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A UK Commons Committee Chair Says He's Seen Evidence a Facebook Engineer Flagged Russian Entities Pulling Billions of Points of Data Every Day in 2014 (buzzfeed.com) 127

Posted by msmash from the meanwhile-in-bad-Facebook-PR-today dept.
A UK Commons committee chair claims a seized trove of Facebook documents reveals that a company engineer flagged Russian "entities" were using a Pinterest API to pull billions of points of Facebook data every day in 2014. From a report: Damian Collins appeared to use parliamentary privilege to outline the detail from the sealed documents, during a fiery session of questioning of Facebook executive Richard Allan before the first sitting of the "international grand committee on disinformation and fake news" in London on Tuesday. The most contentious moment came during an exchange between Allan and the chair of the committee over what's alleged to be in a set of documents that are subject to the protective order of a California court.

During the questioning of Allan on Tuesday, Collins said the emails would not be released. But he did outline details from an alleged incident which, if true, would raise further questions about how Facebook responded to learning about data being taken from the platform. "An engineer at Facebook notified the company in October 2014 that entities with Russian IP addresses have been using a Pinterest API key to pull over 3 billion data points a day," Collins said. "Now was that reported to any external body at the time?" Allan dismissed the claim by focusing on the source of the information, Six4Three, labelling it a "hostile litigant." Further reading: Facebook Exec Admits Zuckerberg Not Appearing Before UK Parliament Doesn't Look Great (CNBC); 'The Problem is Facebook,' Lawmakers From Nine Countries Tell Zuckerberg's Accountability Stand-in (TechCrunch); and "When You Get That Wealthy, You Start to Buy Your Own Bullshit": The Miseducation of Sheryl Sandberg (VanityFair).
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A UK Commons Committee Chair Says He's Seen Evidence a Facebook Engineer Flagged Russian Entities Pulling Billions of Points of More

A UK Commons Committee Chair Says He's Seen Evidence a Facebook Engineer Flagged Russian Entities Pulling Billions of Points of

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  • So what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The only way to really stop Russia from using social media for their state interests is to crack down on free speech. We don't need more censorship, even when it appears to further our interests. People need to stop being so naive and start to understand that the content they consume is biased and sometimes outright false. If people were more skeptical of propaganda and could start to think for themselves, this wouldn't be an issue. Until then, society will be vulnerable to manipulation by malicious actors.

    • If Russia wants to plaster its name all over Facebook ads disturbingly similar to Moscow Donald's talking points that's one thing.

      That's free speech. It's treason that Donald Trump colluded with Russian influence operations, but still it's free speech.

      What Russia is doing is writing comments pretending to be American citizens, and intentionally downing out debate on our social networks with bot generated attacks.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        Oh will you fuck off on bashing President Trump already?

        . JUST . FUCK . RIGHT . OFF .

        Op has valid points that have Zero to do with your BS collusion agenda.

        Here's what OP wrote again, since it's obviously not what you want people to read:

        The only way to really stop Russia from using social media for their state interests is to crack down on free speech. We don't need more censorship, even when it appears to further our interests. People need to stop being so naive and start to understand that the content they consume is biased and sometimes outright false. If people were more skeptical of propaganda and could start to think for themselves, this wouldn't be an issue. Until then, society will be vulnerable to manipulation by malicious actors. No, Facebook cannot be trusted, and that should also be readily apparent to anyone with a clue.

        Let's support free speech and focus on educating our citizens about propaganda and trolling by malicious actors rather than censoring free speech. Slashdot used to be a bastion of free speech, but it seems like that's being thrown out the window. Deletion of comments once amounted to sacrilege here, yet many threads have disappeared in recent days and have obviously been deleted. That's a damn shame.

        Perhaps, instead of worrying about the Russian trolls, content distributors should change their AI-curated news feeds. Instead of showing users they will agree with to maximize "engagement", show content that represents a variety of views. If users aren't in echo chambers and get to see a variety of views, they will probably be less susceptible to manipulation by propaganda.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Dip stick, from the buzzfeed (just eww, really, really fucking eww) article, "company engineer flagged Russian "entities" were using a Pinterest API to pull billions of points of Facebook data every day in 2014", they were data mining, not putting up information. Facebook obviously did not want to mention it because a bunch of others were also data mining the platform.

        Pulling down data is not putting it up and thirteen Russian trolls getting people to click on links to get them to see a for profit ad, from

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      People need to stop being so naive and start to understand that the content they consume is biased and sometimes outright false. If people were more skeptical of propaganda and could start to think for themselves, this wouldn't be an issue. Until then, society will be vulnerable to manipulation by malicious actors.

      Exactly... people as a whole are obviously not going to wise up to this game any time soon, and corporations will continue to walk over them, gathering and reselling their intimate details until it's too late for people to revoke that from them. We need regulation to prevent this. But preventing foreign state actors from spewing limitless propaganda on global platforms is not censorship, it's basic moderation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        Personally I see this as a kind of Darwin thing. If they are going to be like that they deserve what they get.

