– When Roberto Livar's wife picked up their son Wednesday from Great Hearts Monte Vista charter school in San Antonio, Texas, the 8th-grader was "distraught" over an assignment in history class, Livar tells KABB. The worksheet he completed was entitled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View," per WMUR, with two empty columns for students to fill in: one labeled "Negative Aspects," the other "Positive Aspects" (Livar's son crammed all the cons in the former and wrote "N/A" in the latter). "What the hell is this revisionist history lesson trying to achieve here?!?," Livar wrote on Facebook, with a photo of the worksheet. "What positives??? This is unacceptable and gross." Among those in agreement: Rep. Joaquin Castro, who tweeted the assignment was "absolutely unacceptable" and noted the teacher was working from a text by publishing giant Pearson. Pearson, however, says in a statement to Newsweek the worksheet didn't come from its book, Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States, and that "we ... strongly condemn the implication that there was any positive aspect to slavery." On Facebook, the school addressed the matter, saying the assignment was "very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent with Great Hearts philosophy and culture." "To be clear, there is no debate about slavery," the statement added. "It is immoral and a crime against humanity." It went on to note that only this particular teacher had used the worksheet, that the teacher has been placed on leave during the fact-gathering process, and that the school would review the text and dump it if it's found to be "imprudent." A "follow-up communication" is set for May 9. (A New Jersey school held a mock slave auction.)

Expand this summary.

Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| A charter school located north of downtown is apologizing to parents and students after a teacher issued an assignment to students, asking them to describe the negative and positive aspects of slavery.

 This is the paper Robert Livar's 8th grade son was given to fill out in history class Wednesday at great hearts Monte Vista Charter School.

 "My wife picks him up from school and as soon as they pull out of the parking lot, he showed her the assignment and was pretty distraught by having to perform such a classroom assignment, and naturally my wife was upset, sent me the photo that went viral,” said concerned parent Robert Livar.

 You can see his son wrote not applicable on the side labeled "positive aspects" and wrote a long list of "negative aspects". Robert says there is no excuse for this assignment.

 "The assignment itself weighing the pros and cons of slave life and slave perspective quite honestly is just gross. There are no pros to one human being owning another."

 The school responded, agreeing with parents, saying there is no debate about slavery-it is "immoral and a crime against humanity" In a statement from the school's superintendent they say: "our review of the situation found this incident to be limited to one teacher at just one campus. It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense." The school has placed the teacher on leave while they investigate. The history book that is used in class has also been removed and may be replaced.

 "This is to be able to give school administrators and staff actionable items to implement change within their organizations, to make those organizations better, so this is a learning moment not just for our student and our family, but really this is a learning moment for the school,” said Livar.

 Robert along with several parents met with the school Thursday. They say the school plans to have a response to their investigation by May 9th, and will determine if the teacher involved keeps his job.

 Read the full statement from Great Hearts Monte Vista:

 Last evening Great Hearts was made aware that one of our teachers at the Monte Vista North campus assigned homework that was very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent with Great Hearts philosophy and culture. In the 8th grade American History class students were asked to reflect on the differing sides of slavery. To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity.

 Our review of the situation found this incident to be limited to one teacher at just one campus. It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense. We want to thank the parents who voiced their concern and brought this to our attention. Please know Great Hearts is taking this seriously, including placing this teacher on leave while we have time to collect all the facts.

 We are removing from classrooms and will conduct an audit of the American History textbook in use, "Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States". If we deem this textbook imprudent, we will permanently remove it and replace it with a history book that accurately reflects our values.

 Finally, the headmaster and teachers at the Monte Vista North campus will spend time with the impacted students to explain the mistake and engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period of American History.

 We fully intend to make sure something like this does not happen again and will keep parents posted as we address this issue further. We have scheduled a follow up communication on May 9, 2018. ||||| ...

 😉 👉🏼 Stop by our table 👈🏼 and get info about Great Hearts & meet Kevin our trick roper.

 Our President of Great Hearts TX is a little tied up at the moment. ||||| Middle school students at Great Hearts Monte Vista in San Antonio were asked to weigh the "positive" and "negative" aspects of slavery for an assignment.

 Great Hearts Monte Vista, a local charter school, confirmed an eighth-grade American History class was assigned a worksheet titled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View." The assignment was posted on social media Wednesday by a parent who asked to remain anonymous at this time.

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 The post was shared with other parents at the school and has garnered growing concern from members of the community, including U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who asked the parent to send him a copy of the assignment.

 Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel addressed the issue in a statement on Thursday. He said the assignment was only used at the school's Monte Vista North campus and it "was very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent" with the school's "philosophy and culture."

 "To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity," Kindel wrote in the statement. "It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense."

 Kindel said the teacher was placed on leave while "all the facts" surrounding the issue were assessed. The textbook for the course, "Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States," was removed from use and will be audited.

 "If we deem this textbook imprudent, we will permanently remove it and replace it with a history book that accurately reflects our values," Kindel's statement reads.

 In addition, headmasters and teachers will meet with students who were assigned the worksheet to explain the "mistake" and "engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period."

 "We fully intend to make sure something like this does not happen again and will keep parents posted as we address this issue further," the statement said.

 Congressman Joaquin Castro tweeted that the teacher had worked from a Pearson textbook, but Pearson says the worksheet is not their product.

 This is absolutely unacceptable. A @GreatHeartsTX charter school in San Antonio asked students to complete a “balanced view” assignment about slavery, requiring them to list the “positive aspects” of slave life. The teacher worked from a @pearson textbook. pic.twitter.com/mzEWty68tB — Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) April 19, 2018

 We agree this is unacceptable. We have investigated this and determined that this worksheet is not our product. For more information, see https://t.co/cEQ3nhcM3h https://t.co/YiGAbmzJ33 — Pearson (@pearson) April 20, 2018

 AlertMe ||||| Updated | Following complaints from teachers, parents and state lawmakers, an assignment that asked students to list the "positive aspects" of slavery has been removed from rotation at a Texas charter school, and the teacher who assigned the project has been placed on leave.

 Titled "The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View," the worksheet featured two columns, in which students were told to list the "positive aspects" and "negative aspects" of living life as a slave. The homework, assigned in an eighth-grade American history class at Great Hearts Monte Vista, was pulled from the textbook, according to the school — a claim Pearson, its manufacturer, denies.

 A parent on Wednesday posted a picture of the assignment, which made its way back to state lawmakers after a report from the San Antonio Express-News. Joaquin Castro, a Texas congressman, tweeted that it was "absolutely unacceptable," tagging Pearson in the tweet. Texas State Representative Diego Bernal said he had people calling him and complaining. Parents also flooded the school's Facebook page with angry comments about the assignment.

 Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel said in a Thursday statement that the school would be "conducting an audit" into the circumstances that led to the assignment, and said the textbook Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States would be pulled from school shelves.

 "Our review of the situation found this incident to be limited to one teacher at just one campus," Kindel said. "It was a clear mistake, and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense. We want to thank the parents who voiced their concern and brought this to our attention. We are removing the textbook from all of our Texas academies."

 Kindel's statement continued, "the headmaster and teachers at the Monte Vista North campus will spend time with the impacted students to explain the mistake and engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period of American History."

 In a statement to Newsweek, Pearson denied that it had anything to do with the worksheet, despite the school's claims.

 Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now

 "The worksheet in question was not created by, endorsed, or encouraged in any way by Pearson," the statement read. "We do not support this point of view and strongly condemn the implication that there was any positive aspect to slavery."

 It's not the first time Pearson, one of the largest manufacturers of school textbooks, has been accused of racial insensitivity. In 2017, a nursing student blasted the company for including stereotypical depictions of race in its book.

 “Hispanics may believe that pain is a form of punishment and that suffering must be endured if they are to enter heaven," the book said. "Jews may be vocal and demanding of assistance.”

 Pearson leaders apologized in a video tweet and removed the content from its books.

 "

 Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

 Updated: This story has been updated with a statement from Pearson, which has since denied all involvement in the homework material. ||||| See more of Roberto Robotico Livar on Facebook |||||


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 'Real Time' host Bill Maher [YouTube]

 Bill Maher said the attacks on the French satirical magazine should serve as a wakeup call to American liberals that mainstream Muslims do not share their democratic values.

 The comedian and talk show host appeared Wednesday night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where he addressed the murders of 12 people at the Paris offices of “Charlie Hebdo.”

 “This has to stop, and unfortunately, a lot of the liberals, who are my tribe — I am a proud liberal,” Maher said.

 “He’s about to turn on you,” Kimmel said.

