Paranoid, miserable Facebook employees have started using burner phones to complain about the company to each other and the press

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/07/paranoia-will-destroy-ya.html

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It’s always an encouraging sign about a company’s culture when the staff are taking their internal communication cues from Stringer Bell or Saul Goodman.

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better-call-saul-jimmy-okay

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skinny-pete

Please Like my page.

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It’s ironic that to avoid the excesses of our modern age the best thing you can do is fall back on old fashioned methods like those used during the cold war. Works even better because who still knows how to intercept a dead drop these days?

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If only we’d had burner phones when I worked at Perot Systems…

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The Bush-43 Administration infamously relied heavily on handwritten memos which were shredded after reading to avoid creating any digital records of their internal communications. The current administration might be well advised to do the same, except that the most damning communications are all published in real time on Twitter.

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Trump has a similar technology: crumple and throw on floor. Then nobody could possibly read the note.

I did not make this up.

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Actually, he’s known for tearing every document into confetti, which happens to be against the law, of course.

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image

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Anyone who thinks changing CEOs is the solution is part of the problem. These are people, bear in mind, who are choosing to still work for facebook.

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For the first few months of his administration, people were hired to scotch tape his trash back together.

Politico link

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It’s darkly amusing that he’s too incompetent to properly dispose of evidence.

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Yeah, no doubt. I bet FB staff are starting to feel a bit like the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar these days.

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Liked for the Matrix reference.

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I’m curious about this. It’s hard to do a verbal convo in an open office, burner phone aside. if they’re texting what if someone pulls a paula jones and leaks the convo?

Personally I don’t use a burner but discussing sensitive stuff I use Signal, and set up disappearing messages. Sure someone could take a screen or whatever, but I’m pretty mindful of what I say over text and I think it would backfire harder on someone leaking my chats than anything someone would have in them.

Anyways that’s a long roundabout way of saying: why are they using burners? Signal would do the job just fine.

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Given that they work for Facebook, my guess is that they assume all kinds of traffic is being monitored on the company premises. This is a company whose technical capacity for monitoring people’s activities and relationships from a myriad of different angles is matched only by its complete lack of respect for its customers’ (and presumably employees’) privacy.

Which is to say, those burner phones also likely have Signal [ETA: the app/protocol] and VPN gateways installed on them.

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I’m going to guess that employees that work on FB products meant to invade peoples privacy have valid reasons to not bad mouth FB on devices with FB products installed.

Personally, when I have been in situations where I felt the need to rant to someone about work issues I only do it in person while off the company campus.

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I’m curious how a “signal gateway” works? If it’s my personal phone going to someone else’s personal phone. I’d assume even absent a vpn you can’t just MITM if I understand the signal protocol correctly

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