

Facebook deepens ties with intelligence agencies. Is it selling data? - DJN
http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/04/22/facebook-lobbying/

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_delirium
It's somewhat unfortunate that technology is moving a lot faster than the law
can keep up with. Among some groups of people, Facebook is essentially the
modern-day version of the phone network: how they do their routine
communication. But the phone network has a bunch of legal protections, e.g. if
the police want to listen in on some conversations they need a warrant, _even
if_ the phone company were willing to sell them a wiretap without a warrant
(that's why the warrantless-wiretapping scandal was a scandal). But Facebook
is currently just treated as a simple case of a company that has some
information, which the government can purchase if it wishes.

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DJN
"...helping legislators and intelligence agencies understand how to use the
social network for campaigning, reaching out to their constituencies and in
their regular line of work."

Hmmm...I wonder what "regular line of work" Facebook is helping the CIA with.

~~~
cosmicray
the most obvious would be large crowd behavior analysis. That would not
necessarily require divulging individual information.

The other possibility would be some form of association tracking. This is not
significantly different than trying to determine enemy dispositions by
inspecting who communicates with whom, and at what frequency. IOW, traffic
pattern analysis.

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socratees
Stay away from social networks as much as possible. The world will be a better
place if personal data stays personal.

~~~
forkandwait
I don't know why there isn't a groundswell in favor of a gnu facebook,
democratically run, ssl enabled, with powerful opt out privileges... Maybe
because I don't have time to start it...

~~~
indigoviolet
Because open-source can only do some things. It took an Ubuntu to make Linux
somewhat usable, and even then it is miles behind an OS X. Some endeavors can
only be done when there is lots of money at stake, that's a reality of our
world today.

~~~
forkandwait
I disagree -- it takes motivated, large scale cooperation of resources.
Sometimes money can buy it, sometimes you don't need money to buy such.

PERHAPS you can argue given a boring problem (e.g. Linux usability for
grandma) and getting people to work on it takes money. But that is contingent
on the arrangement of society, it isn't a universal principle or anything.

As for Ubuntu -- um, as a newly converted FreeBSD user, I think there appeared
a free usable system a long time ago...

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btilly
Heh. Many people believe that Facebook was founded by people from the CIA,
which would make perfect sense for them to reach back.

See [http://www.itsecurity.com/features/cia-facebook-
conspiracy-0...](http://www.itsecurity.com/features/cia-facebook-
conspiracy-092007/) for a reasonably balanced take on that theory.

~~~
rdtsc
That sounds a little too conspiratorial. However legally, it would somehow
make sense.

NSA probably already copies all the data it wants by tapping straight into the
backbone connections via AT&T and other providers. NSA is more hidden from
public scrutiny and doesn't have to worry much about those pesky little laws.
CIA on the other hand, is more visible, might not have access to all of that
technology as NSA, and is scrutinized a little more by the public. So they
might choose a "smarter" approach than just brute-force copying everything.

So legally I would guess that other parties (companies, other citizens)
probably can spy on American citizens, and then sell the data back to the CIA.
I am sure that is already going on as far as Choicepoint, for example, is
concerned. So I would say, it would certainly make sense for them to somehow
obtain data from Facebook.

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indigoviolet
I saw a guy buy a meat cleaver the other day. Is it possible he is a psycho
killer?

~~~
rdtsc
But was he also buying formaldehyde, rope, a shovel and was google-ing stuff
like "how to dispose of a body" recently.

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ErrantX
Why the editorialized title? the "is it selling data?" addendum is just
commentary as it's not related to the article....

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josh_blogs
Wait, Facebook might _not_ be selling data? I find that surprising.

