Mark Zuckerberg is rumored to have a secret escape passageway beneath his conference room for emergencies
- Facebook budgets $10 million a year to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
- When Zuckerberg first got executive protection, he had a habit of wandering off without telling them where he was going.
- Business Insider has published an in-depth investigation into Facebook's corporate security practices.
- There are rumors internally that Zuckerberg has a hidden escape passageway beneath an office conference room for emergencies - but it's not clear what the truth is.
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg first got 24/7 executive protection, there was a problem: He kept wandering off.
Sources said that in the early 2010s, the world-famous tech cofounder didn't always keep his security team - initially just one person - in the loop on his plans. He might decide on a whim to leave the office, or go for a jog, or to a bar, leaving his staff scrambling to keep up.
"He [was] in his mid-twenties ... he was developing a platform he truly believed was good ... at the time he didn't grasp the concept that there were haters out there," one source said.
Since then, however, the billionaire exec has grown more accepting of executive protection's constant presence, according to insiders. His closely monitored patterns of life now far more closely resemble a head of state than a typical 34-year-old engineer, with the stricter security practices mirroring the increase in Facebook's own fortifications over the years.
Business Insider has spoken to current and former workers at Facebook's Global Security organisation and others familiar with the matter, obtained internal company documents, reviewed court documents, and surveyed publicly available information in a 5,000-word investigation into how Facebook handles its corporate security, which you can read in full here.
These sources described sophisticated logistical challenges in protecting tens of thousands of employees and contract workers every day, and an underlying struggle between the techie ideals of openness and engineer freedom and the realities of protecting a high-profile and increasingly controversial multinational firm - as well as the challenges that come with protecting one of the world's richest men.
Armed executive protection officers stand on constant guard outside Zuckerberg's gated homes in the Bay Area, at least one of which also features a panic room. If he goes to a bar, his team will sweep through ahead of time to make sure it's safe. They will vet new any new doctors, or trainers if he wants to take up a new hobby. He is driven everywhere, with the security team monitoring traffic and adjusting his route accordingly. (Back when he still drove, Zuckerberg was, in the words of one source, a "shitty driver.")
During company all-hands meetings, members of Zuckerberg's Praetorian Guard sit at the front of the room and are dotted throughout the crowd, just in case an employee tries to rush him. They wear civilian clothes to blend in with non-security employees.
Zuckerberg doesn't typically work in a cordoned-off office like a traditional corporate executive. Instead, his regular desk is on the floor of Facebook's open-plan office, just like everyone one - but executive protection officers sit near his desk while he works, in case of security threats. Facebook's offices are built above an employee parking lot, but it's impossible to park directly beneath Zuckerberg's desk, because of concerns about the risk of car bombs.
He also has access to a large glass-walled conference room in the middle of the space near his desk, which features bullet-resistant windows and a panic button. There's also a persistent rumor among Facebook employees that he has a secret "panic chute" his team can evacuate him down to get him out of the office in a hurry. The truth of this matter remains murky: One source said they had been briefed about the existence of a top-secret exit route through the floor of the conference room into the parking garage, but others said they had no knowledge of it. Facebook declined to comment on this.
A $10 million security plan
All told, there are now more than 70 people on the executive protection team at Facebook, led by former US Secret Service special agent Jill Leavens Jones. In July 2018, Facebook's board approved a $10 million security allowance for Zuckerberg and his family for the year.
And with good reason: The billionaire chief exec lives an extraordinarily public life, with 118 million followers on Facebook alone (making him both an icon of Facebook's ideals and, increasingly, a magnet for public ire following his company's recent scandals), and the threats he faces are severe.
He receives numerous of death threats a week, and the security team actively monitors social media for mentions of him and COO Sheryl Sandberg to detect them. The pair also have stalkers, who alternately declare their undying love for the execs or harbor worrying vendettas against them.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg are the only two Facebook execs with 24/7 executive protection, though others may get it for specific occasions like traveling. The pair also have amusing security codenames, which Business Insider is not publishing for safety reasons.
Such stalkers are classified as "BOLOs," short for Be On the Look Out, a category of person banned from all Facebook property. If BOLOs use Facebook or the other apps the company owns, the security team may quietly use data drawn from these apps to monitor their location without telling them, as CNBC previously reported.
In one surreal episode, someone turned up outside Zuckerberg's house with a love letter scrawled across the side of their truck, a source recalled. Security officers initially assumed it was directed at the CEO - but it was actually for the benefit of one of the housekeeping staff.
Pranks and political stunts are another concern: High-profile execs make prime targets, as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates infamously discovered when he had a pie thrown in his face in Brussels in 1998. Any time Zuckerberg goes out in public, there are concerns he could be mobbed, and his appearances at events are carefully planned and mapped out in advance.
People will also send unsolicited presents to his home - everything from cookies to a gift from a rabbi after the birth of one of his children. (These get sent to the security team for inspection; Zuckerberg doesn't open them himself.)
In Facebook's offices, things are less intense, but employees will still rush to get the seats at meetings closest to Zuckerberg. Executive protection officers are instructed to be alert for employees and guests at the offices trying to take unauthorized photos of Zuckerberg, which is against the rules. Some employees, too, will try and give him gifts.
"If you've ever been close to his office, you'll see there are big burly people sitting there staring at screens. They pretend to be software engineers, but everyone knows that they are security guards," one Facebook employee wrote in a Quora post. "Once I was there at 7am, and tried to take a picture of his office (he was not inside) to send to my family, but immediately, 3 of the men came seemingly out of nowhere and asked me to delete the picture."
You can read Business Insider's full investigation into Facebook's corporate security here »
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