Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Thursday. March 14th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, Facebook's data sharing is now under criminal investigation and the company had a bad night

last night with its services intermittently down across the globe. Dropbox is cracking down on

freeloaders. Silicon Valley wants to build a monument to itself

and Google makes a Pie Day statement.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

According to the New York Times, Facebook's data sharing deals are under federal criminal

investigation. In fact, a grand jury in New York subpoenaed at least two mobile device makers who had previously

partnered with Facebook.

Quoting from the Times, both companies had entered into partnerships with Facebook gaining

broad access to the personal information of hundreds of

millions of its users. The companies were among more than 150, including Amazon,

Apple, Microsoft, and Sony that had cut sharing deals with the world's dominant

social media platform. The agreements, previously reported in the New York Times,

let the companies see users' friends, contact information, and other data, sometimes without consent.

Facebook has phased out most of the partnerships over the past two years.

We are cooperating with investigators and take these probes seriously, a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.

We've provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledge that we will continue to do so."

End quote.

It's the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York that has

impaneled the grand jury inquiry and it's easy to forget this but prosecutors

for the Northern District of California are still running an active investigation into the whole

...