 “No, I’m not turning on them,” Maher said. “I’m asking them to turn toward the truth as I have been for quite a while. I’m the liberal in this debate. I’m for free speech. To be a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. It’s not my fault that the part of the world that is most against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world.”

 Maher claimed the attacks were supported by mainstream Muslims throughout the world.

 “I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this, but here’s the important point,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this, they applaud an attack like this. What they say is, we don’t approve of violence, but you know what, when you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off.”

 He said American liberals turned a blind eye to Muslim extremism.

 “They chop heads off in the square in Mecca,” Maher said. “Well, Mecca is their Vatican City. If they were chopping the heads off of Catholic gay people, wouldn’t there be a bigger outcry among liberals? I’d ask you.”

 Maher called on liberals in the U.S. to unequivocally condemn the attacks and the supposed motivations of the attackers.

 “We have to stop saying when something like this that happened in Paris today, we have to stop saying, well, we should not insult a great religion,” Maher said. “First of all, there are no great religions. They’re all stupid and dangerous — and we should insult them and we should be able to insult whatever we want. That is what free speech is like.”

 Watch Maher’s appearance posted online by Real Clear Politics: ||||| Jimmy Kimmel serves as host and executive producer of Emmy-nominated Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC's late-night talk show, well known for its huge viral video successes, with 8.6 billion views and 12.4 million subscribers on the show's YouTube channel. Some of Kimmel's most popular comedy bits include "Celebrities Read Mean Tweets," "Lie Witness News," "Unnecessary Censorship," "Halloween Candy YouTube Challenge" and music videos like "I (Wanna) Channing All Over Your Tatum." ||||| Bill Maher didn’t hold back Wednesday night, blasting “hundreds of millions” of the world’s Muslims for allegedly supporting the Islamic terrorist massacre of cartoonists, writers, and editors at a Parisian satirical magazine that has mocked the Prophet Muhammad.

 “I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this,” the host of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher said on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. “But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is, ‘We don’t approve of violence, but you know what? When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off.”

 “Hundreds of millions of Muslims?” a clearly skeptical Kimmel asked his fellow comedian, an out and proud atheist who in recent years has targeted the adherents of Islam for harsh criticism.

 “Absolutely,” Maher insisted. “That is mainstream in the Muslim world. When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off. You get what’s coming to you. It’s also mainstream that if you leave the religion, you get what’s coming to you—which is death. Not in every Muslim country… but this is the problem in the world that we have to stand up to.”

 He continued, “I’m the liberal in this debate,” adding that he grew up in a family that supported John F. Kennedy over racist Southern governments in the fight for civil rights. “The reason we were liberals is we were against oppression.”

 Needless to say, Maher’s vitriolic rant drew few laughs from the studio audience, which seemed stunned into silence by his uncompromising anger.

 Maher’s well-known anti-Islamic views have come in for severe criticism in recent months from moderate Muslims and even prominent liberals (such as Ben Affleck on an installment of Real Time) who’ve accused him of intolerance and ignorance.

 He praised the murdered editors, writers, and cartoonists of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for their bravery in lampooning Muslims in the face of death threats and even the November 2011 firebombing of their offices. “These guys had the balls of the Eiffel Tower. Their balls were bigger than Gerard Depardieu,” Maher said.

 By contrast, he said in a line that was partially bleeped during the broadcast, the politically correct liberals of the United States, especially those who’ve been arguing for sensitivity to delicate Muslim sensibilities, had turned America into “Pussy Nation.”

 When Kimmel warned that Maher was turning on his fellow liberals, Maher corrected, “No. I’m asking them to turn toward the truth. I’m the liberal in this debate. I’m for free speech. To be a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. It’s not my fault that the part of the world that is most against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world.”

 Maher cited an unidentified “study” of 130 countries in which 17 majority Muslim countries ranked in the bottom 20 regarding the treatment of women. “In 10 Muslim countries, you can get the death penalty just for being gay. They chop heads off in the square in Mecca. Well, Mecca is their Vatican City. If they were chopping heads off gay people in Vatican City, wouldn’t there be a bigger outcry among liberals?”

 When the show resumed after a commercial break, Maher’s bile had not run out, and he spent the next several minutes venting at Bill Cosby. Not only had the iconic comedian sexually assaulted many, many women, Maher argued, “I never thought he was funny.” He added: “People say he deserves his day in court… Do we have enough time?”

 Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking “Subscribe,” you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

 Maher drew a contrast between the embattled Cosby, who has so far been accused by some 30 alleged victims, to such high-profile alleged offenders as Woody Allen, “who had one accuser,” and the late Michael Jackson, “who had two or three accusers,” young boys who said he fondled them.

 Recounting a childhood incident on the school playground, where one bully held him down while another socked him repeatedly in the face, Maher said that given the choice between that and “being jerked off by a pop star”—another bleeped phrase—he’d take the latter.

 RELATED:

 Bill Maher: Yes, I Can Generalize About Muslims

 After Maher-Affleck, We Need an Honest—and Calm—Dialogue on Islam

 ‘Real Time’ Panel Confronts Maher on Islam |||||Summary:

– Bill Maher opened his mouth on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and added his ever-controversial two cents to the discussion of yesterday's deadly shooting at Charlie Hebdo. While "most Muslim people" wouldn't carry out such an attack, Maher said "hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this." Maher continued, per Raw Story, "When you make fun of the Prophet, all bets are off." The Daily Beast reports an apparently stunned audience was noticeably subdued throughout his rant, in which he said all religions are "stupid and dangerous." "It's not my fault that the part of the world that is most against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world," he said. Asking the audience to "turn toward the truth," he proceeded to attack how Muslim countries treat women, gay people, and those who leave Islam. "They chop heads off in the square in Mecca. Well, Mecca is their Vatican City. If they were chopping the heads off of Catholic gay people, wouldn't there be a bigger outcry among liberals?" Maher said. America's politically correct liberals weren't free from his critique, either. The Daily Beast notes Maher said those who argue for sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities have transformed the US into "Pussy Nation."


Three months ago, Harvard student Aran Khanna was preparing to start a coveted internship at Facebook when he launched a browser application from his dorm room that angered the social media behemoth.

 His application, called Marauder’s Map — a clever name that Harry Potter fans will appreciate — was a Chrome extension that used data from Facebook Messenger to map where users were when they sent messages. The app also showed the locations, which were accurate to within three feet, in a group chat with people he barely knew. That meant complete strangers could hypothetically see that he had messaged them from a Starbucks around the corner, while he could see that they had messaged from their dorms.

 The app capitalized on a privacy flaw that Facebook had been aware of for about three years: the Facebook Messenger app automatically shared users’ locations with anyone who they messaged.

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 Khanna tweeted about the app on May 26 and posted about it on Reddit and Medium. Marauder’s Map began to go viral. Facebook, never one to miss a trend, quickly caught on.

 Within three days, Facebook asked Khanna to disable the app. The company also deactivated location sharing from desktops, which meant Khanna’s app wouldn’t work even if he hadn’t taken it down. And the company that Mark Zuckerberg famously launched from his Harvard dorm room withdrew its internship offer from this Harvard student, who apparently made the mistake of...launching an app from his dorm room.

 Before it was disabled, the extension was downloaded more than 85,000 times, Khanna said.

 About a week later, Facebook released a Messenger app update trumpeted as follows in a news release: “With this update, you have full control over when and how you share your location information.”

 The description didn’t mention the previous default settings. Nor did it point out that users who didn’t activate the update would continue to share their locations by default unless they manually altered their privacy settings.

 Matt Steinfeld, a Facebook spokesman, said the company had been working on a Messenger update long before Khanna’s blog post was published.

 “This isn’t the sort of thing that can happen in a week,” Steinfeld told Boston.com. “Even though we move very fast here, they’d been working on it for a few months.”

 Khanna, who detailed the experience in a case study published Tuesday in Technology Science, a journal published by Harvard University, told Boston.com he created the app to show the consequences of unintentionally sharing data. That way, he said, users could decide for themselves whether or not it was a violation of their privacy.

 Facebook Messenger, the company’s mobile messaging app, had been set up with automatic geolocation sharing since it launched in 2011. CNET drew attention to the issue in 2012 and showed users how to switch off location services. Various updates to the app improved its usability and even introduced fun cat emoji stickers, but the geolocation sharing remained.

 Khanna used Messenger frequently when he started studying at Harvard, but didn’t realize how much information he was unintentionally sharing until he began to look at his message history.

 The day after Marauder’s Map was posted, Khanna said his future manager at Facebook called him and asked him not to talk to the press. That evening, Khanna received a call from Facebook’s global communications lead for privacy and public policy, who reiterated that Khanna shouldn’t talk to the press because the story had become damaging.

