Facebook employees were able to access deleted user data and share details with law enforcement agencies, who said they were singled out for raising concerns about the practice, according to allegations involved in an explosive lawsuit filed by a former employee and Air Force veteran.
On Tuesday, Brennan Lawson sued Meta, Facebook’s parent, in California claiming he was informed about the new protocol during a staff meeting in late 2018 and immediately questioned its legality. Soon after, he said he was fired and remained unemployed for 18 months. He’s seeking more than $3 million (roughly Rs. 23 crore) in compensation plus punitive damages.
The former content screener says Facebook introduced a new protocol in 2018, allowing members of the social network’s global escalation team ‘to circumvent Facebook’s normal privacy protocols’ by retrieving data from the Messenger app ‘that users had chosen to delete’.
Here’s what the lawsuit states:
“Law enforcement would ask questions about the suspect’s use of the platform, such as who the suspect was messaging, when messages were sent, and even what those messages contained. To keep Facebook in the good graces of the government, the Escalations Team would utilize the back-end protocol to provide answers for the law enforcement agency and then determine how much to share.”
Contrary to its stated policy, Facebook can access “anyone’s Messenger history, including children within Messenger for Kids,” the suit alleges.
Calling attention to the abuse of users’ private data resulted in Lawson receiving a poor performance review that he maintains was unreasonable.
He was ultimately terminated on July 10, 2019, for ‘alleged improper use of one of Facebook’s user admin tools a few months earlier.” Facebook claims Lawson was let go because he did adhere to company policy when reinstating his grandmother’s account that was previously hacked.
Meta denies breaching users’ privacy.
“These claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves against them rigorously,” a Meta spokesperson contends.
Moreover, the protocol appeared to violate European Union digital privacy rules and a Federal Trade Commission order that required Facebook to accurately inform users about its data retention policies, according to the complaint.
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Sources: TheGatewayPundit, DailyMail