RUTHFULLY YOURS

Facebook’s problems just keep accumulating, drip by drip—or more like splash by splash. It’s now been discovered that Facebook not only collects and uses the personal data of its members but also collects the data of those who never signed up for Facebook.

So if you’re one of those who blames Facebook users for allowing their personal data to be compromised, don’t be so smug. Facebook may be sharing your personal data as well.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor, senior staff technologist at the ACLU, discovered that, although he never joined Facebook or any other social network, Facebook has a detailed profile on him.

Facebook obtains information from those not on Facebook in two different ways: from other Facebook users and by tracking people who visit other other sites on the web.

When people sign up for Facebook, they’re encouraged to upload their contacts to make it easier for Facebook to connect them with their friends. That allows Facebook to access personal contact information for people who never signed up for the platform or gave their permission to share their information. Facebook knows that these contacts are friends of the new Facebook user, and can start compiling additional details on these non-members.

Gillmor explained, “I received an email from Facebook that lists the people who have all invited me to join Facebook: my aunt, an old co-worker, a friend from elementary school, etc. This email includes names and email addresses — including my own name — and at least one web bug designed to identify me to Facebook’s web servers when I open the email.” He added, “Facebook records this group of people as my contacts, even though I’ve never agreed to this kind of data collection.”

“Similarly, I’m sure that I’m in some photographs that someone has uploaded to Facebook — and I’m probably tagged in some of them. I’ve never agreed to this, but Facebook could still be keeping track.”

Facebook also tracks individuals when they visit other websites. Whenever they click a “like” button on the website, that information often gets fed back to Facebook, along with a list of the websites visited and any Facebook-specific cookies the browser might have collected. Facebook calls this a “third-party request.” As individuals do this over time, Facebook is able to accumulate a detailed profile, again, even though they never signed up for a Facebook account.

Now you might think, so what? Facebook could not possibly know who the person is. Gillmor notes that “the profiles Facebook builds on non-users don’t necessarily include so-called ‘personally identifiable information’ (PII) like names or email addresses, but they do include fairly unique patterns.”

He then conducted a test. “Using Chromium’s NetLog dumping, I performed a simple five-minute browsing test last week that included visits to various sites — but not Facebook,” he wrote. “In that test, the PII-free data that was sent to Facebook included information about which news articles I was reading, my dietary preferences, and my hobbies,” said Gillmor. “Given the precision of this kind of mapping and targeting, ‘PII’ isn’t necessary to reveal my identity. How many vegans examine specifications for computer hardware from the ACLU’s offices while reading about Cambridge Analytica?”

Any rational person’s list of the most intelligent and pungent columnists now writing will perforce include the name Kevin Williamson, late of National Review and, as of Thursday, late of The Atlantic as well.

And anyone with a working internet connection knows that Williamson, hired to a chorus of drooling leftoid obloquy by The Atlantic a few weeks ago, was summarily fired by the magazine’s preening, oleaginous editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, after having written only one article, “The Passing of the Libertarian Moment.”

That article was not the problem. The problem (prescinding from Goldberg’s obvious spinelessness in capitulating to the baying mob) was a remark Williamson made about abortion during a podcast with his former NR colleague Charles C. W. Cooke. Like nearly 50 percent of the American public, Kevin believes that abortion is a form of homicide, i.e., murder (“homicide” somehow sounds more antiseptic), and noted he was “absolutely willing to see abortion treated like regular homicide under the criminal code.” When asked how he thought those found guilty of abortion should be punished, he said although he was “kind of squishy on capital punishment in general,” death by hanging might be appropriate.

If you listen to the exchange, it is clear—or so I think—that the bit about hanging was a flip provocation. It was a provocation that Kevin apparently liked, however, for he repeated it in a tweet (since deleted). The weaponized cyber garbage-dispensing service known as Media Matters insinuated its tentacles into the recesses of social media to compile snippets of Kevin’s views about abortion and other matters about which there can be only one opinion, and dumped the lot into the contemporary equivalent of the public square, i.e., much-visited internet sites. Then its politically correct masters sat back and waited for the mob to do its work.

Which it promptly did.

Before I get into the firing of Kevin Williamson, let me say this: Williamson is a talented, unique, and compelling writer. I have complimented his work privately to him and publicly on social media. Even when I strongly disagreed with him—particularly with his harsh assessment of Trump supporters—I still envy his way with words. Kevin has a painful personal history that he is not afraid to share, and it clearly shapes his view of the world.

