Facebook Heading for a Face Off and Hires the Big Gun?
This morning, Tech Crunch reported that Facebook had hired former FTC Chairman, Timothy J. Muris to represent them against the growing scrutiny in Washington over new Facebook privacy policies. Powerful Anti-Trust lawyer, Muris held his FTC chairmanship under the Bush administration and is the creator of the U.S. Do Not Call Registry.
The negative reactions to Facebook’s new Open Graph API, announced in the past two weeks has been growing in furor . Several members of Congress and at least 14 Advocacy Groups for Privacy have joined in asking that the FTC regulate Facebook’s new policy that is currently an opt-out to force it to make Open Graph an opt-in.
The supposed hiring of of Muris would seem to be a good step in light of the direction from which this negative response is coming. But later today we learned that Facebook is denying that they have, in actuality, hired Muris as of yet.
This would be a formidable job that Muris could well-handle, especially in tandem with Facebook’s recently hired, director of public policy, Tim Sparapani who is an ex- American Civil Liberties attorney.
There has been much made of Facebook’s new plans in the media.
On Saturday Morning, Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (Chief Security Officer) Online., was interviewed on The Early Show and gave her list of 5 Dangers of Using Facebook”:
- Your information is being shared with third parties
- Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign
- Facebook ads may contain malware
- Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable
- Scammers are creating fake profiles
The transcriprt of the entire interview on The Early Show can be found here.
Wired Magazine started a huge debate on creating an Open alternative to Facebook. Read More here.
And here is a very cool animated graphic and blog posted by Matt McKeon, developer with IBM’s Cemter for Social Software Visual Communication Lab on Facebook’s Privacy Evolution.
