Move Evidence Of Facebook, Instagram Spying On Customers

NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Says Facebook, Instagram Spying On Customers -- Wants To Help Combat Surveillance

By Aaron Kesel

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden wants to fight back against corporate surveillance by Instagram and its parent company Facebook, as well as YouTube, which is owned by Google.

In a tweet rant posted on Twitter, Snowden expressed that both social media giants owned by Mark Zuckerberg were involved in spying on their users, as well as YouTube. Snowden also announced that he has created new accounts on the platforms and that he will explain how the sites spy on users. He added, that he would “explain methods to limit how much they know about you,” if you choose to use them.

These are my new accounts on other platforms. In the weeks ahead, I aim to explain how each of these site spies on you, and methods to limit how much they know about you. If you use them, keep an eye out.https://t.co/kbyQQe95oNhttps://t.co/6Jvkgu9zyPhttps://t.co/VU7jL8qV9r

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 1, 2019

FISA was enacted in 1978 as a response to illegal domestic surveillance operations revealed by two Senate committees in the 1970s, including President Richard Nixon’s use of federal intelligence agencies to monitor his political opponents. It was brought into law “to authorize electronic surveillance to obtain foreign intelligence information.”

The law requires the government to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before setting up an electronic or physical wiretap targeted at foreigners and foreign agents.

Congress amended FISA in 2007 to let the government wiretap communications that either begin or end outside the United States jurisdiction without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approval; in a stronger 2008 overhaul, they further limited that power to non-U.S. persons. The last reauthorization of the Act was in 2012, which set the current expiration date of Dec. 31, 2017.

The FISA law has long been criticized by privacy and civil liberties advocates like the EFF who say the order allows broad, intrusive spying without oversight. The section first gained renewed attention following the 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the agency carried out widespread monitoring of emails and other electronic communications through PRISM, XKeyscore, Upstream and other NSA surveillance programs.

Activist Post covered XKeyscore and PRISM in extensive detail when the revelations happened. XKeyscore, which in 2008 was on 750 servers on 150 sites around the globe, served as the point of entry for most of the information that was collected by the NSA.

NSA agents would easily be able to gather information using XKeyscore’s system the operator could then trawl through billions of emails and online chat sessions, or check sites visited by specific computers by using IP addresses.

It’s worth noting that this author recently wrote an article on Palantir, the company that was accused of providing the technology that enables NSA’s mass surveillance PRISM. In that article, we went into extensive detail about Palantir’s history as a company and the development of software used at Fusion Centers across the U.S.

Ironically, this plan by Edward Snowden to expose social media spying actually comes as Facebook has admitted that it wants to “begin” spying on users of its encrypted chat app WhatsApp using A.I. scanning of messages. Although many have long suspected that Facebook was already involved in this practice. This proves Edward Snowden’s point that Facebook and its subsidiary companies are spying on their users.

Facebook itself was caught data mining its users emails – “harvesting the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts,” as Activist Post reported.

Facebook also got caught for years giving tech giants access to user data as well, so it’s not just Cambridge Analytica and numerous other analytics companies.

The New York Times reported a bombshell in December of last year detailing the secret relationship that Facebook had with the tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Spotify, and Yahoo just to name a few. The Times report was backed by 50 former employees of the company and its partners, as well as documents for the deals.

“For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.” The Times wrote.

Besides the 150 tech companies, Facebook gave 60 device makers themselves — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Samsung — special access to Facebook data, according to another report by The Times. This special access allowed a reporter using a BlackBerry device (old model) to view private details of Facebook users despite their privacy settings, a shocking contention.

To make it clear, Facebook never asked for every specific user’s consent to send over their personal data to these other companies. Facebook claims that it didn’t need user consent since it considered these companies “service providers,” and “integration partners” which were acting in the interests of the social network.

Facebook was embroiled in data scandal after scandal. To refresh the reader’s memory, in 2010 Facebook got caught giving advertisers its users’ names, ages, hometowns, and occupations simply from clicking an ad, Business Insider reported.