Last month, distinguished Harvard Law graduate Antonin Scalia convinced eight of his closest friends to proclaim that it is illegal as all hell for the government to electronically gather personal information about people, at least via a GPS device stuck on your car, without a warrant.
Last week, distinguished Harvard University dropout Mark Zuckerberg didn’t need to ask 800 million of his closest friends before arranging to raise perhaps $100 billion by continuing to electronically gather personal information gleaned from his own customers’ computers and smart phones.
Scalia, 75, is the senior associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, an entity created by the Constitution in 1787 and which, at least according to Scalia’s way of thinking, has no business inventing anything newer than that.
Zuckerberg, 27, is the CEO of Facebook, a company founded in a dorm room in 2004 and which, at least according to its IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is so reliant on its creator and figurehead to keep inventing new things that his rather unlikely demise is listed as a risk factor that potential investors should take into account before buying its stock.
Both of them wear a rather bland uniform in public and have security details paid for by their employer.
If Scalia convinces similar majorities to do things that the rest of us don’t like, there isn’t much anybody can do about it. He has a lifetime appointment.
If Zuckerberg orders his company to do things the rest of us don’t like, there seems very little chance that anybody will do anything about that, either. He has created something that so many people willingly, yet addictively, use every day that they are likely to continue using it no matter what use he might make of their personal information and activities.
Facebook is free to use. It makes most of its money selling advertisements that appear on its users’ pages.
The ads are valuable to companies with stuff to sell because they are not randomly placed before a few million people who are unlikely to ever buy that product. They are targeted to people who have very clearly, but usually unthinkingly, left a trail of bread crumbs in the form of all the web pages, music downloads, TV shows, movies, porn, get-rich-quick schemes and bad-breath cures they have noted, or, in Facebook lingo, "Liked."
The main reason why what Facebook does is not as illegal as the cops placing a tracking device on your car is that, by creating a Facebook account, you have agreed to such use of your data. It says so right here: www.facebook.com/about/privacy.
Justice Scalia rides herd on a government that exists to serve you. If it does not serve you, it has failed and needs to be corrected.
CEO Zuckerberg controls a company that exists to serve itself. Soon, "itself" will include its many stockholders. If it does not serve those stockholders, if it does not put their interests above the public good or the interests of its nonpaying users, it will have failed those stockholders, opening itself up to huge losses and even lawsuits.
Now that profit is officially the reason for Facebook Inc., its proud independence from, even subversion of, the politicial system may soon end. It could give way to the standard corporate desire to either suck up to government — say, by abetting censorship — or actively corrupt it — via campaign cash.
Our best hope is that Zuckerberg, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs before him, is motivated not so much by the desire to get your money as by the need to see his creation on every desktop, smart phone and tablet on Earth.
Thus may Facebook, at least as long as it is controlled by its creator, still have a need to be "Liked," rather than feared.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, wants you to like him on Facebook: facebook.com/stateofthedebate. He promises he won’t tell anybody.
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