Facebook allegedly narcs on its users far more than we already assumed, according to a new lawsuit filed by a former employee and Air Force veteran. Earlier this week, Brennan Lawson sued the Big Tech giant, claiming it fired him “in retaliation for raising concerns about a protocol that let Facebook employees access deleted user data,” according to a rundown from Business Insider earlier this morning. But don’t worry: it apparently only does that when Zuckerberg is trying to appease law enforcement agencies.
Lawson — the former member of an “Escalations Team” whose responsibilities included content moderation for high-profile, often graphic materials — says that a back-end protocol introduced in 2019 allowed him and other employees to access supposedly deleted Facebook Messenger data that the company publicly swore to consumers was inaccessible. When approached by U.S. law enforcement agencies, the Escalations Team would sometimes utilize the protocol to provide cops with data on suspects to remain “in the good graces of the government,” according to the lawsuit.
