Facebook Says Ceglia Computers Show ‘Smoking Gun’ of Fraud
August 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Facebook Says Ceglia Computers Show ‘Smoking Gun’ of Fraud
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Facebook Inc. said its inspection of computers turned over by Paul Ceglia, the western New York man who claims he’s entitled to half of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s holdings in the social-networking company, shows “smoking gun” evidence of fraud.
Facebook Inc. said its inspection of computers turned over by Paul Ceglia, the western New York man who claims he’s entitled to half of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s holdings in the social-networking company, shows “smoking gun” evidence of fraud. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Paul Ceglia
Bob Van Voris/Bloomberg
Paul Ceglia poses for a photo outside his home in Wellsville, New York.
Paul Ceglia poses for a photo outside his home in Wellsville, New York. Photographer: Bob Van Voris/Bloomberg
Facebook Inc. said its inspection of
computers turned over by Paul Ceglia, the western New York man
who claims he’s entitled to half of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s holdings in the social-networking company, shows
“smoking gun” evidence of fraud.
Ceglia sued Facebook and Zuckerberg last year, claiming
that a two-page contract Zuckerberg signed in 2003 gave Ceglia
half of the company when the service was started the following
year. Palo Alto, California-based Facebook has grown to become
the world’s biggest social-networking site.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Foschio in Buffalo, New York,
last month ordered Ceglia to let Facebook run forensic tests on
his computers, hard drives and electronic storage media, as well
as on the contract and the e-mail he says support his claim.
“Defendants have uncovered smoking-gun evidence that the
purported contract at the heart of this case is a fabrication,”
Facebook said in its court filing late yesterday.
In a publicly filed version of the motion papers, Facebook,
citing a confidentiality order in the case, didn’t identify the
evidence it says was “embedded in the electronic data on
Ceglia’s computer.”
Paul Argentieri, a lawyer for Ceglia, declined to comment
on Facebook’s claim, citing Foschio’s July 13 confidentiality
order.
$69.2 Billion
Facebook is valued at as much as $69.2 billion, according
to Sharespost.com, an online marketplace for investments in
companies that aren’t publicly traded.
Facebook’s “smoking gun” claim comes in the context of a
court battle between the parties over the pretrial exchange of
evidence in the case.
On July 1, Foschio entered several orders requiring Ceglia
to turn over evidence for testing by Facebook after the company
argued Ceglia’s case was a “fraud on the court.” Foschio also
ordered Facebook to produce samples of Zuckerberg’s signature
and 176 e-mails from Zuckerberg’s Harvard University e-mail
account.
Both sides filed papers claiming the other side has failed
to comply fully. Facebook also said Ceglia abused Foschio’s
protective order by designating all 120 relevant items found on
Ceglia’s computers, CDs and floppy disks as confidential.
Facebook said it wants the “smoking gun” and other materials
made public.
Foschio set a hearing on the matter for Aug. 17.
StreetFax
Zuckerberg worked for Ceglia in 2003, writing computer code
for StreetFax.com, a failed company that Ceglia was setting up
to sell photographs of streets and intersections to insurance
companies and other clients. Zuckerberg claims he signed a
contract with Ceglia for the StreetFax work. The contract had
nothing to do with Facebook, according to Zuckerberg.
At a hearing in Buffalo June 30, Facebook lawyer Orin Snyder told Foschio that Zuckerberg no longer has his copy of
the contract he signed with Ceglia.
In the papers filed yesterday, Facebook said that Ceglia,
has moved from his home in Wellsville, New York, to Ireland.
Ceglia, 38, said in an interview last year that he and his
family lived in Ireland for six years when he was a child.
Argentieri declined to comment on Ceglia’s location.
The case is Ceglia v. Zuckerberg, 1:10-cv-00569, U.S.
District Court, Western District of New York (Buffalo).
To contact the reporter on this story:
Bob Van Voris in U.S. District Court in Manhattan at
rvanvoris@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.
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Researchers show power of Facebook facial-recognition software
August 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Facebook has come under a lot of heat for its facial-recognition software, in which the social networking site has been automatically enrolling its more than 750 million users.
But Facebook has made it clear that the software, which automatically tags people in photos, isn’t going anyway anytime soon. In fact, facial-recognition software is growing and is being used and further developed by Facebook, Google, Apple and the U.S. government.
On Friday Carnegie Mellon University researcher Alessandro Acquisti showed off his research, funded in part by the U.S. Army, on how facial-recognition technology can be used with Facebook profile photos to match names and other identification data to pictures.
Acquisti presented his findings, alongside fellow researchers Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman, at the Black Hat Technical Security Conference in Las Vegas, according to tech website Cnet, which reported on the group’s presentation.
The researchers set up a computer webcam on the Carnegie Mellon campus and asked people to volunteer to have their pictures taken, Cnet said.
Those photos were then cross referenced with a database the team built of about 25,000 Facebook profile photos (all Facebook user names and photos are publicly shared with the world afterall), the report said.
The researchers found that facial recognition software identified 31% of the students by name, Cnet said.
Acquisti then demonstrated an app for Apple’s iPhone that can “take a photograph of someone, pipe it through facial-recognition software, and then display on-screen that person’s name and vital statistics,” the report said.
“Facial visual searches may become as common as today’s text-based searches” and that has “ominous risks for privacy,” Acquisti said in the Cnet report.
“What we did on the street with mobile devices today will be accomplished in less intrusive ways tomorrow,” he said in the report. “A stranger could know your last tweet just by looking at you.”
In yet another demonstration, about 6,000 profile photos and names from a dating site were cross referenced with 277,978 Facebook profile photos and names and “about 1 in 10 of the dating site’s members — nearly all of whom used pseudonyms — turned out to be identifiable,” Cnet said.
In a draft of the researcher’s presentation, posted online and titled Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality, they even said they’ve been able to use profile photos and facial-recognition software to get details such as birthdate and social security number predictions.
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Facebook under scrutiny for face-recognition feature from privacy group, lawmakers
– Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Image: Screenshot of a slide in a draft of the Carnegie Mellon University presentation at the Black Hat Technical Secuity Conference in Las Vegas titled Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality. Credit: Alessandro Acquisti, Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman /Carnegie Mellon University