 Khanna complied, redirecting all press inquiries back to Facebook.

 The next day, Facebook asked him to deactivate the extension. He did, but also updated his Medium post and the extension’s description to make it clear that Facebook asked him to disable the map.

 Three days after the extension was posted, and two hours before he was supposed to leave to start his internship, Khanna received a call from a Facebook employee telling him that the company was rescinding his summer internship offer. Khanna said he was told that he violated the Facebook user agreement when he scraped the site for data.

 However, Khanna told Boston.com that the data was from his own messages, which meant he used information accessible to all Facebook users, not just to employees.

 Khanna then received an email from Facebook’s head of global human resources and recruiting, who told him that his Medium post didn’t meet the high ethical standards expected of interns. Khanna was told that the issue wasn’t the Messenger app itself, but instead the way his blog described how Facebook collected and shared user data.

 “This mapping tool scraped Facebook data in a way that violated our terms, and those terms exist to protect people’s privacy and safety,” Steinfeld told Boston.com. “Despite being asked repeatedly to remove the code, the creator of this tool left it up. This is wrong and it’s inconsistent with how we think about serving our community.”

 In his first letter to investors back in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook follows an approach they coined the “Hacker Way.”

 “The word ‘hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” he wrote. “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done.”

 Khanna thought his extension — which he built quickly and which tested boundaries — was performing a public good by showing users how their data was being used.

 “I didn’t write the program to be malicious,” he said.

 In the end, Khanna had a pretty great summer after all. He accepted another internship with a tech start-up in Silicon Valley. And, he said, the back-and-forth with Facebook turned out to be an “internship experience” in itself that taught him a great deal.

 In the closing of his letter to investors, Zuckerberg said one of the five core values of Facebook is for its employees to “be bold.”

 But not too bold.

 Famous Massachusetts companies ||||| Facebook's Privacy Incident Response: a study of geolocation sharing on Facebook Messenger Aran Khanna Abstract

 Introduction

 Background

 Methods

 Results

 Discussion

 References

 Download

 Authors

 Citation

 Data

 Suggestions News coverage by day In 2012, a media outlet reported that Facebook Messenger shared personal geolocations by default

 In 2015, my demonstration displayed Facebook's shared data on a map; it was downloaded over 85,000 times

