Privacy Groups Go Public with Federal Complaint about Facebook

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By Beverly Goldberg

Concerned about protecting the privacy of library patrons and other individuals who have Facebook accounts, the American Library Association has joined nine other organizations in filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission regarding Facebook’s recent changes to its policies.

“EPIC has framed some very important questions about Facebook’s privacy policy,” said Lynne Bradley, director of the Office of Government Relations in ALA’s Washington Office. “The complaint asks the FTC to conduct an investigation into the changes in Facebook’s privacy practices and their impact on consumers,” she told American Libraries.

The December 17 complaint (PDF file) written by the Electronic Privacy Information Center contends that changes to users’ privacy settings that Facebook announced December 9 in actuality “disclose personal information to the public [and] violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook’s own representations.”

The complaint goes on to say that, in contrast to the social network’s acknowledgment in its original 2004 privacy policy statement that users “may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook,” the newly established default settings make public to anyone doing an internet search “users’ names, profile photos, lists of friends, pages they are fans of, gender, geographic regions, and networks to which they belong.” Libraries have increasingly established pages on Facebook, enabling individuals to become their fans.

As evidence that the new default settings reveal more information than most Facebook users would prefer, the complaint cites how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg narrowed access to his account within a week of accepting the new default settings.

Among the invasions of privacy that result from the availability of so much personal information, the complaint explains, are the disclosure of an individual’s sexual orientation and religious and political views. It cites a December 3 Wall Street Journal article about an Iranian-American engineering student whose father was questioned by Iranian security officers because of the student’s Facebook postings that criticized the Iranian government.

Other groups joining ALA and EPIC in the complaint include Consumer Federation of America, Patient Privacy Rights, and the U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation.

American Libraries, Wed, 12/23/2009 - 13:46