Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers

by pjc50 • 8 years ago

176 87 8 years ago

"In another exceptional move, parliament sent a serjeant at arms to his hotel with a final warning and a two-hour deadline to comply with its order. When the software firm founder failed to do so, it’s understood he was escorted to parliament. He was told he risked fines and even imprisonment if he didn’t hand over the documents."

Wow. I've never heard of the British parliament being this assertive before.

CrawfordJF• 8 years ago

Many consider these powers to be essentially spent: they have not been exercised to any significant extent in a very long time, and since then various changes (e.g. the need to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights) have put them on very shaky ground. If he had refused to go along with the Serjeant at Arms, I suspect nothing would have happened because parliament is keen to avoid a small constitutional crisis over these powers, and to avoid losing even the power of threatening to actually use them. In particular the power to compel witnesses, documents and so on in a process that is entirely separate from the courts could conceivably breach the right to freedom of expression as protected by the ECHR.

I am surprised that he actually complied with this order, especially as the article says the documents were under a US court order restricting their dissemination/publication, but maybe what happened is the Serjeant at Arms appeared with these scary warnings, his lawyers didn't know quite what to do, so they just did what they were told even if they probably didn't have to.

It will be interesting to see what the US court makes of its order being broken due to the order of a foreign legislature.

-- A source on the status of these powers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18875266

jsmith99• 8 years ago

Given that his company is suing Facebook, he was possibly quite happy to comply. He doesn't seem to have lost out, and got a historical trip in the bargain.

zeristor• 8 years ago

I suppose a key question is why did he have thes documents with him in London?

If they’re that key there was th3 risk of the computer being stolen, hard drive encryption aside.

bertil• 8 years ago

For anyone wondering: the serjeant-at-arms is a mostly ceremonial role that keeps order in the common parts of the Parliament. You mainly see them carrying the Royal Mace, the symbol of executive power that is kept in Parliament for obvious symbolic reasons. They litterally enforce the authority of the Sovreign.

https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/principal/serj...

Sending them in town has no close equivalent in the US, maybe threatening someone to be in Contempt of the Supreme Court.

nhf• 8 years ago

Probably the closest thing in the US would be a Congressional subpoena. In contrast to the UK Parliament's shakier justification, both Congressional rules and the Supreme Court case Wilkinson v. United States have affirmed that committees can subpoena witnesses.

ubernostrum• 8 years ago

Sending them in town has no close equivalent in the US, maybe threatening someone to be in Contempt of the Supreme Court.

The US House of Representatives and the US Senate also have Sergeants at Arms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_at_Arms_of_the_United...

There have been multiple occasions in recent decades when, in theory, either house of Congress could have resorted to enforcement of a Congressional subpoena by sending its Sergeant at Arms to arrest the non-responsive party. The most recent occurrence was early in Trump's term when several of his high officials refused to appear before Congressional committees which sought to question them; there was talk of whether Congress would provoke a showdown by issuing and enforcing subpoenas. And a court ruling during the George W. Bush administration confirmed Congress could compel members of the executive branch to appear and answer questions:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-bush-idUSN31...

networkimprov• 8 years ago

One should ask: Was the Six4Three executive lured to the UK on a pretext, specifically with the intent of seizing the FB documents?

rhizome5• 8 years ago

If so, at least there wasn't a bone saw involved.

andyjohnson02• 8 years ago

Possible, but doesn't seem likely somehow.

What's more interesting is how the committee knew the documents were in the UK. It wouldn't aurprise me if the UK intelligence services tipped the off, with tacit apprival from the government.

DannyBee6• 8 years ago

They were not in the UK, which makes this a really really bad plan.

The person was in the UK, and they ordered them to produce specifically protected non-UK documents that they don't own, simply have access to.

To give an analogy, imagine taking a random contractor to your company, who is passing through the UK, and forcing them, under pain of jail time, to login to your VPN and produce records that the contractor happens to have access to, but doesn't own, control, do anything with etc.