 After 9 days of news coverage, Facebook released an update that requires a user's permission to share geolocations Abstract Facebook allows users to chat among themselves on a mobile app called Facebook Messenger. From 2011 to the start of this study in May 2015, Facebook Messenger collected and shared user geo-locations as the default setting for every message sent from the Android mobile app. These locations were visible to anyone in a group chat, regardless of his or her relationship to the sender on the Facebook social network. Noticing a lack of significant public response to the visible nature of geo-location data on Facebook Messenger, despite media coverage dating back to 2012, I hypothesized that users were either (1) not aware, or (2) not concerned about the collection and visibility of their geo-location data on the app. This study explored this hypothesis by testing how the public responded to easily seeing the historical geo-location data collected and shared by Facebook Messenger. This study also tested the response from Facebook, a company with a reputation for encouraging outside-the-box "hacking". I wrote a browser application that requires a Facebook user to log into their Facebook account and then displays on a map the geo-location data shared with that user through Facebook Messenger chats. I announced the tool in a blog post and publicized it on Twitter and a few other online forums. The immediate public response was that of surprise and concern over the privacy issue raised by the collection and visibility of the geo-location data. Results summary: My tool has been downloaded over 85,000 times since its release, and more than 170 global news publications linked to my post. During the first three days after release of the geo-location mapping tool, Facebook also responded by demanding that I take down the tool, which I did. Nine days after the release, Facebook made sharing geo-location data an opt-in feature, allowing users to select to share personal geolocations in Facebook Messenger, although all historical geo-location data is still archived and shared. The results of the study suggest sufficient public attention may be necessary for redress of reported privacy concerns. Introduction Hundreds of millions of people share personal information on Facebook. Starting in 2011, Facebook implemented initiatives focused on "frictionless sharing" to automatically post a user's activity on music apps, such as Spotify, or news readers, such as The Washington Post, that use Facebook's Open Graph to integrate their websites more closely with Facebook. [1] This automatic posting of songs listened to and articles read was not very popular with users, and Facebook announced in May 2014 that it would decrease the visibility of passively shared user activities on their friends' news feeds. [2, 3, 4] Regulators have also expressed privacy concerns with regard to how Facebook handles sharing of user data. For example, in Europe, the Belgian Privacy Commission found that Facebook "fails to offer adequate control mechanisms" for the use of user data. Furthermore, "Facebook places too much burden on its users, [who are] expected to navigate Facebook's complex web of settings in search of possible opt-outs." Finally the commission stated that, "Facebook's default settings related to behavioral profiling … are particularly problematic." [5, 6] Background In 2011 Facebook launched Facebook Messenger, an application (or "app") for Android and iOS mobile devices. Messenger has the ability to share geo-location with messages. [7] When a Facebook user sends a message from a smartphone using Messenger, the user's physical location can also be sent. Prior to a June 2015 update, unless a user changed the initial default settings of the program, the app would collect and display geo-location information with message content by default in all conversations on the Android app, including conversations in chat groups with people who are not direct friends on Facebook's social network. When the app first installs on a mobile device, a notice appears that informs the user that the app will collect and share geo-location information. After that notice appears, the only other indicator of location data collection and sharing is a small blue icon next to the textbox in a conversation. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the Messenger app with this icon highlighted in Android. Figure 1. Image of Facebook Messenger's Android application showing a message sent by Roger. The small icon in the lower right, highlighted by a red box, is colored blue, showing that geo-location is being broadcast along with the message. Figure 2. The results of tapping a message with location attached on the Android app. Tapping on the message "*margo sry android autocorrct" reveals a map showing where the message originated. Figure 3. iOS app showing sender's location after the recipient clicks on a message with location attached. Other Facebook users can view shared geo-locations on the Facebook Messenger application by tapping on individual messages in their chat log, which reveals a map of the location where the individual was when the message was sent (Figure 2). On iOS, the application requests access to the device's geo-location data [9], and a similar interface for sharing location data in chats exists in the iOS Messenger app (Figure 3). On the desktop version of Messenger [10], geo-locations can be viewed by moving a mouse over a small pin attached to a message, to reveal a similar map (Figure 4). Figure 4. An image of a chat with Keyon from Facebook Messenger's desktop web application. The small pins next to the messages, highlighted by red boxes, show that geo-location is attached to these messages (and can be viewed by hovering the mouse over the pins). A user can disable geo-location sharing for individual conversations by pressing the blue icon in the app. A user can also disable geo-location sharing at any time for all messages by going into the application settings and finding the option to disable it. Adjusting privacy controls for location sharing on mobile operating systems is not entirely intuitive, as evidenced by the number of popular sites that have felt the need to publish guides on how to adjust geo-location controls. [11] Prior to the June 2015 Messenger update, location data sharing was on by default in Android. It required user permission to become perpetually active in the iOS Messenger app. [8] In 2012, CNET was the first major website to raise concerns about the privacy implications of Facebook Messenger's geo-location sharing feature. [12] A few other publications subsequently voiced concerns. [13, 14] Facebook did not take significant action to change the software in response to these concerns, and so the geo-location sharing continued to operate unchanged. There was not significant public pressure for change after the initial news coverage about Facebook's location sharing settings. This raises two questions: (1) whether Facebook users knew about the geo-location collection and sharing, and (2) whether they cared about its privacy implications. Facebook's location data practices presented an opportunity (1) to study how easy it is for a computer program to systematically copy the data and (2) to test whether Facebook's initial notification on app installation, along with the options to disable geo-location sharing within the Messenger app and through the Android and iOS system settings, were sufficient to satisfy the privacy concerns of users aware of the data sharing. My Interest in Facebook Messenger I became interested in this issue during the spring of 2015. At the time, I was a junior at Harvard College and had been offered a summer internship position at Facebook doing software development. I had secured the internship through Harvard's Office of Career Services' (OCS) On Campus Interview program. The internship was a paid position starting June 1, 2015, and I had signed a letter of intent to join the company, although I was not to be considered an employee until my June 1 start date, meaning that I was not privy to any proprietary information. I was attracted to work at Facebook by the popularity of its products and its publicly professed "hacker culture", where "code wins arguments." [15] Methods My approach was to build an extension for a common web browser so that a person running the extension could see the geo-locations of any Facebook user who is sending them (or a chat group they are in) messages through Facebook Messenger. I would then make the extension publicly available and alert the public through a blog post, Twitter and online forums. This approach made public what some may already be doing – harvesting geo-location information about Facebook users they have been in conversations with. It also provided transparency and feedback to users about their geo-location settings on Facebook. If there was no reaction by users or Facebook, then Facebook's current geo-location data practices were potentially sufficient to address privacy concerns. My expectation was that the historical pattern of lack of public pressure on this issue evidenced from 2012 through May 2015 would continue. The Extension The extension is a lightweight program (called a "script") that runs on Google's popular web browser, Chrome. After a user logs into a Facebook account, when the Facebook Messenger page appears on Chrome on a desktop computer, the script runs in the background. It detects calls to update the message page, requests a copy of the content and then plots the location data associated with the content onto a map that appears in the browser. This approach allows the extension to access all the geo-location data delivered to the browser. The precision of the location coordinates was accurate enough to locate a user to within a meter. It is important to note that all the data retrieved were accessible without the extension if a user clicked on the map icon for each message. The script did nothing illegal or malicious; rather, it accessed and displayed data already available to the user. Furthermore, the data aggregated on the map remained temporarily in memory and was discarded when the page reloaded. A full technical overview of the system can be seen in Figure 5. Using the extension, a user can choose to see a map of the geo-location data collected and shared by Facebook Messenger about the user and about others users in the same chat group. Figure 7 shows a demonstration of a map created with the extension. I uploaded the Chrome extension to the Chrome Web Store, marking it as unlisted so that only those with a specific link, which I shared on my blog, could access it. [16] The title of the extension on the Chrome Web Store was "Marauder's Map", which can be seen in Figure 6. I also archived an open source copy of the code for the extension in an MIT-licensed Github repository with the title "marauders-map". [17] This repository contained the code and setup instructions for creating the extension from source. Figure 5. A graphical depiction giving a full technical overview of the marauders-map Chrome extension. White boxes represent the components injected by the extension. The extension consists of a Chrome background script that copies asynchronous requests from the desktop Facebook Messenger page to the Facebook cloud endpoint for retrieving messages, and then passes the HTTP bodies of these requests to an injected content script running on the Facebook Messenger page. This content script then emulates the original asynchronous request (automatically adding the appropriate headers) and plots the location data returned by Facebook onto a map drawn using the Mapbox API. With this base code, the extension can collect data on all messages loaded onto the page asynchronously. However, owing to optimizations in how Facebook delivers data to the browser, some messages are sent embedded in the initial HTML packet (via a protocol known as BigPipe). Using a simple asynchronous GET request, the content script pulls this HTML packet and uses a regular expression to parse the embedded location data from the messages, then plots the data on the map. Figure 6. A screenshot of the extension download page in the Google Play store. Clicking the "Add to Chrome" button allowed users to automatically install the extension. The total number of users (88,924) the extension had acquired over its lifetime is visible next to the star rating in the top left Figure 7. A labeled example of a map created by the extension The Blog Post I drafted a blog post that introduced me as an avid user of Facebook Messenger. The post highlighted the fact that the Facebook Messenger App transmits geo-locations alongside many of the messages sent from mobile devices. The post went on to describe how the Marauder's Map extension aggregates this data onto a map. It noted that, at least on Android devices, the default setting for Messenger sends geo-location with messages. The blog also provided some examples from using the extension, including how a person's geo-location can accumulate over time to reveal travel patterns and other information. Publicizing the Blog On May 26, 2015, I published the blog post and corresponding code on Medium.com. [18] I also posted URL links to the blog post and extension to both Reddit (reddit.com/r/privacy) [19], a popular forum for discussions on data privacy, and Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) [20], a popular technical forum. Medium, Reddit, and Hacker News all have a voting system so that the most interesting articles are voted (or recommended) upwards to the top listings. Finally, using my public Twitter handle (@arankhanna), I sent out a tweet [21] asking my followers, consisting mainly of family and friends, to read the post. This study used, as one measure of public concern over Facebook Messenger's sharing of geo-location data, the popularity ranking of my posts on the three sites. If the public response to the posts was indifferent, then the ratings would likely not increase on these forums. This study also examined the quantity of news coverage received and the total number of downloads of the extension as other measures of public concern. Finally, the study examined Facebook's response to any public concern. Results Media Coverage News of the blog went viral, starting within 24 hours of posting and continuing for about 72 hours afterwards. For the first 12 hours of posting, little happened. The Reddit post received 7 upvotes, the Hacker News link also received 7 upvotes, and the Medium story had 3 recommendations by the end of the day. By the morning of the 27th, the story gained momentum on Twitter. Figures 8 and 9 show the Twitter responses to my posts over the week after I initially posted the blog. A total of 611 tweets and retweets reached a total follower audience of 3.63 million Twitter users. Figure 8. Twitter Activity after initial blog post. The total number of tweets about my posts per day between 5/26 and 5/31. Of the public tweets, 57% appeared on 5/27 as the story initially went viral globally and hit the front page of various forums such as Medium, Reddit Privacy, and Hacker News. The Twitter data for Figures 8, 9, and 12 was gathered by searching through all public Tweets between 5/26 and 6/5 (using Twitter's native search) for mentions of my name, my Twitter handle, Marauder's Map, and links to any of my postings and then recording all relevant tweets, their author, and their time of release. Figure 9. Twitter timeline. Total reach of tweets about my posts over the active hours between 5/26 and 5/29. The total number of tweets and retweets was 611 and the total number of Twitter followers reached was 3.63M. The measure of reach is the number of followers the tweets were delivered to. The figure shows the total number of tweets and the total number of followers reached. The biggest boost came from Medium.com, which tweeted about the post and promoted it on its site. The tweets from the largest influencers (those with over 10k followers) are labeled. The increased traffic to my posts raised their rankings. For example, my post on Medium became the most recommended story of the day. Posts linking to my blog and extension on both Hacker News and Reddit Privacy rose to the front page of both by 8 a.m. PST. By 9 a.m. PST, tech bloggers and content aggregators including The Next Web, Computerworld, and The Huffington Post covered the story in their blog posts and articles. The Huffington Post asked to directly cross-publish my Medium blog post on its site. Afterward, information about my posts spread to Al Jazeera, The International Business Times, and other major news organizations. Figure 10. Press coverage after initial blog post. The total number of press stories about my posts per day between 5/25 and 6/5. I gathered the news data for Figures 10, 11, and 12 by searching for mentions of my name, my Twitter handle, Marauder's Map and links to any of my postings between 5/26 and 6/5 on Google News and recording all relevant stories, their author, their time of release and their country of origin. By the 28th, only two days after my original posting, news stories about my posts appeared on CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many large international European, Australian, and Brazilian publications (e.g. La Stampa, Der Standard, Globo, NDTV, The Sydney Herald). By the 28th, large TV networks such as CNBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN had covered my posts as well. Figure 11 shows the total number of stories written about my posts per country. Figure 11. News coverage count by country. Count of news publications about my posts published on or before 6/5 grouped by country of origin. The United States, Europe and India were the top three origins for stories overall, with the United States accounting for over a third of all stories written. Figure 12. Twitter activity and news coverage by day. Number of tweets (right vertical axis) and press stories (left vertical axis) about my posts per day between 5/27 and 6/5. The total count of news publications was 178 and the total count of tweets was 347. The count of tweets and stories appearing on peak days are displayed. Extension Downloads There have been more than 85,000 downloads of the Chrome extension since its release (Figure 6). Users continued to download the extension even after I deactivated it in response to Facebook's request, as described below. Facebook's Response The afternoon of the 27th, one day after the Medium blog post's publication, Facebook contacted me. My future manager phoned and asked me not to speak to any press; however, I