Facebook Has 25 Employees to Handle Requests for User Information from Law Enforcement
February 25th, 2012Via: Forbes:
If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world and Joe Sullivan would be head of Homeland Security.
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The dirt Facebook holds on its users makes it as attractive to cops as to criminals. Among Sullivan’s responsibilities are daily decisions about how much user information to give to law enforcement when it comes calling. And, as a digital nation’s DHS, Sullivan and his team actively police the site for user data worth volunteering to the authorities. Still, he says, “we err on the side of not sharing and have picked quite a few fights over the years.”
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Most of his security team is based at headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. and sits at clusters of desks close enough to take dead aim at one another with Nerf darts. Broken roughly into five parts, the team has 10 people review new features being launched, 8 monitor the site for bugs and privacy flaws, 25 handle requests for user information from law enforcement, and a few build criminal and civil cases against those who misbehave on the network; the rest are handling security situations as they arise and acting as digital bodyguards protecting Facebook staffers (“We have someone trying to hack an employee’s account every day,” says Sullivan). If you include the physical security guards who patrol Facebook headquarters, Sullivan’s team numbers 70 people.