Now imagine if that contractor was really an officer of a company suing you, and the access was also being forced upon your company and only being allowed on a temporary basis by a court.

The only reason they would ever get away with such a thing is because everyone hates facebook.

Six4three can and should be held liable in a US court for this (though that is unlikely).

mr_custard• 8 years ago

Following AMP links makes me sad. Here's the real link:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize...

lightswitch052• 8 years ago

I didn't realize it was an AMP link until I clicked and saw that it had been blocked. I have a growing hosts block list specifically for AMP hosts. If anyone else wishes to block some AMP hosts, here is the link: https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/blob/master/amp-hosts...

I don't use Google anymore, so the list only has 362 at the moment, but I keep adding more as I find them. Pull requests are welcome!

dang• 8 years ago

Switched now.

kslo3• 8 years ago

How can some rando small company manage to get access to FB internal emails over some dinky app, while parliament has to resort to such extreme methods?

nighthawk1• 8 years ago

Due to their lawsuit with FB in the USA. I imagine those documents were obtained by court order. Pretty bold move by the UK gov. Looking forward to the leakage of said documents.

M2Ys4U2• 8 years ago

Pretty bold move by the UK gov.

This wasn't the UK government, though, but Parliament through its Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

Parliament doesn't allow government ministers to be members of parliamentary committees, only backbenchers, as Committees are one of the main ways that Parliament holds the government to account.

wavefunction• 8 years ago

monies paid, one presumes

DannyBee6• 8 years ago

One is a court of competent jurisdiction ordering discovery. The other is not.

As far as i understand (from my British friends): They generally can compel people inside the UK to produce papers, but would not otherwise have jurisdiction to order much here.

Instead, they ordered a person in the UK to produce non-UK protected documents.

So what they did here is pretty extraordinary, and if everyone didn't hate facebook, would likely cause a very serious diplomatic incident.

One of the underlying problems is that they aren't six4three's documents to produce. They are not the owner or custodian of these documents.

They simply have access under a protected set of circumstances by court order.

This is quite literally compelled espionage: "Espionage or spying, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information without the permission of the holder of the information."

lixtra2• 8 years ago

Looks like Six4Three is at fault here. It should have protected the papers to be not accessible by whoever is outside the US. We will see more of this as national jurisdictions collide with the international internet.

bobloblaw22• 8 years ago

I'm not entirely sure that's the case. The guy is the CEO.

So let's say he can't access it from the UK. The UK guys tell him "give us the documents or you go to jail". Well then he could ask an employee who is currently in the US to unlock them for him, maybe even give them his password. Basically, there is usually a way to get things done if there is a threat of jail pending.

The greater issue is how the UK was allowed to even do something like this to a person who hadn't done anything illegal.

lixtra2• 8 years ago

Well, he can tell his employees beforehand to only accept such order if he is in the US. Otherwise the documents should not leave the country. Then he would have to reply that he is unable to provide access to the documents.

Another reply suggested that he should have contacted the US embassy and ask that he is forced to commit a crime in the US by UK. This would have lifted it to a diplomatic level.

From the circumstances it sounds possible that he wanted the documents published and was happy to be forced.

greenyoda• 8 years ago

Background on Six4Three's lawsuit against Facebook:

Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes [7/3/2018]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462238

zxv• 8 years ago

In June, the Open Markets Institute [0] filed an amicus brief opposing Facebook’s motion to seal records in the case, arguing this matter “greatly implicates the public interest. [1]”

[0] https://openmarketsinstitute.org/articles/six4three-v-facebo...

[1] https://openmarketsinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/...

IcyApril• 8 years ago

From a different case a few years ago, a good description of Contempt of Parliament and the power of the Searjent at Arms in such a situation - "Mike Ashley: Could Sports Direct boss be jailed in Big Ben?": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-35783408

lancewiggs• 8 years ago

This is Sovereign power in action, being the power that each country has to escalate when people or companies do not behave according to their norms. We generally don’t see it a lot but when it happens results can be severe.