was told that I could keep my blog post up. By that evening, the global communications lead for privacy and public policy at Facebook called me to clarify Facebook's expectations that I not speak to the press, saying that his objective was to hamper the spread of what had become a damaging story. By midday of the 28th, the global communications lead for privacy and public policy at Facebook requested by email that I disable the extension. I complied within the hour by deactivating the Mapbox API key associated with the extension so that all current and future users could no longer load the map used to display geo-location data. On the morning of the 29th, three days after my initial posts, media reported that my Chrome extension was turned off and no longer viable. Additionally, Facebook had tweaked its code to remove location data from browsers. This alteration did not change Facebook's policy of collecting and sharing geo-location data by default from the Facebook Messenger app on Android and with user permission on iOS. However, Facebook no longer transmitted this location data to browsers. This action merely halted the use of an extension such as mine that uses browser data. Geo-locations remained visible on the Facebook Messenger mobile application, and seemingly, the map could be rebuilt using an interface to the mobile application. On the afternoon of the 29th, three days after my initial posts, Facebook phoned me to inform me that it was rescinding the offer of a summer internship, citing as a reason that the extension violated the Facebook user agreement by "scraping" the site. The head of global human resources and recruiting followed up with an email message stating that my blog post did not reflect the "high ethical standards" around user privacy expected of interns. According to the email, the privacy issue was not with Facebook Messenger, but rather with my blog post and code describing how Facebook collected and shared users' geo-location data. On June 4, nine days after my original posts, Facebook officially announced a Messenger update with a new feature requiring users to opt into sharing their location during chats. Sharing would no longer be the default. The press release did not mention the previous default settings for geo-location data and did not disclose with whom Facebook would share the previously collected data. [22] As of June 2015, shared geo-location data from before the update remains viewable on the mobile application, and users who did not update to the new versions of the Messenger app on iOS and Android still share geo-locations in the same manner as before. Discussion At the beginning of the study, historical behavior by Facebook and its users suggested that there might not be significant public concern about Facebook Messenger's sharing of geo-location data. Even though the media had highlighted the issue four years earlier, Facebook had not been concerned enough to make any fundamental change to its software. So, why the big change now? What seems to have made the difference was transparency. It is possible that before my extension and blog post, the degree of location data collection and sharing by Facebook Messenger was hard for an average user to notice and thus did not raise significant concern. Without public pressure, Facebook may have lacked significant incentive to change. My extension and blog post made the data collection and sharing practice real and transparent. The resulting public attention, with over 85,000 downloads of my tool, more than 170 news articles, and 3.6 million Twitter users exposed to my posts through tweets and retweets, seemed to motivate Facebook to react. What does this say about privacy protection? Can we reasonably expect Facebook or others with an interest in collecting and sharing personal data, to be responsible guardians of privacy? Could this work have been done inside Facebook to understand how its users view the collection and sharing of their data? Must future privacy guardians always be on the outside? References 1. Darwell B. Facebook's frictionless sharing mistake. SocialTimes. January 22, 2013. http:/ / www.adweek.com/ socialtimes/ facebooks-frictionless-sharing-mistake/ 289289 2. Facebook. Making It Easier to Share With Who You Want. May 22, 2014. http:/ / newsroom.fb.com/ news/ 2014/ 05/ news-feed-fyi-giving-people-more-control-over-when-they-share-from-apps/ 3. Hamburger E. Facebook gives up on automatically posting everything you do online. The Verge. May 27, 2014. http:/ / www.theverge.com/ 2014/ 5/ 27/ 5754862/ facebook-gives-up-on-automatically-sharing-everything-you-do-online-open-graph 4. Popper B. Facebook's social reader apps nosedive in popularity. The Verge. May 7, 2012. http:/ / www.theverge.com/ 2012/ 5/ 7/ 3005580/ facebook-open-graph-frictionless-social-reader-decline 5. Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT. ICRI/ CIR and iMinds-SMIT advise Belgian Privacy Commission in Facebook investigation. KU Leuven. March 31, 2015. http:/ / www.law.kuleuven.be/ icri/ en/ news/ item/ icri-cir-advises-belgian-privacy-commission-in-facebook-investigation 6. Because Facebook in Europe officially operates out of Ireland, the firm states that it formally abides by Irish regulations in the EU. See Facebook. Facebook Response to European Commission Communication on personal data protection in the European Union. Accessed July 30, 2015. http:/ / ec.europa.eu/ justice/ news/ consulting_public/ 0006/ contributions/ not_registered/ facebook_en.pdf 7. Facebook. A Faster Way to Message on Mobile. October 9, 2011. https:/ / www.facebook.com/ notes/ facebook/ a-faster-way-to-message-on-mobile/ 10150249543542131 8. McHugh M. Facebook Messenger Will Finally Stop Telling People Where You Are. Wired. June 5, 2015. http:/ / www.wired.com/ 2015/ 06/ stop-facebook-messenger-telling-people/ 9. Burnham K. Facebook Messenger: 5 Misconceptions. InformationWeek. August 11, 2014. http:/ / www.informationweek.com/ software/ social/ facebook-messenger-5-misconceptions/ d/ d-id/ 1297913 10. Facebook Messages. https:/ / www.facebook.com/ messages/ 11. Nickinson P. How to keep Facebook Messenger from sharing your location. Android Central. August 9, 2014. http:/ / www.androidcentral.com/ how-keep-facebook-messenger-sharing-your-location 12. Ciprani J. How to prevent Facebook Messenger from sharing your location. CNET. May 10, 2012. http:/ / www.cnet.com/ how-to/ how-to-prevent-facebook-messenger-from-sharing-your-location/ 13. Brinkmann M. Beware: Facebook Messenger Reveals Locations, Introduces Read Confirmations. gHacks Tech News. May 5, 2012. http:/ / www.ghacks.net/ 2012/ 05/ 05/ beware-facebook-messenger-reveals-locations-introduces-read-confirmations/ 14. Murphy D. Facebook Adds Locations, Read Receipts to Messenger App. PCMag. May 6, 2012. http:/ / www.pcmag.com/ article2/ 0,2817,2404031,00.asp 15. Letter from Mark Zuckerberg pg. 67-70 of Facebook. Form S-1 for United States Securities and Exchange Commission. February 1, 2012. http:/ / www.sec.gov/ Archives/ edgar/ data/ 1326801/ 000119312512034517/ d287954ds1.htm#toc287954_10 16. arankhanna25. Marauders Map. Chrome Web Store. May 26, 2015. https:/ / chrome.google.com/ webstore/ detail/ marauders-map/ mliofombcghaamgjkmmmmlepkiacdhkh 17. arank. marauders-map. Github. May 26. 2015. https:/ / github.com/ arank/ marauders-map 18. Khanna A. Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger. Medium. May 26, 2015. https:/ / medium.com/ @arankhanna/ stalking-your-friends-with-facebook-messenger-9da8820bd27d 19. arankhanna. I wrote a chrome extension to show how easy it is to track your friends' locations with Facebook Messenger. Reddit. May 26, 2015. https:/ / www.reddit.com/ r/ privacy/ comments/ 37db80/ i_wrote_a_chrome_extension_to_show_how_easy_it_is/ 20. arankhanna. Hacker News. May 26, 2015. https:/ / news.ycombinator.com/ submitted?id=arankhanna 21. @arankhanna. Check out this blog + extension I wrote about how your friends can track you from Facebook Messenger https:/ / medium.com/ @arankhanna/ stalking-your-friends-with-facebook-messenger-9da8820bd27d … . Twitter. May 26, 2015. https:/ / twitter.com/ arankhanna/ status/ 603293036693463040 22. Facebook. A New Way to Send a Location in Messenger. June 4, 2015. http:/ / newsroom.fb.com/ news/ 2015/ 06/ a-new-way-to-send-a-location-in-messenger/ Authors Aran Khanna is a senior at Harvard College majoring in Computer Science joint with Mathematics. During his time at Harvard he has interned at Microsoft, Novus, a hedge fund data analysis startup based in New York City, and Marianas Labs, a deep learning startup based in Mountain View. Aran is an active blogger in his free time and is passionate about the impact the increasing role of technology in our lives is having on our privacy. Referring Editor: Latanya Sweeney Citation Khanna A. Facebook's Privacy Incident Response: a study of geolocation sharing on Facebook Messenger. Technology Science. 2015081101. August 11, 2015. https://techscience.org/a/2015081101 Data Khanna A. Replication Data for: Facebook's Privacy Incident Response, a study of geolocation sharing on Facebook Messenger. Harvard Dataverse. August 10, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/D2SNRI Suggestions Enter your recommendation for follow-up or ongoing work in the box at the end of the page. Feel free to provide ideas for next steps, follow-on research, or other research inspired by this paper. Perhaps someone will read your comment, do the described work, and publish a paper about it. What do you recommend as a next research step? Suggestion 1 How does Facebook's Privacy Policy or Facebook's License Agreement for the app at the time match these changes in Facebook Messenger's default on sharing personal geolocation? How do these compare with other apps that share personal geolocation data with other users? [Editors] Suggestion 2 The demonstration code in this paper used the browser. Is the same information still available if you wrote code that could access the information that would be delivered to a mobile phone? [Editors] Suggestion 3 Which news outlets were critical in spreading the word? Have these information flows been instrumental in possibly influencing other technology changes? [Editors] Suggestion 4 I would like to see some ethnographic studies that elucidate the depth of understanding of this issue by the "common man." How is privacy understood by older or less tech savvy individuals? How likely are these people to be aware of these issues? What protections should exist for those who are not knowledgeable enough to protect themselves? Suggestion 5 Interview with Apple's Tim Cook and get on his privacy/secyurity team! (And thanks for the important difference you've already made.) Continued Good Luck on your career! Suggestion 6 First of all, thank you for your great work. I would like to see more studies about privacy awareness in people. What will make people act? What makes companies act? Suggestion 7 Excellent analysis of the information dissemination through various channels Aran! I would like to see more studies that track information dissemination. What are good ways to collect that data? Suggestion 8 Maybe this was a feature in messenger, not a flaw. Maybe opt-out rather than opt-in made for a better user experience. I would like to see a study about utility. Did users like it better the other way? Or, are users indifferent to the change? Is anyone complaining about the change? Your paper suggests that the media coverage made a difference. Is the media response a good proxy for how users feel? Suggestion 9 Remember the Golden Rule: He with the Gold makes the rules. Being correct and right in the context of an angry employer... ramifications. I would like to know whether an employee can ever really do this kind of work effectively? Suggestion 10 I would like to see a study of whistle blower laws. Maybe they need to be beefed up. Suggestion 11 This is a brilliant study and exposes the lack of privacy concerns by companies like Facebook, which pay little more than lip service to an issue that most Internet users care about deeply. I'm sure Facebook felt its collective "face" flush over the embarrassment of this, got indignant and revoked the student's internship. Instead, the company should have hired him on the spot. A company that exalts itself as encouraging hacking culture, as Facebook does, would have been a good candidate to have hired him, but they did not. I would like to see a study about corporate structures and cultures to better understand the internal pressures that lead to this outcome, which seems typical. Suggestion 12 Question: Did the author Mr.Khanna consult his supervisor before publishing the tool? Did he even know who his Facebook supervisor might be? He did this work while he was still at school and before the summer internship started. Mr. Khanna said he promptly complied with Facebook instructions to stop the demo. I would like a study about the role and responsibilities of summer interns who do research at school and who are employees for a summer. How does this work? Can only students who will never do research related to a company be hired by the company? Should students who want to be hired never do this kind of research? It seems optimal to have students interested in doing this kind of work actually being hired by these companies. Is that possible? Suggestion 13 It's not just FACEBOOK that's doing this. I would like to see a study of geolocation sharing across apps. Suggestion 14 Excellent work. I would like to vote up Suggestion 4. I am quite common, with zero tech savvy. Yet even I can recognize the implications of hacking and tracking personal devices without the user's knowledge and my concern is dismissed by most as paranoia. I would love to know what the tipping point might be for people. We love our wired world and we have willingly put on blinders, when are we forced to look and know? Suggestion 15 I write this not to thank Mr. Khanna. If the number of people who tweeted is in millions then the number of passive people would probably be at least 10 times. I was surprised by the fact that geolocation pin points to within a meter. That's scary. I would like a study that tracks how much of a person's time is captured in someone's geo-location database. If I carry my mobile phone with me all the time, then how often does some database somewhere know where I am? Suggestion 16 Very interesting. It would be interesting too to know how many times similar historical private information's (like users position, calls, messages, etc.) have been accessed after creation dates, from what location, read only or modified, moved to another category/location, etc. The metadata of archived files for alpha individuals and for beta groups (e.g., by interests, age, location, incomes) can provide many details. An analyze from this reversed point of view, of how the databases in question are used further by their owners, could reveal their objects of interest (not really connected with targeted advertising), as well as lots of details about the interested persons behind. Suggestion 17 It would be interesting to learn how much is known by vulnerable populations about about default location sharing of Facebook and other apps. Victims of domestic violence, jurors, and police are examples of populations that may be vulnerable in different ways. Suggestion 18 If only facebook itself views my geo location, it wouldn't be an issue for me. But if others can see it, then it is. I would like to see a survey of personal attitudes towards geolocation sharing. Suggestion 19 When Facebook started selling mobile ads in 2012, not even the keenest optimists could have predicted how big a success they would become. In each of the past ten quarters, mobile ads have accounted for more then 90% of Facebook's revenue growth. In the first six months of 2015, all of the company's growth came from advertising on tablets and smartphones. Mobile ad revenue now accounts for 76 percent of Facebook's advertising revenue and 72 percent of total revenue. I would be interested to know the role of geo-tagging in FB`s revenues as stated above. If all users disabled their geo-tagging, what will be the impact on FB to sell customized ads. Suggestion 20 I cannot find out "Is geo-location so important to be used by applications". I mean it should be an option like "What's App" gives share your location , only with those we want to share and not by default with all. Pin-point accurate geo-location is not necessary rather only the region from which the user is online is sufficient to share. I appreciate the way Mr. Aran did the whole analysis and presentation systematically. Big companies should take care of their users who blindly believe and uses their applications and should seek prior permission before collection and share of user's data about location. I would like to see a study to know if more gross geo-location reporting would work as well in many apps that use geo-location. Suggestion 21 I see that you do not cite names from Facebook, which understandably is in keeping with most academic guidelines and with most human subject considerations. Everything should be documented and if applicable in writing such as your internship. The fact your paper does not give names of specific people does not hold them accountable for thier actions, and makes investigations much harder. I would have had a signed legal internship document before I moved. I would like to see, among other things, an ethongraphic study that interviews employees and includes those involved. For that, I assume if researchers contact you that you will share the names of the people. Suggestion 22 Found your site on Google. This is a cool post. I'd like to see you take the main idea from this article and carete another second experiment, and maybe you could embed a vid, also? Suggestion 23 Read this article because of my school assignment. Do we still have privacy? Thank you for educating people and making me aware of everything that is happening now. Suggestion 24 Apparently, when you download a copy of your Facebook data, it also downloads a .txt file called "security". If opened with MS Word, it shows ALL account activity, used cookies, user agents, IP addresses, estimated geolocations and administrative records such as name changes and checkpoint accesses. At this point, we all know that Facebook collects data on its users. But perhaps you could demonstrate how vast that data is. Submit your suggestion We welcome your ideas for next steps and additional research related to this paper. This is not a general discussion forum, and the moderator will not post unrelated contributions.

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  ||||| Stalking Your Friends with Facebook Messenger

 Aran Khanna Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 26, 2015

 Edit: At Facebook’s request I have again deactivated the *official* version of the extension. Furthermore, Facebook has deactivated location sharing from the desktop webpage so the extension will not work.

 When I came to college Facebook Messenger became an integral part of my digital life. I quickly found that it was the easiest way to keep in touch with old high school friends, contact people I had just met, organize impromptu poker games with people I hardly knew, and everything in between. However, I didn't realize how much data about me Messenger was revealing to the people I chatted with until last week when I began tinkering with my message history.

 As you may know, when you send a message from the Messenger app there is an option to send your location with it. What I realized was that almost every other message in my chats had a location attached to it, so I decided to have some fun with this data. I wrote a Chrome extension for the Facebook Messenger page (https://www.facebook.com/messages/) that scrapes all this location data and plots it on a map. You can get this extension here and play around with it on your message data.

 A screenshot of the map the extension creates:

 What I Found

 You may not believe that there are enough of these location tagged messages to provide truly invasive data on any one person, since they must be on mobile, with GPS on, and choose to share their location for it to be sent… right?

 What you should keep in mind is that the mobile app for Facebook Messenger defaults to sending a location with all messages.

 You can see this location data by clicking on individual messages in the mobile app to reveal a map of where they were sent from.

 You can tell if your location is being shared in a message if the little GPS icon next to the text-box is colored blue.

 Go ahead and see how many messages in your chats have locations attached. I’m guessing it’s a lot of them. And if this isn't already starting to get a bit weird, the first thing I noticed when I started to write my code was that the latitude and longitude coordinates of the message locations have more than 5 decimal places of precision, making it possible to pinpoint the sender’s location to less than a meter.

 Coordinates scraped by my code for two of my friends.

 Once the extension was written I naturally started seeing what kind of things I could discover about my Facebook friends.

 I am in a pretty active group chat with some of my brother’s friends (who I am friends with on Facebook but don’t know too well). They are all fairly active on the chat, posting once a day or more.

 Let’s pick on the one who goes to Stanford. By simply looking at the cluster of messages sent late at night you can tell exactly where his dorm is, and in fact approximately where his room is located in that dorm.

 Where my acquaintance who goes to Stanford sleeps.

 Furthermore, by gathering a couple weeks’ worth of chat data on the map and looking at the location clusters you can even figure out his weekly schedule. With this you can predict exactly which building he would be in at a given time.

 The location history data over the course of a few weeks for my Stanford acquaintance.

 In fact I found that I could infer a schedule for almost everyone in this chat as well as the other active chats I am in.

 Highlighted the important location clusters for another Facebook friend who is a student at UW

 I found that I could even do this for people who I am not Facebook friends with. I am currently in a large active chat to organize poker games with some fellow students, many of whom I am not Facebook friends with. However, I can still track their locations extremely accurately from the messages they send the group.

