According to Senior Facebook Engineers, no One at the Firm Knows Where Your Data is Stored

According to recently unsealed court documents, two senior Meta engineers were questioned about how the company stores and monitors user data, and they said they did not believe anyone at the company could have access to all the data on a single user.

Two engineers have been sentenced in court as part of a consumer privacy lawsuit linked to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018. The engineers were questioned in March of this year, but as The Intercept first revealed, a transcript of the meeting has just been released.

A court-appointed technical expert led the investigation, trying to determine exactly what information Facebook collects about users and where it is stored. One of the engineers is Yevhen Zarasha, who works as the director of engineering at Meta and has been there for over nine years. The second is Stephen Elia, who is listed on LinkedIn as a director of software, having worked at Facebook for 11 years. Previously, when Facebook sued its “Load Your Data” tool, it found that when it asked users what information it stored, it did not have all the information that the court wanted to confirm.

“Where is all user information stored?” – asked the expert appointed by the court. He asked who could answer this question on Facebook.

“I don’t believe there is anyone alive who could answer that question. Even answering this question, Jarash replied that a considerable group of effort was needed.

In response to the question whether the user data and behavior are stored in advertising systems, Elias replied: “I agree that no one should determine or know all this.” According to a META spokesman, individual developers cannot determine that all users are stored in the company’s servers.