Facebook privacy is awful, but users don't care, security expert says

Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and author, decried Facebook's privacy protections during a panel discussion at the State of the Net conference in Washington on Tuesday.

He said that if a person set out to write "crappy privacy" protections, they would come up with Facebook.

"Users complain, there are revolts, there are protests," he said. "But it doesn't matter."

Schneier said what he sees as inadequate Facebook privacy is an irrelevant issue because individuals are not deterred by this feature.

"They go where their friends are," he said. "The social aspects of the system overcome the privacy concerns for individuals."

The situation is different for businesses, which must be concerned about privacy, he said.

Nevertheless, it wasn't all jeers for Facebook during this panel.

The company was also framed as an example of a business built from scratch, with one panelist noting the recent Golden Globe win for "The Social Network," a movie based on the life of Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg.

The panelist asked what would have become of Facebook if Zuckerberg had to worry about compliance and wiretapping issues when he was inventing the site in his dorm room.

"What if Zuckerberg had to run Facebook by the [Federal Communications Commission]?" he said, as a warning about forcing new online companies to address issues such as government intercepts.