    • Or unplug their internet.

      • Tempting, but that would just contribute to destroying the Internet as a whole. Like we don't have enough problems to worry about...Comcast...*shudders*

    • Britain's propaganda machine:

      https://www.wired.co.uk/articl... [wired.co.uk]

      "a UK-based psyop to create a "large-scale information secret service" in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election"

      https://www.zerohedge.com/news... [zerohedge.com]

  • Excitement (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

    This Red Scare 2.0 is lit!

    The unfortunate thing is, with all of the Kabuki theater going on about Russia, everyone is totally ignoring China pretty much...

    I mean, if you want presidential ties to another country to examine there is all kinds of fun stuff on China, while there is hardly anything to do with Russia and most U.S. actions have been working directly against Russia so far (can you say hundreds of dead Russia mercenaries in Syria...).

    Yes Russia got ahold of a lot of data but to no effect. What Rus

    • Re:Excitement (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alwin Barni ( 5107629 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @03:41PM (#57710596)

      This Red Scare 2.0 is lit!

      The unfortunate thing is, with all of the Kabuki theater going on about Russia, everyone is totally ignoring China pretty much...

      Diverting discussion away from the topic? We're not talking about China but about Russia's meddling here. Will there be any other leak, we'll discuss it.

      ... stuff on China, ... hardly anything to do with Russia ...

      OK, still diverting, kind of start to have suspicions about the source of this post.

      The people that think they are stoking anything are delusional.

      Quite to contrary, the people claiming Russia' meddling have evidence of this happening, seems like not only during 2016 elections, but also during UK brexit referendum.

      • Diverting discussion away from the topic?

        It's still the same topic - meddling in U.S. Affairs, in fact the main slant of the supposed meddling is Russia having some kind of ties to Trump - but in fact as I said if you want to look for meddling, and presidential ties, there is a lot more evidence you should consider China...

        Look at both if you want, I just think Russia is in fact the one meant to drive discussion away from the topic - after all it worked on you so strongly that if any mention is made of Chi

        • It's still the same topic - meddling in U.S. Affairs ...

          Except that this article is about Russia's meddling, not meddling in general.

          ... the main slant of the supposed meddling is Russia having some kind of ties to Trump ...

          If you say so, however the article is about UK and 2014.

          ...but in fact as I said if you want to look for meddling ... you should consider China ...

          That is not what you said, you said that people talking about Russia's meddling are "delusional" and that meddling has "hardly anything to do with Russia"

          Look at both if you want, ...

          Not only will but am. Will you?

          ... Russia is in fact the one meant to drive discussion away from the topic ...

          How twisted reality we're living? Kindly asking to read the article being discussed first.
          China's espionage is being discussed in detail ... when the article being discussed is about it!

          • That is not what you said, you said that people talking about Russia's meddling are "delusional"

            Here's how you recognize the foreign spies kids -they have a poor grasp of the subtleties of English.

            If he was a native English speaker, he would have read what I actually wrote, which is that Russia did try to meddle, it just had no effect because the internal strife was already so great (the throwing a lit match into a raging bonfire line).

            I'll let you have the last word Mr Meddling Agent, as I have no time for

      • Re:Excitement (Score:4, Insightful)

        by grep -v '.*' * ( 780312 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @08:10PM (#57712128)

        people claiming Russia' meddling have evidence of this happening

        I'm sorry, not to downplay this (and I'm in the US), but: we've supposedly occasionally been interfering with other (smaller usually) government elections for decades, and probably attempted for our larger enemies. WHY ON EARTH would we think we'd be completely immune from this to start with?

        Now there are different levels of tampering: you directly change the vote count by ballot tampering (changing / adding ballots), losing boxes, changing computer collection results, all that.

        Or get people to change their votes: pay them directly, misleading news articles, direct / deflect attention to / from something real OR imagined (how does it go: hide a lie in the midths of a truth), or somehow form a popular movement that does what you want.

        So there's hacking the election mechanics proper, where the vote count doesn't match what was truly "done", vs hack the people to vote the way you want. We've been doing it to ourselves for years (vote my way because ... KIDS!), why would you think foreign entities would be any different?

        Evidence of interference? I'd be shocked if you COULDN'T find any interference. Now like antibodies it needs to be defended against and unless we're going retroactive it needs to be fixed going forward, but ... I am shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find that gambling is going on in here!

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          You're forgetting a few options. There's always outright overthrowing an elected government and installing a puppet dictator.

        • You're right, there has always been interference. However, this sort is a new phenomenon.

          Once upon a time, to influence another country, you dropped leaflets from aeroplanes, you had agents put up posters or you transmitted radio stations from outside the country. All these mechanisms fail in so much as the only people influenced are the ones that were on your side already (or maybe moderately on your side but somewhat undecided).

