Facebook/Cambridge Analytica legal primer: 'Breach' of data? No. Trust? Yes

Is that St. Petersburg State University, Florida, or Russia?

These days, could be either.

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It certainly sounds like a breach under the UK’s Data Protection Act which considers unnecessary data processing or retention as a data breach. Sadly the punishments available under UK law are capped at £500k. Facebook appears to also have violated the spirit of the DPA by neither notifying the regulator or their users of the breach when they first became aware of it - two years ago.

However, the European Parliament is now involved and the penalties available to the EU are eye-watering.

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Hardly, did you suffer through “The September that never ended”? :slight_smile:

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How, how, how do people ever think they’ll get away with doing this kind of stuff? Or do they not think they will, and they’re just kind of riding the wave for a while and it’s fun for them until it all comes crashing down? Humans mystify me.

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Nothing at all. Cause and effect does not exist. Do not believe your lying eyes, they deceive you.

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Is that code for constipation?

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Trump would be proud of how we all are arguing over the definition of breach rather than changing our facebook app sharing settings. Let me go surf youtube for some more embarrassing videos and laugh at how people are being manipulated.

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So glad I have never had a Facebook account.

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No, it’s a what we really old farts called the Sept that AOL gave Usenet access to their customers.

Before then, it was a short spike in Sept when colleges that had Internet access got a new batch of students in, that had no
idea about what they’d gotten to connect to, but after a month or two, they learned and things settled down again. The year AOL
joined, it got worse and stayed that way from then on. Green Card Lawyers, the UDP against UUNet, etc.

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I remember the first time data analytics really hit home to me. We went on a tour at the Switch data center in Vegas (we have racks there now) and she walked us by one of the EBay “cages” that was dedicated to only data analytics. It was 25,000sf.

You seem to value distrust. Very well then, I place mine in you.

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But it’s alright, everyone, as Cambridge Analytica has suspended their rat-fucking CEO, Alexander Nix. Oh, but wait - Cambridge Analytica is just a shell company; it doesn’t have any employees or a CEO. Nix is CEO of SCL Elections. From which he hasn’t been suspended. Nor can he be - he’s the majority shareholder; he can only step down (and then step back up again, any time). But he hasn’t. Because even in something straightforwards like a face-saving suspension, CA is pure lying ratfuckery.
And look, Facebook didn’t know what was going on at the time - they only recently found out, and boy, were they mad! Except for, you know, the various journalists who told them what was going on at the time. And whatever Facebook learned when they worked directly with CA. But Facebook is definitely never again going to work with those guys! They’ve suspended working with CA, uh, temporarily. And the academic who passed on the information he was given access to CA? Facebook definitely won’t be handing out information to outsiders like that again. Because now he works directly at Facebook…

So lessons learned! Everyone will be much better at covering their tracks in the future.

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Absolutely perfect summation, @Shuck.

They are so damned sorry . . that they were caught.

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image

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Oh, that “September that never ended”.

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…do they even still MAKE those anymore? Doesn’t seem like the kind of legal specialization that there’d be a lot of call for in the halcyon days of 21st century Amurka. When was the last time anybody busted a trust?

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The King is dead, long live the King.

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The funny (not funny) thing is that Facebook might get punished more than Equifax.