According to an unnamed employee who worked at Facebook, the company deploys “secret police” in order to crack down on would-be leakers. The employee found out about Facebook’s anti-leaking efforts after becoming the target of Facebook’s investigative team who had compiled proof that he’s been leaking company information to the press.
In an interview, the anonymous employee said:
“It’s horrifying how much they know. You go into Facebook and it has this warm, fuzzy feeling of ‘we’re changing the world’ and ‘we care about things’. But you get on their bad side and all of a sudden you are face to face with Mark Zuckerberg’s secret police.”
The anonymous employee was lured into a meeting by the investigators after receiving a message from his manager at Facebook telling him he was in line for a promotion. When he arrived at the meeting room on the following day, however, he came face to face with the company’s head of investigations, Sonya Ahuja.
During the meeting, the employee was shown records of screenshots he’d taken, links he had clicked or hovered over, and “strongly indicated” that they’d gained access to chats between him and a journalist, even before he joined the company.
Commenting further on the subject, the employee said:
“When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff that you don’t need access to. The counterbalance to giving you this huge trusting environment is if anyone steps out of line, they’ll squash you like a bug.”
Facebook spokeswoman, Bertie Thomson, defended the company explaining that "companies routinely use business records in workplace investigations".
The amount of data Facebook collected on this employee is hardly surprising given what we know about the amount of data collects on its user base. To get a better idea of what Facebook knows about you try out Data Selfie.
Source: The Guardian