Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch may have not been completely truthful while under oath when taking questions in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 31, 2017.
Stretch was being grilled by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) about the extent of Facebook’s ability to profile users on the social media website. Stretch told Kennedy that Facebook had done away with the ability of employees to compile or access profiles on individual users. Here’s a transcript of their relevant remarks:
Sen. Kennedy: Do you have a profile on me?
Stretch: Senator, if you’re a Facebook user, we would permit you to be targeted with an advertisement based on your characteristics and your likes along with other people who share similar characteristics and your likes along with other people who share–
Sen. Kennedy: Well, let’s do another one. Let’s suppose your CEO came to you, or not you, somebody who could do it in your company, maybe you could, and said, “I want to know everything we can know about Senator Graham. I want to know the movies he likes. I want to know the bars he goes to. I want to know who his friends are. I want to know what schools he went to.” You could do that, couldn’t you?
Stretch: So, I want to be—it is a very good question—the answer is absolutely not. We have limitations in place on our ability to review the person’s—
Sen. Kennedy: I’m not asking about your rules. I’m saying, you have the ability to do that, don’t you?
Stretch: Again, Senator, the answer is no. We’re not able—
Sen. Kennedy: You can’t put a name to a face to a piece of data? You’re telling me that?
Stretch: So we have designed our systems to prevent exactly that, to protect the privacy of our users.
Sen. Kennedy: I understand, but you can get around that to find that identity, can’t you?
Stretch: No senator, I cannot.
Sen. Kennedy: That’s your testimony under oath?
Stretch: Yes, it is.
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3 comments:
I could have told you his testimony was BULL!!!! From the start... All you have to do is know how the govt people use words and people in high up positions like this guy use words... Once you know that, you know they only speak half truths, and on top of that you would know, that what he admitted to by saying no was, he had no ability to review co-workers profiles without them knowing, without them getting a notification... So in a sense he is right, he can't look at profiles of co-workers but he didn't use the word co-worker in that sentence... That is not what the Senator asked!!!! Hence the half truth...
I come up with bad analogies but here is goes... That is like you going away fro the weekend, telling your 16 year old not to drive the car anywhere, not to even take it out of the driveway... Then when you leave, they take the car to a friends house!!! So when you get home and you ask, did you take the car??? And they reply, no I did not drive the car to Walmart... So in essence, they didn't go to Walmart so they were truthful, but they lied becasue they took the car out in general, and so they gave you half truths...
Its a well known fact certain agencies are given tools by Facebook to snoop on people he is lying flat out.
Of course it was a lie. Do a search for some odd item, let's make something up. A Metric Slinky. FB will start pitching that to you in mere moments. So will other websites.
Kudos to the senator for getting him to repeat his answer after being reminded he's under oath. Problem there is that the society in general places little value in an oath anymore.
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