The Daily Beast just doxxed a man for the (not a) crime of allegedly posting a "doctored" video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on social media. And the worst part?
It looks like Facebook helped them do it.
In an article published early this week, Daily Beast writer Kevin Poulsen revealed the name of a man who he claims created the now-infamous viral video of Pelosi, purposely slowed down to make the House Speaker sound drunk or otherwise impaired.
But not only did Poulsen publish the guy's name - he openly admitted that a Facebook employee had personally confirmed the man ran the Facebook page "Politics Watchdog," despite the man's name not being publicly attached to the page.
In the article Poulsen states:
...a Facebook official, confirming a Daily Beast investigation, said the video was first posted on Politics WatchDog directly from Brooks’ personal Facebook account.
If true, the move would already indicate a major breach of privacy from the social media giant. But it gets even worse.
The Facebook official gave over even more information that would not be in the public domain:
According to the [Facebook] official, there were indeed six other accounts registered alongside Brooks as page administrators, but the company determined last week that all six of them were controlled by Brooks. Facebook deleted those accounts under its real-name policy, the Facebook official said.
It would appear that Facebook, which has been swamped in case after case of abuse of user’s data, voluntarily gave over a user's personal information to a reporter.
And Poulsen didn't stop there. The Daily Beast writer even used his article to give a full biography of the individual including personal and intimate details of the man's life, such as his profession and his alleged criminal history. Poulsen then said he reached out to the owner and tried to get him to reveal the other supposed administrators of the Pelosi-mocking account.
Facebook has yet to respond to the possible doxxing of one of its users by a Facebook employee.