Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machine' Ever 520
i4u points out an interview with Julian Assange in which the controversial WikiLeaks spokesman calls Facebook "the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented." He continues,
"Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use. Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them."
A small price to pay (Score:2)
That would be a "yes"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean you're ready to revolt or ready to restock the cave for a long timeout?
Re:That would be a "yes"... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless one feels like scratching out a marginal existence somewhere so lousy that technological society considers the ROI to be not worth the effort, there isn't much to be done.(Unless the energy runs out. Then everybody gets an exciting lesson in what "nostalgia" means.)
Re:That would be a "yes"... (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I think technological development is neutral, it can go either way. The real question is this: do the CS people who develop and refine surveillance methods outnumber and/or outperform the CS people who develop and refine ways to counter the surveillance?
A smart CS graduate could work on better privacy systems, or on better surveillance systems. It's not all one way. Both problems are equally interesting and equally challenging. It's a black hat/white hat kind of thing.
It's clear that there's a lot of money in surveillance, especially in the US which is so strongly controlled by the military industrial complex. So there are a lot of grants and projects to improve surveillance. But I think that's ultimately a social problem rather than a technical one. There needs to be a critical mass of people who are willing to fund and sell countermeasures, and create a self sustaining market available to all.
For example, we have encryption widely available in software today because people were willing to stand up to the US government when they were trying to ban the technology.
There are embryonic ways to sabotage data gathering efforts which everyone on slashdot has used before: filling out fake data in surveys and registration forms, etc. We need people to think up ways to refine these basic ideas into technologies that can reliably damage large scale surveillance efforts.
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Yes. But the direction is set more by corporations than by individual employees. And it's not a surprise that corporations tend to prefer solutions where they know a LOT about individual customers.
Payment-systems is a big one, for example. (if you can follow and/or control the cashflow, you've got a LOT of information and a LOT of influence)
But the systems being introduced today are almost entirely shaped by the interests of big financial institutions, and not consumers. For example, from the POV of the con
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something something Dark Side, something something (Score:2, Interesting)
I choose not to be on Facebook because I don't want my friends to see me doing something embarrassing.
I don't care what the faceless "agencies" know about me because I have nothing to hide from them, and it won't embarrass me if they know my dirty secrets, as long as they don't tell my dirty secrets to my friends.
Re:something something Dark Side, something someth (Score:5, Insightful)
That is, until your dirty secret becomes illegal. Poker anyone?
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I don't care what the faceless "agencies" know about me because I have nothing to hide from them
I do. I have a lot to hide from them.
I want to hide the stuff from them that's NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS.
Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machine' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machi (Score:4, Insightful)
The extra funny thing is that 1) Its voluntary, and 2) most people on facebook aren't thinking of themselves as criminals with things to hide.
People VOLUNTARILY share this information. Sure its a society where privacy can be beneficial, but this *society* is actually very social. People are driven to share their lives with each other, and while many a smirk is made by joking about the uselessness of facebook, the truth is we are drawn towards it like a magnet of interest! The truth is, the people on facebook aren't afraid of being called a 'criminal' because they probably don't consider themselves as such.
Now there might even be criminals using facebook to their own demise... Who knows... But unlike Assanage, most of us are living our lives without fear of some repercussion. And as we desire, we socialize.
Once Corporations and Government become the same thing -- maybe its too late to undo anything and we'll all get our tattoos and serial numbers... I just used the last of my tinfoil on a nice dinner, so... well... so much for worrying about being made out 'bad', lol.
Stop associating privacy with criminal activities (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very common misconception: privacy is not about criminals with things to hide.
It's about not giving some centralized entity an enormous power because they know everything about everyone. Such a huge power will be misused, sooner or later.
That's why you still need privacy and secrecy even (especially!) if you've nothing to hide. And, BTW, everyone has something to hide to at least someone else.
Re:Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machi (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machi (Score:4, Insightful)
Reverse Wikileaks (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also the reverse in that you control it (Score:4, Insightful)
With Wikileaks, they decide what should be released about a company/government/etc and that person has no say in it. With Facebook, the individual decides what gets released. Anything you don't give to them, anything you don't post, doesn't get released. You don't want your phone number released? Don't give it to them. They don't go hoovering that kind of stuff up.
The problem with FB seems to come from people's false assumption that their weak ass privacy controls mean anything. No, not so much. Basically, you need to assume anything you post anywhere on the web is public, and that goes double for social networking sites. So, don't post it to FB if you don't want the world to see it. Real simple.
I have a FB profile, because there are things I'm ok with everyone knowing. All of it, with the possible exception of photos of me, is more or less public record anyhow. However there's not a lot on there. Many of their fields remain blank. That is because it is stuff I don't care to be public. I choose what to release and I don't really care where it goes, because I presume by posting it there I made it public to all.
Re:It is also the reverse in that you control it (Score:5, Insightful)
I choose what to release...
Suppose you attended a party and elected not to say a single word. How much do you think I could find out about you simply by listening in on all your friends?
Facebook doesn't need you to post. Other people can fill in the blanks for them. You don't decide what information they release about you.
Re:It is also the reverse in that you control it (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. Your friends aren't generally going to post "Hey! Here's my friend's home phone number, since he neglected to put it up on his own info page!"
Yeah, you'd never reply to a private message saying, "hey bud, what's your cell # again, i water damaged my phone and lost it...?" with anything except... "hey I'd tell you but I choose what to release on facebook. meet me at midnight in the graveyard and I'll tell you in person". right?
And even inoccuous stuff like..."My son had fun at Natalie's 8th birthday on Saturday!" -- was your daughters birthdate something you wanted to provide facebook?
Or "Hey, your Uncle Gord was a riot... check out this picture of him on the slip-n-slide at the party with the birthday girl"
Ok... so the pic your friend posted has your uncle tagged...I see he's got a different last name from you... decent odds that's your mothers maiden name.
Oh, and the pic contains your daughter too... along with a decent angle on your back yard. Couple that with the gps meta... and we know where your little girl lives, confirmed with google satellite view to help match the backyard.
Your uncles profile happens to mentions how he's taking care of his father (your grandfather) with a[genetic condition that skips a generation], and deduce that you are at elevated risk for this condition.
And that's just the start of the creepiness.
But it was quickly clear that their lives and mine had practically nothing in common.)
You could make that argument, but it'd be pretty clear that you were distant based on frequency and content of interaction, etc.
but you don't need a social networking web site to accomplish that. In the "good old days", this same info was culled by private detectives and investigators who simply went out and talked to people who knew you or about you
Correct. But someone had to hire a private detective to go out and talk to all these people, and follow you around.... one couldn't build profiles on more than a handful of people by hiring private detectives due to the cost.
Reduce the cost to next to nothing, and the they will build profiles on everyone.
Re:It is also the reverse in that you control it (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh. Perhaps Facebook doesn't decide, but my friends sure do. They post shit all the time that implicates me as participating in certain activities and being in certain places. And that's without me ever using Facebook myself.
Yeah, so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ain't nothin' on my Facebook but my name, my friends, and my random attempts at being witty. I don't care if the gov't sees any of it. If I did, it wouldn't be on Facebook. The problem isn't Facebook, it's that people -- including Assange, actually -- have a binary idea of security and trust. They think something is either totally secret and revealing it would be a huge betrayal, or it's all out there in the wind open to everyone. If you think Facebook is a privacy threat, you don't have to stop using it: just stop posting private stuff to it.
Trust is multilayered. I have stuff I only tell my close friends. I have stuff I only tell my Warcraft guild. I have stuff I only tell my wife. I have stuff I keep entirely inside my head. And none of that stuff goes on Facebook. Facebook is fine for some sorts of privacy -- for instance, as a college professor, I don't Facebook friend my students, so I don't have to worry about saying something unbecoming of a professor. For other sorts of things, I use other sorts of communications.
But I've been living in this sort of multilayered online privacy world for two decades now. Hopefully someday soon the rest of the planet will figure out how it works, so I don't have to deal with Assange's paranoid ranting, or college students who can't get a job because they're naked and/or vomiting on their profile page.
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Ain't nothin' on my Facebook but my name, my friends, and my random attempts at being witty. I don't care if the gov't sees any of it. If I did, it wouldn't be on Facebook. The problem isn't Facebook, it's that people -- including Assange, actually -- have a binary idea of security and trust. They think something is either totally secret and revealing it would be a huge betrayal, or it's all out there in the wind open to everyone. If you think Facebook is a privacy threat, you don't have to stop using it: just stop posting private stuff to it.
Trust is multilayered. I have stuff I only tell my close friends. I have stuff I only tell my Warcraft guild. I have stuff I only tell my wife. I have stuff I keep entirely inside my head. And none of that stuff goes on Facebook. Facebook is fine for some sorts of privacy -- for instance, as a college professor, I don't Facebook friend my students, so I don't have to worry about saying something unbecoming of a professor. For other sorts of things, I use other sorts of communications.
But I've been living in this sort of multilayered online privacy world for two decades now. Hopefully someday soon the rest of the planet will figure out how it works, so I don't have to deal with Assange's paranoid ranting, or college students who can't get a job because they're naked and/or vomiting on their profile page.
This, in a nut shell. The idea of privacy being some kind of binary thing is odd - it's not on or off. You would think that levels of privacy would be part of a healthy outlook on the World. There's stuff I trust to X I would never trust to Y. Some overlap. Some are mutually exclusive.
Some if it I am willing to exchange for services. Be it certain information to Facebook for the services they provide, or other information to a gf for the services she would provide.
