According to a fired employee who raised the alarm, Facebook can see deleted user data.

(1) Facebook fired an employee in 2019 for questioning its policy regarding user data

(2) Brannan Lawson, the ex-employee, has filed a lawsuit over the network’s policy change

(3) Facebook helped law enforcement by accessing personal user data, claims Brennan

Facebook dismissed a content screener for raising concerns about the most recent corporate policy, which permits staff to recover deleted user data. The sacked employee, Brennan Lawson, filed a lawsuit against Meta Platform’s Inc. on Tuesday in the US state of California. He asserted that the new procedure, which was declared during a staff meeting in the latter part of 2018, made him wonder about its legitimacy.

Lawson was let go by Facebook, but he didn’t find work for 18 months, so he is now suing for more than $3 million in damages and compensation. According to Lawson’s lawsuit, the new corporate policy change allowed Facebook’s Global Escalation team unlimited access to users’ deleted messenger data, circumventing the network’s default privacy safeguards.

FACEBOOK CAN ACCESS DELETED USERS’ DATA

According to the lawsuit, the protocol appeared to go against both a Federal Trade Commission ruling requiring Facebook to provide users with proper information about its data retention policy and European Union digital privacy laws. According to the lawsuit, the most recent procedure looked to be in violation of both the FTC’s decision requiring Facebook to tell its users of its data-saving policy and the digital privacy laws of the European Union.

Lawson claimed he was aware of his “shaky foundation” in challenging the legitimacy of the practice and was concerned about being fired if he persisted. In July 2019, he was let go for allegedly abusing a Facebook administrative tool. He asserts that was a ruse and a reprisal for his complaint.

In July 2019, Lawson was let go. Before that, the ex-Facebook worker said that he was aware of his “shaky basis” for voicing a concern about Facebook’s most recent policy. Lawson was fired from his job, according to his employer, for allegedly using the Facebook administrative tool maliciously.

Lawson claims that the Escalation team utilized the procedure to assist the police and other law enforcement organizations in their investigations of a number of users. The Escalation team at Facebook would frequently employ back-end procedures to give responses in order to acquire access to user communications, and they would then decide how much information they wanted to disclose with law enforcement.