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The company, however, is poised to resume the data tracking program once the issue is settled.
Yep. Sounds like Meta.
My company (near the top of the fortune 500 companies) has been doing this for a while. They track every file change, intercept all http web connections using MitM attacks, etc.
It causes tons of issues for software development and the production application operations including extreme slowdown of both laptops and servers as it thrashes disks and pauses things when the buffers fill up. It can’t keep up with applications that use lots of disk caching or make many small file modifications, like merging a large git repo. So things crash and generally run very poorly all the time. Plus all http connections end up with invalid certificates after the MitM attacks, and they block a lot of connections even to places like GitHub which we use. So things break constantly.
They laid off most technical people with any experience (should say with any moderately higher salaries) as part of their push for AI to take over those jobs. So, most of the people dealing with these issues don’t understand the technology.
I can’t imagine what they could use all pf that data for which includes tons of employee and customer private data. It would take years to sort through for some specific breach, so it’s useless for it’s stated purpose. It’s just ripe for hackers to steal tons of data on tens of millions of people around the world, though.
When executives and middle managers are put on charge of technical decisions utilizing “AI” and short term, junior level technical contractors, it’s no wonder they make tons of bad decisions and don’t recognize how much it’s costing them. If only there was competition to drive innovation rather than easy cost cutting like laying off experienced employees, maybe things would change. But that’s impossible in the modern late-stage capitalist economy they’ve created. So we just have to wait for the whole system to collapse. But by then we may have reached a point where it’s no longer possible to prevent extinction from climate change (water and food shortages, pandemics, and all the other things were seeing). We just need to wait and see what collapses first I suppose. If only democracy hadn’t been turned into this farce and media hadn’t been coopted and consolidated to not allow enough people to see what’s really going on, maybe we could change it.
They laid off most technical people with any experience (should say with any moderately higher salaries) as part of their push for AI to take over those jobs
One my fav quotes from Ricky Gervais applies to management like that.
“When you are dead, you do not know that you are dead. It is only difficult for the others. It is the same when you are stupid”.
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I wish mods would ban sites like this. What’s the point of discussing privacy on a forum with links that violate privacy?
Meta’s controversial program that spied on its employees’ computers has backfired spectacularly.
Though its chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth assured that the data it collected would be “tightly controlled,” the company is now pausing the tracking program after sensitive employee information was leaked internally, according to reports from Business Insider and Wired.
A security notice sent out Monday said that the exposed data included employee’s full AI prompts and transcriptions, performance data, and even private conversations. The leak allowed the data to be accessible to any employee inside the company.
Meta said it’s investigating the incident and confirmed it paused the program, but maintains it’s keeping a lid on things.
“We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards, and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we’re pausing it while we investigate,” a spokesperson told outlets.
The program, dubbed the Model Capability Initiative, was intended to gather data so Meta’s AI models could learn “how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers.” Reports suggested it collected everything from employee keystrokes to recording their computer screens.
When it was announced in April, it immediately sparked backlash in the workforce, with internal posts openly denouncing the initiative as an invasion of privacy, and some employees circulating a petition calling to end it. It came while morale at the company was at a nadir, following fresh layoffs that forced out nearly 8,000 employees, and a heavy push from the top that workers should heavily use AI to produce as much code as possible.
Under CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s directive, the company has doubled-down even further on developing automation tech, moving employees who were working elsewhere onto a new AI project, sowing further discontent.
Reactions from employees about the leak were unequivocally critical.
“I am incensed,” one employee wrote Monday in an internal group, per a screenshot obtained by BI.
“I don’t see any evidence of malicious access, but the fact that this data wasn’t locked down as originally promised is super frustrating,” another complained.
Memes also abounded. In an internal forum, one employee posted an image of Jim Halpert from “The Office” holding a sign that says, “0 days since our last nonsense.”
Bosworth, Meta’s CTO who promised that the collected data would be “tightly controlled,” responded to employees’ posts by admitting that the initiative’s implementation had fallen short of the standards set in its prevacy review, per Wired.
The company, however, is poised to resume the data tracking program once the issue is settled.
“We will only re-enable MCI when we are confident in the effectiveness of our data protection controls,” Stephane Kasriel, a Meta vice president overseeing AI research, told employees Monday, according to Wired. Kasriel said the company discovered and resolved the issue last week, but that the initial fix didn’t work.
It’s not the only recent security blunder at Meta. In March, a rogue AI agent gave an employee advice that it wasn’t authorized to share, resulting in sensitive data being exposed and causing what was described as a critical security incident.
They are automatung the downfall of their own species. Nobody feels sorry for Nazis because they still had to pay bills. Fuck these people. Their actions are self-destructive.
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we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees
What does “no indication” mean if they record every keystroke? Did they screw up their snooping program as usual, or are they lying as usual?
also “improperly” is very vague
It means they’ve checked the logs and didn’t find anything suspicious at first glance, but just in case they missed something they’re covering their asses.
…or flat out lying in an attempt to cover it up.
It could be either, depending on how well they think they can contain this.