He is also Donald Trump’s harshest critic on the Right. He wrote a book about the president, The Case Against Donald Trump. Williamson has mocked Trump’s business acumen, his family, and his supporters in a vile way. His Twitter timeline—before he deleted his entire account at the behest of his now-former employer—was filled with even more vicious remarks. (He was once a clever, engaging personality on social media, but had recently devolved into a nasty crank.) He is not a sympathetic character.

Conservatives are outraged that Williamson was fired Thursday by Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, after a left-wing media watchdog released audio clips of Williamson supporting capital punishment for women who have abortions. He also referred to illegal immigrants as “peasants” and advocated waterboarding terrorists. But it was his view that women who abort their babies should endure “hanging”—and his dodginess in owning up to the remark—that primarily led to his ouster. (Williamson and his defenders originally downplayed it as an impetuous tweet.) But in an email to employees, Goldberg said:

The language he used in this podcast—and in my conversations with him in recent days—made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views. The tweet was not merely an impulsive, decontextualized, heat-of-the-moment post, as Kevin had explained it. Furthermore, the language used in the podcast was callous and violent.

The media are going after Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt for traveling first class and only paying $1,500 per month for a condo, pretending it’s all a matter of ethics.

It’s nonsense. They actually are going after him because he dares reverse some of the rules the Environmental Protection Agency implemented without going through Congress. Dissent is just not allowed from Democrat policies and the media are the method of choice for Democrats, using it to go after any Trump administration person they don’t like. Here’s a typical headline:

Scott Pruitt’s job in jeopardy amid expanding ethics issues

Somehow I don’t remember any of Obama’s people fired for massive ethical violations, including Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin for working for the Clinton Foundation, the State Department, and a consulting group at the same time. Clinton aide Cheryl Mills also did work for the Foundation at the same time she was working for the State Department.

That wasn’t even the half of what went down during the Obama administration. The huge donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign countries doing business with the State Department, along with escalating speech fees for Bill and Chelsea were obvious kickbacks or illegal campaign donations. But nobody’s head was called for when those things made the news.

The media cared so little about all the ethics and actual law violations of Hillary that they almost universally supported putting her, Huma and Cheryl in the White House.

Just look at the flavor of how things were done during the past administration:

A spring 2012 email to Hillary Clinton’s top State Department aide, Huma Abedin, asked for help winning a presidential appointment for a supporter of the Clinton Foundation, according to a chain obtained by POLITICO.

The messages illustrate the relationship between Clinton’s most trusted confidante and the private consulting company that asked for the favor, Teneo — a global firm that later hired Abedin. Abedin signed on with the company while she still held a State Department position, a dual employment that is now being examined by congressional investigators.

“Missile defense needs to be part of the United States’ strategy” against North Korean nuclear threats, conceded even a February 11 New York Times editorial in an incoherent anti-missile defense rant. Yet the Times still derided vital missile defense efforts like Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), a continuation of the leftist Gray Lady’s longstanding dangerous folly of opposition to protecting America’s homeland from nuclear attack.

The Times probably would have preferred that President Donald Trump had kept his initial Fiscal Year 2018 budget request with the missile defense spending levels of his predecessor, Barack Obama. However, growing North Korean nuclear threats prompted Trump and legislators to add $368 million to missile defense, reflecting a growing missile defense commitment noted on March 7 before Congress by undersecretary of defense John C. Rood. The Alaska- and California-based GMD is central to these missile defense efforts. As the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS) notes, GMD “is currently the only U.S. missile defense system devoted to defending the U.S. homeland from long-range ballistic missile attacks.”

Nonetheless, the Times simply repeated decades-old sophistries about missile defense’s futility, something that “will never provide a foolproof, comprehensive shield against a nuclear adversary.” “After more than 30 years of research and more than $200 billion, the nation’s ballistic missile defense program remains riddled with flaws, even as the threat from North Korean missiles escalates,” the Times wrote. The Times cited a 2016 Pentagon report that supposedly “faulted” missile defenses (it actually describes GMD’s “limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland”).

Kevin Williamson has been fired by The Atlantic. Williamson is one of the great conservative intellectuals of our times. He has a keen wit and frequently engages in heterodox opinions that make his writing and thinking intriguing. For a decade he wrote at William F. Buckley’s National Review until hired away last week by Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic.

The Atlantic fancies itself a place of intellectual diversity where the best writers across ideologies can share their views. But Williamson’s hire drew burning rage from the left. Williamson’s birth came from an unplanned pregnancy. Instead of aborting him, his birth mother gave him up for adoption. As you might imagine, Williamson has strongly held views on the matter of abortion. A week after hiring him, Jeffrey Goldberg bowed to the leftwing mob and fired Williamson for, in part, how he might make the pro-abortion women in the office feel.

