Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangerlibrary | Hacker News Reader

Neat.

Obviously apples and oranges, but between this and Facebook's Tor Hidden Service we're starting to see adoption of real privacy tools among major companies.

View on HN

> facebook

> privacy

I don't think that Facebook has responded to many demands for data from the Syrian/Burmese/Saudi governments. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Probably not from any foreign countries but I would bet 110% that they are an open book to the US government.

A problem that is not exclusive to Facebook. In fact, all U.S. companies are open books to U.S. Government employees wielding the right documents.

My point was that a Tor Hidden Service provides anonymity to users in countries whose _links_ to Facebook's servers are policed.

Tor also provides censorship-resistance, through bridges. It is one of the only consistent ways to access the open internet from Iran or China.

How about the United States / China / Russia / Great Britain?

Oh they're on the right side, so it's OK /s

According to their report, they haven't received any data requests from Saudi Arabia, Syria or Burma, but they did hand over data to the governments of 57 countries in the first half of 2014 alone [1].

It appears content was also censored at the request of the Saudi government.

[1] https://govtrequests.facebook.com/

There is a diffrence between mostly voluntaryly pushing your own data into facebook and wanting to not be detected when organising political rally.

A great deal of the data Facebook has must be derived outside of things you have posted yourself. They build and hold a lot of data you do not explicitly consent to share.

Facebook really wants your activity to be based on your real identity, and making associations between you and other people.

Facebook shouldn't be used as a tool for organizing political rallies if there is concern for privacy. Connecting to FB via Tor does not isolate you from much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com