Cyber Scene #20 - Facebook Faceoff

Cyber Scene #20

Facebook Faceoff

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica and Russian election interference cyber disasters, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was subjected to a 10-hour doubleheader--amazingly his first testimony ever before Congress--under scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary and Commerce, Science and Transport Committees on 10 April and the House Commerce Committee on 11 April. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IO), Judiciary, and Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Commerce jointly chaired the hearing and allotted 5 minutes to each of their committee members, in descending rank order. Despite dismissing his hoodies for a suit, Mr. Zuckerberg was clearly a novice before Congress. The Members, well-practiced in the art of interrogation, began with the 43 Senators launching specific questions and expecting specific answers. Mr. Zuckerberg resorted quite frequently to the old "I'll get back to you on that" response. (These will be written responses to QFR's--Questions for the Record.) The only Senator who seemed to go easy on him was, surprisingly, Orrin Hatch (R-UT) who seemed to barely wait for a response to a soft-ball question before asking the next--a shadow of his old piercing self when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. The other Senators largely poked and probed, often in an edgy manner, while two pressed Mr. Zuckerberg for an answer as to why the 87 million users were not notified of the data issue in 2015, and another noted that Facebook had the talent, but perhaps not the will to fix the problems--this following several repeated "We are working on it" responses from Mr. Zuckerberg. The most pointed question came from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): "Mr. Zuckerberg would you be comfortable sharing what hotel you stayed at last night?" ("No") "and who you texted yesterday?" ("No"). 87 million of us likely feel the same. Since the Members have only 5 min. each, when Mr. Zuckerberg detoured in his responses, they did preempt him. He rarely responded with a yes or no although he was asked to do so.

The Heat Rises

The House Energy and Commerce Committee the following day was more aggressive. The House Members in fact interrupted Mr. Zuckerberg frequently (N.B. This is not unusual but only the interrogator is allowed to interrupt; it is not reciprocal.) Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) chaired, noting that the intent of the House testimony is two-fold: to examine Facebook's breach of trust and to look at how the tech industry may need to be regulated. He noted that although Facebook has grown, he is less certain that it has matured. The issue of regulation, which Chair Walden noted has up to the present been absent from Facebook, was surfaced by both sides of Congress.

Although Mr. Zuckerberg presented the generally same opening statement as was done before the Senate, the House approach to him was markedly different. While Chair Walden was largely balanced, Ranking Member Frank Pallome (D-NJ) cited legislation he had worked on in 2017 (not passed "due to Republicans") and vowed to introduce more regulation. He apologized for his harshness to the Chair, who thanked him, "I think" for his comments, moving through humor away from partisan politics. Chair Walden, however, in his own questioning, zeroed in on the "selling of data" and privacy protection.

All Together Now

The subject matter is, if nothing else, a forcing factor for bipartisanship.

This level of inquiry is atypical. Sen. Hatch, who at age 84 has participated in untold hearings, stated that this was "the most intense public scrutiny I've seen for a tech-related hearing since the Microsoft hearing." In fact, this NYT article compares these two tech giants and notes that Mr. Zuckerberg has learned from Bill Gates' mistakes by adopting a more conciliatory manner. However, Mr. Zuckerberg rarely answered direct questions directly, citing complexity. When questioned about what kind of company Facebook is, as it has evolved beyond imagination since its inception, he bypassed the question, sidestepping what kind of regulation he might suggest.

But regulation is coming. Both the Senate and House, on both sides of the aisle, are increasingly working together to introduce new privacy protection laws, "Honest Ads" about which Cyber Scene wrote, and easy means for Facebook users to "opt out." Mr. Zuckerberg noted that the terms and conditions for data sharing on Facebook are spelled out. However, Members underscored the fact that reams of pages of small print caveats are not user friendly.

Mr. Zuckerberg has his work cut out for him. His QFRs due to both committees are extensive but will be posted on the respective committee webpages when they are completed. The April 11 NYT "Mr. Zuckerberg Has a Lot of Homework to Do”: enumerates 23 major sweeping issues such as "Support for Legislation," "Russian Misinformation," "Improper Data Transfer," etc.

The call for regulation has assuredly spilled outside the august halls of Congress. Tech journalist David Kirkpatrick, writing this time for Time Magazine's Technology section which he harkens back to Mr. Zuckerberg's notion of Facebook's mission, not considering it as a business, but a money-maker it is now that selling ads is part of this mission. Per the article, Facebook is expected to make $21 billion in 2018. It is user data that is the cash cow, as repeatedly surfaced in testimony. Mr. Zuckerberg himself noted that "Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company." Mr. Kirkpatrick posits that Facebook will try to regain the trust of the world and be willing to sacrifice the sale of personal data.

Zeke Faux explores this for Bloomberg Business Week in "How Facebook helps shady advertisers pollute the internet," quoting the Cambridge Analytica candid camera victim. For the graphic readers, he diagrams how affiliates profit from Facebook. Meanwhile, as the "business" burgeoned, into revenue "billions" (THAT is real money!) few engineers were hired to catch people with bad intentions.

Good News?

Things will change. Bipartisan legislation will "encourage" Facebook to take seriously the protection of data. Terms of usage will become usable and humanly intelligible. Scams and scum will be weeded out of all of this with prodding and enforcement. Meanwhile, on the job front, Nellie Bowles in the 12 April NYT entitled "After Cambridge Analytica, Privacy Experts Get to Say ‘I Told You So’" writes that as the great "Facebook Sequoia" is felled, the community of privacy researchers and developers is due for a boom.

Coming to a Computer Near You!

On 16 April, David Kirkpatrick writing with Ron Nixon for the NYTimes announces that the US and UK issued a "first-of-its-kind" warning about Russian cyber attacks, not just on governmental or industrial targets, but also on individual homes and offices. One of their sources is the former director of GCHQ, the UK's counterpart to NSA. But there will be more jobs out there for you privacy protectors!