Never mind Williamson’s feelings on abortion and that he could have been aborted himself, the editor took the brave stand of worrying about the hypothetical feelings of pro-abortion women in the office. The left told us that the purges happening on college campuses were contained to the campus. Yet here we are today with one of the best voices of conservatism fired from a job for his conservative views.

It will only get worse. Just a few years ago, a liberal reporter walked into an Indiana pizza parlor to see if that parlor would cater a same sex wedding. The owner said he was a Christian so he could not do that. The news set off a wave of antagonism against the pizza parlor, which had to close down for several days. It faced harassment online and in the store for the owner having the audacity to answer a reporter’s hypothetical question.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said he made a “huge mistake” in not focusing more on potential abuse, as he and the social-media giant he founded continue to battle concerns about privacy and trust.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s most direct mea culpa to date came on the same day Facebook announced that data from as many as 87 million of its users may have been improperly shared with an analytics firm tied to the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump, a larger number than had been previously reported.

The disclosure comes as the company is stepping up its efforts to repair trust with regulators and the public in the wake of several controversies tied to the election. Mr. Zuckerberg’s remarks, made in a conference call with reporters, served as a trial run of sorts for his testimony on Capitol Hill next Wednesday, where the 33-year-old billionaire is expected to be grilled on how the company handles data related to its 1.4 billion daily users, globally.

On the conference call, Mr. Zuckerberg called Facebook “an idealistic and optimistic company“ that ”didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse.” He also said he made a “mistake” when he dismissed the threat of fake news as “crazy” shortly after the 2016 election.

“What is clear at this point is that it was too flippant,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

When asked if the board had suggested he step down as chairman of the company, Mr. Zuckerberg replied, “Not that I am aware of.”

Mr. Zuckerberg reiterated previously announced figures that the company now employs more than 15,000 people dedicated to security, a number that will top 20,000 by the end of the year.

Facebook informed the public on Wednesday that the number of people whose data was compromised by the Cambridge Analytica breach is tens of millions larger than the company initially thought.

Hidden at the bottom of a statement on Facebook’s new data-security initiative was an admission that closer to 87 million people had their personal information illicitly shared. The number was first reported to be around 50 million.

A Cambridge University scientist improperly shared user information that he obtained from Facebook with data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to target voters in 2016. When the data misuse reached Facebook’s radar in 2015, the company claims it secured, in a legal document, Cambridge Analytica’s word that it would delete all the data.

Cambridge Analytica has denied that it used the information during the 2016 campaign, and the scientist, Aleksandr Kogan, has said he was unaware he did anything wrong and feels he is being used as a scapegoat.

Facebook’s statement, written by Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer, outlined several changes aimed at tightening the platform’s privacy, and promised that more changes would be unveiled in the future.

One of the reforms is restricting apps’ access to information contained in calendar events and private groups. The company will also no longer let apps ask for access to “personal information such as religious or political views, relationship status and details, custom friends lists, education and work history, fitness activity, book reading activity, music listening activity, news reading, video watch activity, and games activity.”

The left-wing lynch mob that has been trying to destroy conservative commentator Laura Ingraham for her gentle mockery last week of David Hogg has already succeeded in frightening advertisers away from the host’s Fox News Channel show.

Since launching his career in big-money leftist televangelism weeks ago, Hogg has been spewing hatred and venomous lies about anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. His belligerent in-your-face activism has also been driving up sales of firearms and ammunition and boosting the membership rolls of groups like the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America.

Hogg has been especially focused on accusing his enemies of wanting children to die. “It just makes me think: What sick f**kers are out there that want to sell more guns, murder more children, and, honestly, just get reelected?” Hogg told The Outline. “What type of person are you, when you want to see more f**king money than children’s lives? What type of shitty person does that?”

Hogg has also called the NRA “child murderers,” NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch “disgusting,” and Republicans “sick f**kers.”

Hogg is a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Broward County, Fla., where former student Nikolas Cruz massacred 14 students and three school employees on Valentine’s Day.

Ingraham has blamed “mental illness” and “broken or damaged families” for the massacre, which is consistent with the evidence, given that Cruz has serious psychiatric problems and had a difficult upbringing, losing his sole remaining parent in the months before the attack. Others have pointed out the multiple failures at every level of government that kept Cruz out of the criminal justice system, as well as the left-wing Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) that helped to make the young man the mass murderer he is today.

Ingraham said a March 14 student walkout for gun control was not an “organic outpouring of youthful rage.” It was “nothing but a left-wing, anti-Trump diatribe.” This comment angered a lot of left-wingers.