It serves as a good warning that when doing business in any country you need to abide by the written and unwritten codes of conduct for that country. Two other less pleasant examples are Assange and Khashoggi.

enraged_camel• 8 years ago

Exactly. I'm very happy with this turn of events. In repeatedly turning down the British Parliament's request to testify, Zuckerberg displayed a stunning level of arrogance, and brought this upon himself.

sys_64738• 8 years ago

I thought he was quite right to turn them down. He doesn’t owe a foreign government his presence to answer to them unless he’s got a warrant for his arrest.

I could imagine that there are implications for tech companies now operating in the UK if they’re subject to raids by the British police force. It sets a dangerous precedent.

Latteland6• 8 years ago

Parliament shouldn't be able compel any random company to hand over internal papers just on a whim. The police can't do that. You have to have a reason, and it can't be a fishing expedition as we say in the us. You must have cause to suspect something. In this case, it's unclear what the cause to justify this could be.

_bfhp• 8 years ago

If we casually allow that there are "unwritten" rules, then we accept that every government is merely a dictatorship ruled by whichever individuals have the most access to physical power. It would be great if everyone could by explicit on this, and if they are happy with it or not.

lightswitch052• 8 years ago

I found an article about the ongoing Six4Three case in CA [1]. From the article:

David Godkin, Six4Three’s lead counsel said: “We believe the public has a right to see the evidence and are confident the evidence clearly demonstrates the truth of our allegations, and much more.”

I have little-to-no legal understanding, but it seems to me that it was in Six4Three's interest to have these documents seized and perhaps released to the public? I see others here talking of how bold of a move this was for Parliament and that it wouldn't have worked if Six4Three simply refused. However, if Six4Three was trying to get the documents released anyways, was this really that bold of a move? Seems to me its more just giving Six4Three an excuse to leak the documents.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark-zuck...

robomartin• 8 years ago

I have always thought companies like FB ought to be legally required to erase any and as much stored personal information from their databases as a user requires.

In other words, I ought to be able to specify that I only allow my activity to be stored for one week, anything older than that should be erased from all databases and backups. Same with personal information, controlled and owned by the user, not the service.

Latteland6• 8 years ago

Isn't this one of the requirements of the gdpr compliance? I want to get to that in the us, but it's going to be like pot laws. Liberal states will do it first, conservatives will try to stop it in the us congress, and it's possible the will of the majority will change.

bulatb• 8 years ago

You can ask them to delete your data, but unless their only legal basis for having it was your consent, they may be able to refuse. [0] They'd have to argue to the regulator that their interest in retaining it should override your interest in deleting it.

You also aren't allowed to dictate how specifically your data is processed, so you can't just boss them around. You only get to choose which data, for which purposes, by whom, and only if the processing requires [1] your consent.

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/

[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/consent/

omnimus• 8 years ago

I am also suprised about GDPR because it seems that on facebook side it didn't change anythin. They added few more checkboxes and thats it. European companies had to change a lot (for better in my opinion).

Maybe thats why EU politicians are starting to be harsher about this. They feel powerless.

Cestor• 8 years ago

Could easily be that Six4three notified the UK ahead of time that Kramer would be in London. Provides a good opportunity to leak the data without being in contempt

sambeau• 8 years ago

  Facebook really aren't afraid of a British man in tights or
  willing to reform without regulation. That's why Zuckerberg
  hasn't turned up to the Commons, & they are appealing the UK
  ICO's important but tiny fine. Time for the EU to move on
  them, and I believe that's inevitable.

—Claude Moraes MEP (the chair of the EU committee that is leading investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica) ‏

https://twitter.com/Claude_Moraes/status/1066486777136013317

justapassenger• 8 years ago

The irony - it looks like uk did Cambridge Analytica themselves. They took data about one entity, in a very shady way, through a third party.

Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

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