Edward Snowden brands Facebook 'shameful' as social network is accused of secretly backing US data-sharing scheme

Now you CISA, now you don't

Facebook has been accused of secretly backing the US Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) - which is now poised to become law - while it continues to publicly oppose the act.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has branded the social network "shameful" in response.

If it goes through US Congress, CISA would allow companies and the government to share private user information to be used in investigating crime and terrorism. Participating companies could look forward to protection from prosecution for handing over this data.

Facebook is a member of an industry body called the CCIA - the Computer and Communications Industry Association - which also includes Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, eBay and Yahoo, and which issued an open letter in protest against CISA earlier this month.

"CISA's prescribed mechanism for sharing of cyber threat information does not sufficiently protect users' privacy or appropriately limit the permissible uses of information shared with the government," read the letter.

"In addition, the bill authorizes entities to employ network defense measures that might cause collateral harm to the systems of innocent third parties."

But Facebook stands accused by anti-CISA activist group Fight for the Future of secretly supporting CISA.

"We've gotten information that Facebook is secretly lobbying for a dirty bill called ‘CISA' that would give them impunity for violating their users' privacy - as long as they hand over user data to the government," reads the accusation, hosted at YouBetrayedUs.org/Facebook.

"Most tech companies are against it for privacy reasons, but apparently Facebook is working behind the scenes to make sure it passes."

The statement goes on to remind readers that "Mark Zuckerberg once called Facebook users ‘dumb fucks' for trusting him with their data".

"Now he's trying to take advantage of us. If CISA passes, all your photos, posts, relationships, and likes will have a path to government databases," it concludes.