Facebook sued over alleged scanning of users’ private messages

Matthew Campbell of Arkansas and Michael Hurley of Oregon have filed a law suit against Facebook in U.S. District court. The suit was filed on December 30 in the US District Court for Northern California.
It is on behalf of all US Facebook members who have used the site to send or receive a private message, particularly those that includes a link.
According to the law suit, Facebook scans private messages for links and other information that can be sold to advertisers, marketers and data aggregators. They also count the link as a “like” on the Facebook page.
This data mining violates  the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California privacy laws. The law suit states,

“[Facebook] systematically violated consumers’ privacy by reading its users’ personal, private Facebook messages without their consent.
Representing to users that the content of Facebook messages is ‘private’ creates an especially profitable opportunity for Facebook, because users who believe they are communicating on a service free from surveillance are likely to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal had they known the content was being monitored.”
“Facebook scanned plaintiffs’ messages and searched the website identified in the URL for purposes including but not limited to data mining and user profiling.”

The suit alleges Facebook earned over $2.7 Billion from targeted marketing during that time.
Facebook spokeswoman Jackie Rooney. told the LA Times in an email, “The allegations are “without merit. We will defend ourselves vigorously.”
AFP notes that “the case is similar to a lawsuit against Google, which is accused of violating user privacy by scanning the contents of Gmail messages.”  According to the LA Times, “A federal judge in San Jose  ruled in September that Google must face a lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of illegally opening and reading the contents of email sent through its Gmail service in violation of federal wiretapping statutes.”
David Kirkpatrick, who recently wrote the Administration’s fairytale on Benghazi, is defending Facebook in the in the media. He is saying the law suit is frivolous ambulance chancing. His video is on Bloomberg, if readers care to watch it.