[nbm]

What position did this Facebook employee hold at the company? In which office did they work? Is it possible they weren't really a Facebook employee? What sort of censorship are you talking about?

I ask because I've never heard anything like that, despite working with the teams that build tools to fight spam, scams, fake accounts, and to assist the User Operations team to handle reports from people who encounter harassment, bullying, and other anti-social or criminal activity.

[freemonoid]

He was a recruiter from the Facebook MPK office (headquarters)

[nbm]

What position was he recruiting for, and roughly when (let's say, which quarter and year)? How likely was he a new recruiter?

I'm not sure I can express my skepticism about this enough - our security, safety, and site integrity teams are some of the most privacy-conscious people I know, and even a hint of something like this happening here would lead to very pointed questions asked at the weekly Q&A every week until it was resolved.

[freemonoid]

This was last year, and the recruiter was an old timer, so to speak; he wasn't new to FB. He was recruiting for the software engineering positions.

Really, are you surprised that there are federal agents on the premises, or just upset at the thought that FB users' privacy could be compromised in such a situation? To the degree that FB forum and groups ToS conforms with federal law and moreover seeks to go above and beyond the letter of the law then FB in this regard could be thought of as an extension of the federal government in such matters with regards to its own users. In this light it is no more relevant whether federal agents look at private or group communications, as opposed to bona fide FB employees. It doesn't matter. This is a private company; the first amendment doesn't apply. In any case, FB as a company isn't exactly widely respected for its position on its users' data, nor is it known to play nice with its users' privacy.

Let's not forget that of the companies whom the federal government sought to extract users' accounts' data from with regards to the Wikileaks issue 18 months ago, only Twitter publicized the compelled exposure of its users' data. Facebook happily gave the feds all the users' info they sought without telling us about it.

Although IIRC you have said that you've worked with the FB spam and fake account / phishing detection team, FB is a large enough organization at this point that the team responsible for complying with federal mandates and managing FB's relation with federal law enforcement is separate. Tao Stein and team have no bearing on this particular matter, nor should they care that real users happen to talk about and discuss real issues that federal agents think should be taken down. This is a separate matter entirely from what you've worked on.