On Friday afternoon - the time when bad news is dumped like garbage from a Star Destroyer before a hyperspace jump - Facebook announced they found and fixed a security glitch:

Facebook blamed the data leaks, which began in 2012, on a technical glitch in its massive archive of contact information collected from its 1.1 billion users worldwide. As a result of the glitch, Facebook users who downloaded contact data for their list of friends obtained additional information that they were not supposed to have…  ”We currently have no evidence that this bug has been exploited maliciously and we have not received complaints from users or seen anomalous behavior on the tool or site to suggest wrongdoing,” Facebook said on its blog.

There’s plenty of concern when a company that amasses so much user data has a breach.  Concerns over the NSA PRISM program have largely centered on what powers the government should or shouldn’t have.  Facebook’s data breach could give the NSA and the Obama Administration a chance to pivot the issue away from law enforcement collecting information and start talking about what information is out there to begin with.

The data breach won’t cause an exodus of users.  It may have fallout in the form of inquiries from a federal government looking for a distraction.