          Then you put agents into that country and had them work at Universities and wh

          • "but now it's much harder to ignore, is much more effective and hits up a very large proportion of your population, regardless of their previous views on any given subject."

            Sure targeted social media advertising has influence but is it really "harder to ignore" than things like what the US is trying to do in Syria or Iran.

      • The only problem I have with ANY of this is that this shit has been going since the dawn of history. Why is it suddenly a big deal now? Why is there no discussion of what the CIA is doing to the Russians, Chinese, Germans, etc? The United States is meddling just as much, if not more, than the other countries. Hell, even Israel tries to influence our elections and they receive lots of aid/support from America.

        So why is Russia fucking about with a commercial service such a big interest? If they were effective

    • This Red Scare 2.0 is lit!

      Clearly, you don't know what you are talking about: "A "Red Scare" is promotion of widespread fear by a society or state about a potential rise of communism, anarchism, or radical leftism."

      Nobody thinks they are communists, anarchists, or radical leftists. We do however think Russia is meddling in foreign elections.

      The unfortunate thing is, with all of the Kabuki theater going on about Russia, everyone is totally ignoring China pretty much...

      I'm sorry but hard facts a Kabuki theater does not make.

      I mean, if you want presidential ties to another country to examine there is all kinds of...

      We are perfectly capable of doing multiple things at once. Whataboutism doesn't change what Russia has done, it just makes you pro-Russia

    • Are you saying there is evidence of China meddling that is being ignored? Give me a source.

      Whether or not Russia succeeded with their meddling isn't the point. The point is they TRIED. and that is a Bad Thing (tm)
      We have lots of evidence of this. Thats not Kabuki theater.

      • Are you saying there is evidence of China meddling that is being ignored? Give me a source.

        I'm so sorry about that accident that chopped off your legs and arms so you don't even have a stump left to access Google with!

        Otherwise you would have been about to find this [voanews.com] in about two seconds.

        My sympathies go with you, Torso-Boy. If you need any more info please have your caretaker look it up, that's what they are paid for - I have a job and can't just paste URL's for you all day long.

  • "Facebook Exec Admits Zuckerberg Not Appearing Before UK Parliament Doesn't Look Great (CNBC);"
    The link is broken

  • If you want to get away with cybercrime in 2018, VPN out through Russia and nobody will want to dig any deeper.
  • Kill it. Kill it with fire. From space.
  • So they knew and didn't care for many years. It is clear to me that Facebook deserves corporate death penalty. Break it up and sell off assets.
  • here is how the business execs heard the conversation Engineer: A customer is using the services we sold to them. Exec: Great!

  • Public API (Score:3)

    by Amigori ( 177092 ) <{eefranklin718} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @03:15PM (#57710364) Homepage
    Is the Pinterest API available publicly? If so, this is not a story.

    If anything, it may be a violation of the TOS and FB would have otherwise been paid for commercial access to the same data.

    But you know... The $bad_guys did it!! In this case, $bad_guys = Russians.

    • Re:Public API (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:23PM (#57711418) Homepage Journal

      As we know from the Cambridge Analystica debacle Facebook APIs are not very secure. CA was able to pull a lot of data they were not supposed to have access to, and even when Facebook discovered it they didn't cut it off immediately.

      It looks like the same thing happened here. They knew and did fuck all about it because they were getting paid. In Europe this is a massive violation of privacy laws at the very least, and possible other crimes due to the fact that the breech allowed our enemies to screw with our democracy.

  • If us political PAC's right or left do this, that is ok, but not Russia? I think some people think the interweb belongs only to the U.S.A. I bet there was at least one British and one Chinese organization that tried to influence the election, probably an Israeli 1 as well. I think you kind of need to expect that.

    Groups ( or individuals) who can pretend to be 100's of people is a bit disquieting, but I'm not sure how to solve that problem. Maybe people should learn to research facts and be realistic about

  • An engineer at Facebook notified the company in October

    People (and companies!) tend to treat companies as cohesive wholes, instead of say ants with a queen or cells and nerves in a human going to the unconscious then conscious brain. There's a lag-time between something sensed and transmitted to "management", and even then it might not be "upper management" if something along the way NAKed the transfer. And even if it makes it, it still might be accidentally corrupted along the way. (Double-takes, anyone?)

    There is a joke I cannot find: An engineer look at

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by twosat ( 1414337 )

      In the Beginning was The Plan

      And then came the Assumptions

      And the Assumptions were without form

      And the Plan was completely without substance

      And the darkness was upon the face of the Workers

      And the Workers spoke amongst themselves, saying

      "It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh."

      And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth,

      "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."

      And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them,

      "It is a container of excrement and it is very strong,

  • The question that no one in the comments here is asking, and the one we need the answer to before asking any others, is, "And how many data points were typically pulled by other entities every day in 2014? Was there anything unusual about an entity pulling that much data?"

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