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Facebook pays contractors to read your ‘encrypted’ WhatsApp messages, shares info with prosecutors

RT | September 8, 2021

When Facebook acquired WhatsApp, it promised to respect the privacy of its users. That hasn’t been the case, and the firm now employs thousands of staff to read supposedly-encrypted chats.

Social media behemoth Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg promising to keep the stripped-down, ad-free messaging app “exactly the same.” End-to-end encryption was introduced in 2016, with the app itself offering on-screen assurances to users that “No one outside of this chat” can read their communications, and Zuckerberg himself telling the US Senate in 2018 that “We don’t see any of the content in WhatsApp.”

Allegedly, none of that is true. More than a thousand content moderators are employed at shared Facebook/WhatsApp offices in Austin, Texas, Dublin, Ireland, and Singapore to sift through messages reported by users and flagged by artificial intelligence.

Based on internal documents, interviews with moderators, and a whistleblower complaint, ProPublica explained how the system works in a lengthy investigation published on Wednesday.

When a user presses ‘report’ on a message, the message itself plus the preceding four messages in the chat are unscrambled and sent to one of these moderators for review. Moderators also examine messages picked out by artificial intelligence, based on unencrypted data collected by WhatsApp. The data collected by the app is extensive, and includes:

“The names and profile images of a user’s WhatsApp groups as well as their phone number, profile photo, status message, phone battery level, language and time zone, unique mobile phone ID and IP address, wireless signal strength and phone operating system, as a list of their electronic devices, any related Facebook and Instagram accounts, the last time they used the app and any previous history of violations.”

These moderators are not employees of WhatsApp or Facebook. Instead they are contractors working for $16.50 per hour, hired by consulting firm Accenture. These workers are bound to silence by nondisclosure agreements, and their hiring went unannounced by Facebook.

Likewise, the actions of these moderators go unreported. Facebook releases quarterly ‘transparency reports’ for its own platform and subsidiary Instagram, detailing how many accounts were banned or otherwise disciplined and for what, but does not do this for WhatsApp.

Many of the messages reviewed by moderators are flagged in error. WhatsApp has two billion users who speak hundreds of languages, and staff sometimes have to rely on Facebook’s translation tool to analyze flagged messages, which one employee said is “horrible” at decoding local slang and political content.

Aside from false reports submitted as pranks, moderators have to analyze perfectly innocent content highlighted by AI. Companies using the app to sell straight-edge razors have been flagged as selling weapons. Parents photographing their bathing children have been flagged for child porn, and lingerie companies have been flagged as forbidden “sexually oriented business[es].”

“A lot of the time, the artificial intelligence is not that intelligent,” one moderator told ProPublica.

WhatsApp acknowledged that it analyzes messages to weed out “the worst” abusers, but doesn’t call this “content moderation.”

“We actually don’t typically use the term for WhatsApp,” Director of Communications Carl Woog told ProPublica. “The decisions we make around how we build our app are focused around the privacy of our users, maintaining a high degree of reliability and preventing abuse.”

Facebook has lied about its commitment to user privacy before. Two years after Zuckerberg assured users that his company would keep WhatsApp ad-free and let the company “operate completely autonomously,” he revealed plans to link WhatsApp accounts to Facebook for the purposes of ad targeting. This move earned Facebook a $122 million fine from EU antitrust regulators, who said the Facebook CEO had “intentionally or negligently” deceived them.

Despite Zuckerberg’s assurances of privacy, WhatsApp shares more user metadata (data that can identify a user without the content of their messages) with law enforcement than rival messaging services from Apple and Signal. This metadata, which can reveal phone numbers, location, timestamps, and more, is valuable to law enforcement and intelligence agencies, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks revealing a large-scale operation by the agency to capture the metadata of millions of Americans’ communications.

“Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life,” former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker once said. “If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.”

Across all of its platforms, Facebook complies with 95% of requests for metadata. While it is unknown what law enforcement has been able to glean from WhatsApp metadata, the US Department of Justice has requested this metadata more than a dozen times since 2017 and likely far more frequently, given many of these requests are not made public. WhatsApp metadata has been used to jail Natalie Edwards, a former Treasury Department official who leaked confidential banking reports about suspicious transactions to BuzzFeed News.

Inside WhatsApp, the company stresses the importance of promoting itself as a privacy-focused operation. A marketing document obtained by ProPublica states that WhatsApp should portray itself as “courageous,” taking a “strong, public stance that is not financially motivated on things we care about,” such as defending encryption and user privacy.

However, another line in the same document states that “future business objectives” mean that “while privacy will remain important, we must accommodate for future innovations.”

September 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

India threatens to jail Facebook, WhatsApp & Twitter staff over refusal to wipe data that ‘undermines national security’

RT | March 6, 2021

Indian authorities have reportedly given an ultimatum to US social media platforms, threatening jail time for their local employees if the companies continue to ignore official takedown requests against “damaging” information.

Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have each received written notices warning their employees could face arrest should the requests be ignored, in some cases citing specific India-based staff by name, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing “people familiar” with the matter.

The reported warnings come as New Delhi faces down Big Tech platforms amid a wave of heated protests over controversial agricultural bills, which have drawn thousands of farmers to rally in the Indian capital, at times descending to violent clashes with security forces. While the government has long wrangled with the social media platforms, the threats of arrest mark a sharp escalation of pressure.

In early February, Twitter blocked access to a litany of accounts for Indian users, among them lawmakers, news outlets, journalists and political commentators. Though the platform quietly reversed those bans some 12 hours later, AFP reporter Bhuvan Bagga, citing a government source, noted the move followed an order from India’s IT ministry to block hundreds of accounts it accused of spreading “factually incorrect” claims and “inflaming passions” around the farmer protests.

The ministry responded harshly to Twitter’s sudden reversal, threatening “penal action” should it continue to rebuff the government’s takedown requests. The warning appears to have worked, as Twitter reinstituted many of the bans within days, though refused to re-block “accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians.”

A Facebook spokesperson told the Journal the platform complies with takedown and data requests “in accordance with applicable law and our terms of service,” while its subsidiary WhatsApp said it abides by the orders only when they are consistent with “internationally recognized standards” of human rights and due process. Twitter, meanwhile, was more defiant, insisting it would “continue to advocate for the fundamental principles of the Open Internet.”

As Big Tech firms seek their way into India’s massive market, the country recently imposed new rules to govern social media platforms, requiring them to appoint India-based representatives to coordinate with law enforcement and government agencies. The restrictions can also compel sites to scrub content the state believes to undermine national security or public order. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the minister of electronics and information technology, argued the rules would force the companies to be “more responsible and more accountable,” after previously blasting sites like Twitter for “double standards” in enforcing their policies.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook CEO summoning sheer lies: Iran official

Press TV – May 28, 2014

An Iranian judicial official has categorically denied reports that Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned over complaints of privacy violation.

“News published by certain virtual sites suggesting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned by [the Iranian ]Justice Ministry’s Fars [Province] Branch is rejected altogether,” said Public Prosecutor of the provincial capital of Shiraz Ali Alqasimehr on Tuesday.

Of course, certain individuals have filed complaints against Facebook for publishing certain images and videos, he further told IRNA.

He also dismissed reports that Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram services have been filtered in Shiraz, saying, “We have had no filtering in that regard so far.”

There are also complaints against the two websites for alleged internet fraud and the release of obscene photos, said the public prosecutor.

Certain media reports on Tuesday claimed that an Iranian judge had summoned the Facebook chief executive to answer allegations that his company’s apps had breached people’s privacy.

May 28, 2014 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment