Facebook Fights U.S. Pressure Over WikiLeaks

[Joanne98]

Facebook’s fight against government pressure to cut ties with WikiLeaks and release the personal data of those users might seem to contradict how the social network operates with respect to third-party developers, although neither happens without permission.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told InfoWorld that the social network is “required to regularly push back against over-broad requests for user records. … in most cases we are able to convince the party issuing legal process to withdraw the overbroad request, but if they do not we fight the matter in court” and have a history of success in those cases.

This is exactly the kind of responsible approach Daniel Ellsberg urged a room of Silicon Valley executives to take at a Churchill Club event in Santa Clara, Calif., last Wednesday. Ellsberg, the man who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers -– a top secret study about the U.S. government’s role in the Vietnam war — said companies that store our personal data have the “responsibility” to push back against the government’s pressure to release said information.

As you probably know by now, the U.S. government has been eager to shut down WikiLeaks and has in turn put pressure on private companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and Facebook to cut ties with the controversial website, although the social network didn’t cave in like the others.

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-fights-u-s-pressure-over-wikileaks-2011-01