Sarah

“It’s about a letter Facebook promised the privacy commissioner in Hong Kong, responding to questions about the privacy of Facebook users there: Update: Rob and I spoke with Vaughan and Zhen on the China team yesterday, and they flagged a potential complication arising from the likely course of our negotiations with the Chinese government. In exchange for the ability to establish operations in China, FB will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data—including Hongkongese users’ data. Facebook will grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data—including Hong Kong users’ data—in exchange for getting into China? This can’t be true. It’s one of those crazy ideas the other offices at Facebook are always floating that Marne and I beat back down before they go very far. This proposal, which would surely violate the consent order Facebook agreed to with the Federal Trade Commission in 2012 (and the earlier 2011 agreement with the Irish Data Protection Commission), doubtless is the work of juniors who haven’t subjected it to any scrutiny by the actual decision makers at Facebook. This is so far-fetched I’m sure there’s no danger of it becoming real anytime soon or ever. So I ignore it, even though the next sentence in the email explains exactly how Facebook would accomplish this: New users in China will agree to a modified DUP/SRR reflecting this practice, but we will have to re-TOS Hongkongese users. Translation: new users in China will have a new Data Use Policy they’ll agree to when they sign up for Facebook—a policy that discloses that the Chinese government will have access to their data—and existing users in Hong Kong will be forced to accept a new Terms of Service (the contract Facebook has with its users) that will also contain this stipulation.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism