Assange: Facebook the "most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented"

Julian Assange has been pointing out that Facebook, the omnipresent social network that has hundreds of millions of users, is actually a spy machine setup to monitor the activities of all these users. Having been financed by the CIA, the agency doesn't actually run the day-to-day operations, but uses National Security law to access the databases that store all the info on Facebook users.

We have been warning our users about this for years now. So if you are on Facebook, everything you post is now in a CIA database.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/julian-assange-facebook-is-spy-machine_n_856313.html

 

Not really midgard. Its origins at college campuses in the US show it was created for communications purposes.

Back then there was no "spy" technology available on the Internet. It's only within the last decade that its use as a spy machine was enabled.

Eschelon was the cold war program to intercept communications from the Soviet Union, but it wasn't hooked up to the Internet until after it was well established.

Don't forget, phone lines were used for spying on people for decades before the Internet became ubiquitous.

There was a technology lag for the spies and it took awhile for them to catch up and make use of the Internet as a device for spying.

What's really incredible is that the CIA has been able to turn it into a machine to start revolutions in selected countries.

I'd love to see what happens to the first Facebook page urging a revolution in the USA. That would reveal the true nature of Facebook because they'd shut it down, even as they allow similar websites for other countries' disaffected citizens.

What's really appalling is that Facebook pretends to be something else, giving people a false sense of privacy and security.

 

Our only safety is in our numbers. Monitoring a few billion people online is not easy. Sure they can pick out anything that matches some pre-existing parameters, but at some point humans must review the info, and obviously that means culling out from billions of communications just a few that look most suspicious.

But what is really scary is that in the USA there are over one million people who supposedly have access to the info compiled in these databases. So it's possible your neighbor might be curious about you and so runs you thru their databases simply because he/she can. They can turn up all sorts of stuff like medical records, military records, tax records, school records, facebook posts, facebook friends, every post you ever made online, all the places you've been, etc...

Talk about invasion of privacy! And that is really the problem here.

Some people say if you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about.

That is a downright lie, since any loss of privacy, whether you're a criminal or not is a CRIME IN ITSELF! And people should be worried about the constant erosion of their personal privacy.

I'm surprised more conservatives aren't up in arms over this. After all perhaps some LIBERAL government down the road might decide to round up all the conservatives and put them in re-education camps... eh? It'll be way too easy to locate the conservatives, and round them up, won't it?

 

What's really insidious is the "friending" crap. Of course we allow that here too, but there it's using real trackable identities. So if someone you don't really know is a "friend" and gets into trouble, you are suddenly a person of interest to them.

They can map social networks involving thousands of people easily with the databases they have assembled. What it will create is an oft repeated scenario where whole groups of people suddenly are targeted for review based on some minor association with a particular individual.

I can see the value in that, actually when they are trying to track down the most dangerous individuals, like Bin-Laden perhaps. But to make it an everyday thing in America for thousands of people to be put under suspicion due to some ad hoc association is beyond paranoid and only creates more fear and loathing (like airport security these days).

When you think about it, just because you use an airport, you are a person under suspicion, subject to search and seizure (of your personal belongings including laptops and other electronic devices). That's ad hoc association.

There should be MORE flags raised before anyone is put under suspicion and subjected to invasions of privacy and personal belongings.

 

midgardsun, I think you were trying to make the correct association that the US gov't created the Internet by funding the research, and are still using it for their own purposes.

So you can say the US gov't, thru various agencies, has continued to fund development of the Internet. First as a defensive tool, to enable the gov't to communicate in the event of attack, and now as a tool to gather every kind of information on everyone it can, not just Americans, and to use it as a psychological tool for political purposes.

This explains their backing of Google's technology, Facebook, etc. They've never stopped funding development with political purposes, that gives them more power over people.

 

Yes, I can't understand why businesses are directing ppl to facebook instead of their own websites. They are all losing visitors and rankings. They are fools and one day they will learn what they've done. And of course when they do get that random visitor, who then sees a big link back to Facebook, goes there and misses their site... ah but they gained a "friend"...

 

Actually what some bizes do is put up coupons on the Internet, which then are redeemed at the restaurant. That's a positive flow of business.

On twitter they can announce the latest products or deals so you stop everything and run right over there.

Of course why not just go to the site itself for the info if you're such a big fan? I think it's cause ppl don't want to have to sign in to every website. That's the only advantage I see. Facebook has unified sign-ins and stolen everyone's webtraffic who allows it.