 The detailed location history of someone I am not friends with on Facebook

 You can now see the fun (and slightly creepy) things this data allows you to do. But wait there's more! One day when I was chatting frequently with a friend of mine (@tomasreimers) the map allowed me to track his hour by hour locations. At the end of that day the location history on the map closely matched the location history collected by his phone.

 Additionally, this map aggregates the location data from all the messages that I send. For the days I was frequently on messenger (posting to different conversations every hour or so), my location history on this map lined up very closely with my phone’s location history.

 My scraped messenger location history for a certain active day

 My Android phone’s location history for that same day.

 This means that if a few people who I am chatting with separately collude and send each other the locations I share with them, they would be able to track me very accurately without me ever knowing.

 If you want to map your friends’ locations to see for yourself how fun (and creepy) this data is you can download the extension for Chrome here. The code is also available and open source on Github.

 For those of you already wanting out here is a great guide on how to ensure you don’t send your locations from the Messenger app.

 What’s The Problem?

 Let me reiterate that I still find Facebook Messenger extremely useful and use it religiously, albeit with location sharing now turned off. This may lead you to wonder if there really is a problem here, since there is always option to not share your exact coordinates with messages. However, everyone I have shown this extension to has been anywhere from surprised to appalled that this much of their very personal data is online for their friends (and even complete strangers) to access. So it is seems that there is an issue.

 Let’s start at the root of the problem: why do so many people give up their location data so readily on Messenger?

 The main problem is that every time you open your phone and send a single message it’s so easy to forget about your location data being attached to it. Furthermore, it seems so harmless to attach a location with a single message, but the problem is over time the information from these messages adds up.

 Both of these issues in some way stem from the fact that locations are not only included by default, but also are rather subtly placed in the UI. The power of defaults on human behavior is well documented in psychology and suggests that few people will put in the effort to deviate from the default action of sharing. Furthermore, because there are no readily visible consequences to sharing your location, users are never incentivized to devote attention to what this default of sharing is actually revealing about them.

 I decided to write this extension, because we are constantly being told how we are losing privacy with the increasing digitization of our lives, however the consequences never seem tangible. With this code you can see for yourself the potentially invasive usage of the information you share, and decide for yourself if this is something you should worry about.

 If you found this interesting you may also enjoy my post on Venmo’s privacy flaws and the extension I made to reveal them. |||||
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– Talk about being too good at your non-job. A Harvard University junior lost his Facebook internship two hours before he had planned to travel to it after he exploited a privacy issue in the social network's Messenger system. Aran Khanna discussed his experience and findings in a paper published in Harvard's Technology Science journal. "From 2011 to the start of this study in May 2015, Facebook Messenger collected and shared user geo-locations as the default setting for every message sent from the Android mobile app," he writes. The flaw was that those locations could be seen by anyone in a group chat, even if the person who sent the message wasn't friends with everyone else in the group. And so Khanna developed a browser app called Marauder's Map that exposed, on a map, the geo-location data that was being shared. He tweeted about his Chrome extension and posted about it on Medium on May 26. By the 28th, CNN, the Washington Post, and many others had covered his findings; the extension was downloaded 85,000 times. That same day, Facebook asked Khanna to disable the app; he did. The company also deactivated location sharing on desktops and released a June 4 update that required users to opt in to location sharing. It also withdrew Khanna's internship, which was to start on June 1. The official reason given was a violation of the "high ethical standards expected of interns," according to Boston.com. "This mapping tool scraped Facebook data in a way that violated our terms," a Facebook rep tells the site. Khanna says his app was created using his own Messenger history, not data scraping. "I didn't write the program to be malicious," he says. Khanna ended up securing an internship with another Silicon Valley firm. (This alleged intern tale of woe involves the Olsen twins.)


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All roads running through the Valley Forge National Historical Park were closed Tuesday after a sewer main break caused extensive flooding. Some reports estimated the volume of spilled raw sewage to be about 5 million gallons.

 Tredyffrin Township officials said the break appeared to have occurred around 10:30 a.m. in a pipe section of the Valley Creek Trunk Sewer Force Main near the intersection of Routes 252 and 23 in Upper Merion Township.

 The spill drew a multi-agency response that also included contractors and environmental and engineering consultants, according to authorities. Officials said in a release that repairing the main “will require extensive damage assessment and traffic control.”

 An initial radio report indicated about 5 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the Valley Creek. Neither township nor state officials immediately returned requests for comment Tuesday evening. ||||| Crews in Chester County are working to stop raw sewage from gushing out of a broken pipe into a creek at Valley Forge National Park. (Published Tuesday, Mar 18, 2014)

 Crews worked through the night to repair a broken sewer main that sent 5,000 gallons of sewage per minute into the creek at the Valley Forge National Historical Park.

 The break occurred in the Valley Creek Trunk Sewer Force Main Tuesday morning near the intersection of Routes 252 and 23 in Tredyffrin Township, Chester County, Pa., according to township officials.

 The 30-inch main is shared by Tredyffrin Township, Easttown Township, East Whiteland Township, Malvern Borough and Willistown Township.

 Sewer Leak at Valley Forge Park

 Water gushed onto the roadway at the intersection of Route 252 and Yellow Springs Road in Valley Forge Park causing traffic problems. (Published Tuesday, Mar 18, 2014)

 Park rangers and police said water from the broken sewer main pushed through Route 23 in the park around 11 a.m. Tuesday and spilled off the side of the road.

 Officials say the same main also broke six weeks ago, though they have not yet determined the cause of that break or the most recent one.

 "I don't want to speculate right now," said William Martin, a Tredyffrin Township worker. "We've engaged other consultants to give us a long-term assessment of the pipe."

 Overnight crews removed the pipe. A new pipe is expected to arrive at the scene around 7 a.m. Wednesday.

 "We're working as fast as we can," Martin said. "Really it's a time game to get the pipe back in the ground."

 The following roads that run through the park are closed:

 Route 23 eastbound from Davis Road to Rt. 252

 Route 23 westbound from N. Gulph Road to Rt. 252

 Route 252 is closed northbound from the Pa. Turnpike

 North and South Outer Line Drives

 Gulph Road is closed from Thomas Road to Rt. 23

 Yellow Springs Road is closed at the Covered Bridge

 Public works officials expect these sections of road in the immediate area to be closed for several days as construction crews continue to repair the damaged water main and resurface portions of the street.

 A PennDOT official told NBC10 that the broken main caused thousands of gallons of sewage per minute to leak into the Valley Creek, which feeds into the Schuylkill River. Officials say more than three million gallons of sewage may be in the creek.

 Officials say the sewage leak doesn't pose a threat to humans but could be a safety concern for wildlife in the area.

 NBC10 reached out to the Pa. Department of Environmental Protection asking how the leak could impact the surrounding area and the towns downriver, but officials have not responded to our calls. |||||

– Perhaps today's most disgusting news: A sewer main at Valley Forge National Historic Park broke yesterday, sending 5,000 gallons of sewage per minute into the creek at the Pennsylvania park. Crews worked overnight to repair the 30-inch main, which had also broken six weeks ago, NBC Philadelphia reports. A replacement pipe was expected to arrive this morning. At least 5 million gallons of raw sewage have leaked into Valley Creek, WPVI reports. "All the water goes down into the Schuylkill River and then it goes into Philadelphia in the Delaware River. People get their drinking water out of this and there's the health problem," says one state conservation officer; but NBC Philadelphia says officials insist humans are at no risk from the leak. Wildlife, however, could be. All roads running through the park are currently closed, Philly.com reports; they are expected to remain closed for a few days as crews continue to work in the area.


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“America's strength doesn't come from lashing out,” Hillary Clinton said Thursday, delivering a harsh rebuke to Donald Trump as she accepted the Democratic nomination for U.S. president.

 Clinton’s speech capped the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she made history as the first female presidential nominee of a major party. While Clinton did not skip over the historic aspect of her nomination, she spent most of her hour-long speech emphasizing two, interlocking themes: the importance of community and togetherness, and the fundamental unfitness of the Republican nominee for office. It was not so dark and ominous a speech as Trump’s own acceptance speech a week ago in Cleveland, but it was a negative speech: a warning against the danger posed to America by a Trump presidency.

 The Atlantic's coverage of the Republican and Democratic nominations for the U.S. presidential election

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 “None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community, or lift a country totally alone,” she said, reprising a theme she introduced in It Takes a Village 20 years ago and echoing her campaign slogan, “Stronger Together.” She added later: “Every generation of Americans has come together to make our country freer, fairer, and stronger. None of us can do it alone.”

