
So yes, I’m one of the “eh, whatevs” people.
cmorenc
Back in the late 1990s, the internet was still widely viewed as a haven of anonymous privacy where no one could tell you were really a dog, and a bastion of libertarian autonomy where the net was an entity which inherently resisted attempts at censorship by routing around it. It was (incorrectly) assumed by most folks that you could prance around the net without leaving any identifiable tracks, so long as you limited your browser cookies.
Wow did that vision turn out to be wrong. The current commercial business model depends on being able to monitor your browsing visits and habits to advertise and sell you stuff, or at least sell that information to third parties interested in doing so. Anything you publish on a social network site…what DID you think their business model is, what their actual product is, except…your personal information? Government now has the computer processing and storage capacity to sift through your email and net activities for…whatever signs of suspicious keywords or patterns they regard as being of potential interest, all to keep us safe from terrorists and rogue nations. Anything identifiable you do post about yourself…is added to the permanent library of information about you, and any promises any websites make about honoring confidentiality are up to the discretion (or lack thereof) of your hosts, many of whom (particularly Facebook) are daily scheming on ways to betray, befuddle, and bamboozle you into making that information public and available.
Brave New World indeed.
gnomedad
The Constitution gives me the right to vent my id on a platform designed to disseminate information, then accuse people of spying on me when they read it.
MattMinus
@Southern Beale:
Umm, you gave them the right to look at it when you posted it on someone else’s publicly viewable website?
If you want your vacation photos protected, put them on your own pw protected server.Or find a service that guarantees privacy in it’s ToS.
Generally, Americans have a very expansive, and equally cloudy, view of their rights.
Jay in Oregon
@Spaghetti Lee:
Facebook has a history of abusing their users’ privacy by making your default privacy settings as open possible, making it difficult to know exactly who is allowed to see the things you post, and even “helpfully” resetting your privacy preferences on more than one occasion.
There’s also the matter of third-party apps and games being allowed to have access to your friends’ list and post on your behalf (usually things like “So-and-so found a rare Purple Dinglewhacker in Fantasy Zoo!” but I await the day that someone Trojans a FB game to robopost spam…)
But the fact is, if you choose to make photos or chain emails or “notices to the government” posted on Facebook public… that means anyone on Facebook can see them. That’s the POINT of posting things publically.
Original Lee
I must have had a slightly different version of this warning, because it wasn’t just against the government, it was against anybody not on my friends list. So as a “whatevs” kind of thing, I posted it, with a link to the Snopes piece on it. I basically wanted some of my low-information family who are thinking of starting their own businesses because they want to control their own destinies to think twice before doing a quick copy-and-paste of stuff on my wall for purposes of advertising their businesses. It won’t stop my employer from scoping out my wall if they really want to, which is why I mostly have Farmville posts on there.
rea
The reality is, Facebook and personal blogs are how people communicate now. You wouldn’t allow an employer or the government to read your personal correspondence in a past era, and you shouldn’t have the expectation that they can view your Facebook wall.
The reality is, you have no legitimate expectation of privacy in something that is visible to the whole world. You wouldn’t do a strip-tease on the field at half time at the Superbowl, and then complain because people noticed (how rude of them!), would you?
Amir Khalid
It is because of privacy concerns that I don’t believe in putting private personal in formation on the intertoobs in any form, be it cloud storage of personal data, mentioning private personal information in my emails or posting it in social media. Once you put it out there, it’s not yours anymore; it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s. He can aggregate with the rest of the planet’s personal info and sell it to advertisers, he can turn it over to the secret police in your country if they ask nicely enough (or demand fiercely enough), his people can bungle your privacy settings and leave it open for everyone to see. if you’re not comfortable with all that, then for FSM’s sake don’t be on social media.
@Southern Beale:
I’ve been doing this trick almost since the beginning of the current firewall. I don’t know why the New York Times still hasn’t bothered to lock this back door. Either it’s too expensive to have the firewall redone, or NYT is actually okay with people sneaking in.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Not on my Facebook page, interestingly enough, and I have friends of all political persuasions. The folks who posted this nonsense were comprised 100% of the Kossack/firebagger crew.
Which I found quite interesting.
catclub
@JGabriel: “Congress is not going to protect you. ”
Interesting though, in Europe there are pretty strong privacy protections on the internet, at least compared to USA.
I wonder how many of those people would modify their facebook posting to: “I want the same protections as they have in Europe.”
catclub
@Southern Beale: “The reality is, Facebook and personal blogs are how people communicate now. You wouldn’t allow an employer or the government to read your personal correspondence in a past era”
When PGP came out, they made the point that any plaintext email is like a a postcard in the mail. Encryption was simply putting an envelope on your email so that the various random eyes on the internet ( in the post office) would not read it. It was not because you had anything to hide, in either case.
Facebook is more like a billboard than a manila envelope.
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
Actually, a lot of the tech savvy people who consider themselves to be libertarian already block whatever they don’t want disclosed on Facebook or hack the shit out of it.
But you can count among the dumb those who mock these people, but who don’t understand that unless you do some pretty sophisticated shit, there is no such thing as privacy on the Internets.
And there are some people who are very tech savvy who fundamentally belief that there should not be any such thing as privacy on the Internet (e.g., Columbia professor Jeff Jarvis and others).
If you think it’s just a Facebook thing, or a government vs people thing, you are missing the larger point.
Another Halocene Human
@Spaghetti Lee: Agreed. Although I have an issue with people who make hurtful statements and then double down. They deserve to be shamed. And people who brag about criminal behavior online are idiots.
The difference with the internet is that unlike real life where you can bully the other side with he said/she said doubt-sowing and revise history endlessly, the internet never forgets.
Well, not never, but when you get caught, you get caught.
Another Halocene Human
@cmorenc: This is why we need privacy laws. Ironically, we have some holds on our governments (which have been engineered around, thank you Ashcroft & friends) but virtually none on private entities, except for HIPAA.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: But then you couldn’t drink up that self-righteous cocktail of idiocy, ignorance and willful delusion.
mclaren
The solution, as president Eisenhower concluded, is obviously to bring the bottom 50% of the population up so that they are no longer below average.
:-)
Tommy D
Check this: use Twitter to log in to comment at the local newspaper in Los Angeles and you give the LATimes permission to “read Tweets… see who you follow and follow new people… update your profile… post Tweets for you.” Seriously. If you log in to the LATimes using Google you give the newspaper free access to your contact list. When I brought this up with the newspaper they blamed Google but Google tells me they do no such thing, that the newspaper or their contractor arranges the permissions.
Scott Alloway
Ah, I posted it to be the usual obnoxious ne’er do well that I am. I know better but WTF. Stick a thumb in their (whomever they may be) eyes. They already have a file on me from the sixties. My fired Christine Couch told me one of my pictures was very nice. Those old anti-war protests …