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in the building?

He's the head of the fbi.

So on the one hand,

mark zuckerberg has said

He wants to create

a more open society,

And facebook

is a way to do that.

On the other hand, you know,

There's a lot about the way

facebook uses information

that people don't know.

[narrator] if only

there was a way of knowing

How much information these

companies were storing about us.

Well, in the case of facebook,

We learned some pretty

interesting things

Thanks to one student

in austria.

And, unlike the us, europe has

a law that requires a company

To tell a customer what data

they have stored on them

If that customer wants to know.

And facebook, unlike most

major internet companies,

Had actually built a

headquarters in europe.

Apparently we're like, the only

three people that were like,

Pushing hard enough and asking

again and again and again

And going through also

the irish authority

To finally get at least like

a bigger part of our data set.

We still didn't get

everything right now.

Got it right here, just to

have an idea of how much it

actually is.

That's like, just to picture

it to see how much it is.

Can I hold it? Wow, this

is more than a baby.

Yeah. That's 1,222 pages.

I'm a member of facebook

for three years,

But I was using it

more intense

For like the last

one and a half years or so.

What's interesting as well

is that I didn't post

too much, actually.

I'm a person who posts

something like once a week

or so.

With this giant ream of

information in front of me,

Is it hard to go through it

and actually find specific

details about a person?

No, that's super-easy,

'cause it's--

I mean, we just used

the search function

in the pdf file.

So you just type in one word,

Let's say

"demonstration" or "sex"

Or political party or something,

And within a second you find

the right information.

So within a couple of minutes

you can figure out what people

voted for,

What, I don't know,

psychological problems

they have,

What parties they've been to,

All these informations

are like really easy to find,

actually.

While using that service

for such a short time,

You still had a data file that's

bigger than anything that

Any cia, fbi, or, I don't know,

Stasi ever had about

an average person.

If you hit the remove button,

it just means it's flagged as

deleted.

So, um, you hide it actually

from yourself.

But anyone like facebook

or any government agency

That wants to look at it

later can still retrieve it

and get it back.

And that means that it's

there for an indefinite time,

Um, even though you hit

the delete button

And they ask you three times

if you really really want

to delete it.

It's not actually gone?

It's not actually gone.

It's still there.

So we've ultimately adopted

roughly the following rule.

We-- think of it as we

anonymize the information

within 18 months.

It might be anonymized

within 18 months,

But all of the searches we've

ever done are still there.

The underlying data is still

there to be de-anonymized at

some point.

[narrator] and de-anonymizing

search records turns out to be

shockingly easy.

That is, taking private searches

and finding out whose records

they are.

In 2006, aol turned over

a bunch of these anonymized

search records

Of their users to the public.

And it only took

a few short hours

For a reporter to decode

who user number 4417749 was.

Between searches for things

like "numb fingers", "'60s

single men",

And "dog that urinates

on everything,"

The reporter uncovered a woman

named thelma arnold.

She was age 62.

But then there's user 17556639,

Who looked up "how to kill

your wife", multiple times,

Along with "decapitated photos",

And then in the middle,

the user actually looks up

"steak and cheese."

Steak and cheese!

And there were plenty

of users online

Who were quick to judge

what was going on here.

It was murder.

Rainey, easy.

Hey, old friend!

So let's take a seat and

I'm gonna show you something.

Okay.

What I'm showing you here

is a list of anonymized

search records.

Um, these records

were released by aol.

Have you-- are there actually

things on this list

That you know you've searched

for before?

Um, sure. Yeah, I've definitely

looked up "car crash photos",

I've definitely typed in

"decapitated",

I've definitely looked up

"dead people photos",

"wife killer" I've definitely

looked up "wife killer".

In fact, I've looked up

every single search term

I'm looking at here.

[narrator] you see,

jerome had been a writer

on "cold case",

A tv show where each week cops

have to solve a murder mystery.

Well, that's always

what scared me

When I was entering

those search terms,

Was if there's some sort

of automated system

That just red-flags you based

on the search term.

They're not gonna look and say,

Oh, yeah, he was probably

working on a tv show,

And that's why

he was just googling

"how to murder

my cheating wife."

What?

I just wanted to confirm

that I had not murdered you

and that you are alive.

No, I am allowed to

come out of this room.

And our baby's safe.

Okay, good.

And he has a clean diaper.

Oh, thank god.

So we can rest assured

you are not a murderer.

I am not a murderer.

You're a writer.

I am a writer.

Okay.

Glad we could

clear that up.

Glad we could

clear that up.

[narrator] so what would

happen if that red-flag

system did exist?

If a dad like jerome

might someday have his

door knocked on

Because his search

records became public?

The consensus seems to be

That the retention

of this kind of information

Should be greater

than zero days.

And the reason has to do with

police actions, terrorists,

Patriot act, all those

sorts of things.

Turns out that in this

environment,

The digital environment,

There's a loophole to

the 4th amendment,

Which is, if a third party

collects a lot of this

information,

The government doesn't have to

go through those same hoops.

It's called the third party

doctrine.

The third party doctrine means

that when you the consumer

Share data with a bank,

With an email provider,

With a search engine,

With any kind of technology

company,

You have basically

given up

What would have been your

4th amendment protections

over that data.

For the government to get

information from a google

or a facebook,

Is a lot easier than the

government doing it itself

And putting a wiretap

on our phones.

Large companies like

google and facebook

Receive thousands of requests

a year from government agencies.

Facebook has 25 employees

doing nothing but surveillance,

And these companies

routinely receive requests,

They process the requests.

You may be surprised to hear

that secret searches of email

By the government

seem to be commonplace.

The law that governs

when the government

Can get electronic

communications,

Like emails and things

that are stored remotely,

Was written in 1986, and could

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