 The slogan, the latest of many, has never really seemed to take, but here, contrasted with Trump’s charismatic, semi-authoritarian approach, it began to come into its own. What Clinton was offering is, after a fashion, a small-c conservative viewpoint, emphasizing community, family, and cooperation. Clinton contrasted that vision with Trump’s, scorning a climactic phrase from his own acceptance speech: “I alone can fix it.”

 “Isn't he forgetting troops on the front lines?” she asked. “Police officers and fire fighters who run toward danger? Doctors and nurses who care for us? Teachers who change lives? Entrepreneurs who see possibilities in every problem? Mothers who lost children to violence and are building a movement to keep other kids safe? He's forgetting every last one of us. Americans don't say. ‘I alone can fix it.’ We say, ‘We'll fix it together.’”

 She assailed Trump for his business career, citing his corporate bankruptcies and the stories of contractors and subcontractors who weren’t paid for work they did at his resorts and casinos. She criticized him for manufacturing some of his many branded products in overseas factories, with a slightly stilted punch line: “Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again. Well, he could start by actually making things in America again.” She portrayed him as incapable of handling the slightest provocation, much less the pressures of the Oval Office.

 “In the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesn't get: that America is great because America is good,” she said. “So enough with the bigotry and bombast. Donald Trump's not offering real change. He's offering empty promises. What are we offering? A bold agenda to improve the lives of people across our country—to keep you safe, to get you good jobs, and to give your kids the opportunities they deserve.”

 Trump, as she archly pointed out, offered little in the way of specific policy suggestions during his speech. She, in turn, often seems to enjoy the policy section of her speeches the most, and on Thursday she went through a litany of her proposals, including debt-free college education, immigration reform, campaign-finance reform, and a more robust social-safety net. As Clinton acknowledged early on, her platform has been heavily shaped by the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont progressive who gave her a tougher run than expected during the Democratic primary.

 “Bernie, your campaign inspired millions of Americans.”

 “Bernie, your campaign inspired millions of Americans, particularly the young people who threw their hearts and souls into our primary,” she said. “You've put economic and social justice issues front and center, where they belong.” She also reached out to Sanders’s supporters, a small but extremely vocal group of whom remain opposed to her. “Your cause is our cause,” she said. (Not all of them bought it: On occasion, her speech was interrupted by chants of “Hillary,” as her supporters tried to drown out hecklers.)

 Clinton has never been a great speaker. Despite her long record in the public eye, only a couple of memorable speeches come to mind: Her famous “women’s rights are human rights” speech, and her “18 million cracks” speech when she conceded the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008. “The truth is, through all these years of public service, the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” she acknowledged Thursday. “I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me.” Clinton’s Thursday address doesn’t seem likely to join the list of noteworthy blockbusters. It was a serviceable, workmanlike speech, short on soaring rhetoric.

 She didn’t really need to deliver such a moment. The obvious emotional peak of the night came some time earlier, as Khizr and Ghazala Khan stood on the rostrum. The Pakistani immigrants were the parents of Humayun Khan, a young Muslim American soldier killed while serving in Iraq in 2004. Speaking calmly and steadily but with great emotion, Khizr Khan addressed Trump, who has called for a moratorium on Muslims entering the United States, and more recently on immigration from areas with terrorism.

 “Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law,’” he said, brandishing a pocket edition. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America—you will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.”

 “You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” Khan said.

 Khan’s pained, passionate words won praise from across the political world, especially among conservatives who reject Trump. The speech was part of an evening of intense patriotism, even nationalism. A few wags suggested that the Democratic National Convention’s fourth night more closely resembled a Republican confab. Doug Elmets, a former aide in Ronald Reagan’s White House, delivered his own endorsement of Clinton. So did Jennifer Pierotti Lim, the founder of Republican Woman for Hillary.

 Captain Florent Groberg, a Medal of Honor winner who was badly injured in Afghanistan, told the hall, “I'm here tonight not as a Democrat or a Republican. I'm here as a proud immigrant to this country, a proud veteran of the United States Army, and the proud recipient of our country's highest military honor.”

 The Clinton campaign is ready to build a big, broad coalition.

 Retired General John Allen, flanked by a rainbow platoon of veterans, delivered a fiery, martial speech. “From the battlefield to the capitals of our allies, friends, and partners, the free peoples of the world look to America as the last best hope for peace and for liberty for all humanity, for we are the greatest country on this planet,” Allen said. He added, in rebuke of Trump, “With her as our commander-in-chief, our international relations will not be reduced to a business transaction. Our armed forces will not become an instrument of torture, and they will not be ordered to engage in murder or carry out other illegal activities.”

 The night wasn’t purely nationalistic and center-right. Clinton was introduced with an underwhelming speech by her daughter, Chelsea, as her husband, former President Bill Clinton, beamed from the audience. Spotlighting the diversity of views in the party, another speaker was Sherrod Brown, the Ohio senator and progressive darling who was considered as a potential vice-presidential candidate. The Reverend William Barber II, who as president of the North Carolina NAACP spearheaded the Moral Mondays movement, delivered a thunderous, revival-style address.

 “I say to you tonight, that some issues are not left versus right or liberal versus conservative, they are right versus wrong,” Barber said. “Is there a heart in this house? Is there a heart in America? Is there somebody that has a heart for the poor? A heart for the vulnerable? Then stand up. Organize together. Fight for the heart of this nation.

 But the evening’s program was unmistakably designed to help Clinton expand her support past the Democratic Party, reaching out to moderates, Independents, and Republicans who reject Trump. The theme built on a foundation laid by President Obama in his speech Wednesday, which won somewhat grudging applause from conservatives. That strategy is not without risks. Some liberals were troubled by the tributes to police during the program, and both Allen and Groberg were interrupted by hecklers chanting, “No more war!” (These, too, were drowned out with “USA” chants, a feature more common at Republican rallies.) But the Clinton campaign, having weathered a stormy start to the convention, has seemingly decided it can count on a unified Democratic Party and is ready to build a big, broad coalition. Both parties entered their conventions seeking to unify their bases and turn to the general election. Only the Democrats look to have succeeded. —David Graham

 Sacha Zimmerman Link 11:57 PM Charles Mostoller / Reuters ||||| Dan Quayle debating Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. (Darryl Heikes for USN&WR)

 Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen was never one given to the clever quip or colorful anecdote. Buttoned-up and taciturn, he made a disastrous stab at a presidential run in 1976. Newspaper scribe Jack Germond once compared the Democrat to plate glass—substantial, but people just couldn't see it.

 But during a 1988 vice presidential debate in Omaha, Bentsen delivered one of the most devastating slights ever. Turning to his GOP opponent, Sen. Dan Quayle, who had defended his inexperience as similar to that of John F. Kennedy, Bentsen responded with scathing disdain: "Senator," he said, "I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

 The audience erupted. In that moment, Bentsen, on the ticket with presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, managed to remake his dry persona and earn himself a footnote in political history. "It's the best put-down I've ever seen," says Germond. But was Bentsen's flawless response to Quayle, then 41 and running with George H. W. Bush, rehearsed?

 Yes and no, says Dennis Eckart, who helped Bentsen, then 67, prepare for the debate. An Ohio congressman at the time, Eckart ordered video of Quayle on the campaign trail. There was Quayle raking his fingers through his hair and posing witha h and thrust in his pocket—all, Eckart believed, conscious imitations of Kennedy. And the Indiana senator was comparing his years in Congress to those of Kennedy. On a legal pad, Eckart jotted: "The sob thinks he's JFK."

 The answer. Eckart had to persuade Bentsen that Quayle could make the comparison during the debate. (Germond says that Quayle's advisers had told him not to use the Kennedy reference.) Once convinced, Bentsen "turned his whole body to me and said, 'I know John F. Kennedy. I waited for John F. Kennedy that fateful day. He's a friend of mine.'" Eckart said, "That's the answer."

 Bentsen, who died in 2006, basked in the post-debate attention. A union in Philadelphia played the theme from Rocky when he arrived. He felt the moment redeemed his poor performance in 1976. But great lines don't win elections. Dukakis-Bentsen got creamed. Quayle was gracious: When he saw Eckart a few months later, he touched his former colleague's new beard and said, "I know Dennis Eckart..." You know the rest. |||||

– A Republican made his way onto the speakers' roster Thursday night at the Democratic convention, but it soon became clear why. Former Reagan administration official Doug Elmets explained that he'll be voting Democratic for the first time in his life, and he used his own version of a now-famous political quote to do so, notes the Atlantic: "I knew Ronald Reagan. I worked with Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump, you are no Ronald Reagan.” He also said of Trump: "I shudder to think where he'll lead this great nation."