Re:Yeah, so? (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't as multi-layered as you would think. How much info can i find about you in 5 minutes?
Hi paul. you are 29 years old, live in the Uk. work/have worked at a college doing computer-y stuff. You are a member of the pirate party in the uk which should narrow you down quite a bit. You might be a level 85 undead priest.
I'm not saying you like to dress up in a fursuit, but...
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/shemmie/
If I devoted more time to it I might find your facebook page, email address and photos. Now imagine if I had started from the opposite direction. Facebook has way more information that you think.
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People new to the Internet don't understand this (Score:2)
They see Facebook as a new technology, like cellphones, and they're treating it like a phone or SMS. So they're saying the same things they would say on a phone or send over SMS. The thing is, phone and SMS data are usually sent to limited-function devices that can't easily store and reproduce this data.
While the government may intercept phonecalls or text messages, the vast majority of people are much more likely to feel negative effects from a lack of privacy in their subsequent interactions with friends,
Re:Yeah, so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ain't nothin' on my Facebook but my name, my friends,
Someone said this up above, so I won't take credit, but "your friends" is the piece of data that is most valuable to intelligence and law enforcement. If one of your FB friends pops up on some watch list, the FBI can (in theory) log into Facebook and get a list of all his "friends." Now you are on an FBI watch list. Your employer may be interviewed, maybe your neighbor or co-workers.
But hey, who cares if you have nothing to hide right?
For me, the problem isn't the voluntary gift of this information from users (including me) to Facebook. It is the voluntary gift of this information from Facebook to the government.
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The problem with your notion is that the government has already revealed that they are reading the subject, to, and from lines on every piece of email. It's safe to assume they are watching every major IM network. So basically, they are already aggregating all of this information in an automated fashion, and whether you use failbook or not makes no difference whatsoever.
Re:Yeah, so? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that so? So you're saying if the government snoops on millions of people, that means there's no point complaining that FB sells your data to shady corps?
Life is not all or nothing. One thing doesn't excuse the other, and they're not both the same.
Re:Yeah, so? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are any of your friends communists? Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party? Anything your friends are involved in leads to you when your friendship graph is available for sale.
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Are you aware how much one can guess about you by the company you keep? Or even your attempts at wittiness?
Imagine a really bad leader having access to this kind of information. Say, a Pinochet. Then imagine one of your friends doing something political, such as working freelance as a photographer, doing some jobs for a left-oriented newspaper. That guy is dragged away, tortured, and disappears. The government knows you knew him. Maybe they see you making the kind of jokes he laughed at. Maybe they just worry that you will be upset at his disappearance, and label you as a potential trouble source for that reason.
So, you trust the current government to not do this, at least not to you. Fair enough. Trust the next one? Trust the one you'll have 30 years from now?
Once a government can just torture people and make them disappear, I think they'll always be able to gather information on subversives and their associates, regardless of whether you identify your friends on Facebook.
Doing their work for them? (Score:2)
"Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them."
Excellent, so by playing Farmville I'm not only reducing my taxes (because they'd build the database anyway), but also contributing to the safety and counter terrorism efforts of my country.
It's not only addictive, but patriotic.
All I have to say is... (Score:2)
...duh.
And as a corollary... ...so?
The Onion beat him to it (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ [theonion.com]
The skill of intelligence is filtering the noise (Score:2)
You might as well say that the local rubbish tip is a valuable source of information. There's just as much garbage as facebook has, but at least yo
Re:The skill of intelligence is filtering the nois (Score:4, Interesting)
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If I was a terrorist the first thing I would do is stop all my online activity and change my identity or more likely I never would have had a FB account at all. It's trivial to have your public persona look nice and normal and do all your illegal, secret, subversive communications done in ways that are impossible to track or intercept. Terrorists have a lot to fear from government intelligence agencies, but FB is not one of them.
What the government CAN use FB for is to spy on and pacify its own citizens. Sa
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In Facebook, the BIG logoff, makes you invisible (Score:3)
This will not protect your privacy against government intelligence, but at least against most else. Do the BIG logoff from facebook by disabling you account instead of just logging off. Data is kept, and you can enable the account just by logging back in. A few seconds extra to log out, and your information is not shared.
Government Spying vs. Business Spying (Score:3)
Personally, I worry more about what various businesses can find out about me and other FaceBook users than I do about the government. The 4th Amendment works fairly well at keeping the government from doing "fishing expeditions" and I don't have a problem with the government getting access to data if they have a warrant based on probable cause. These restrictions don't apply to businesses that buy their way into FB to do data mining or that create cute little applications that require that you reveal everything to them in return for accessing the application.
I consider very carefully whether or not to reveal any personal information on FB beyond what I need to "show" so that people can find me. Most of this information is publicly available (i.e., phone book type stuff). It just isn't linked to me on FB where it can also be linked to my "friends." I'm going to do what I can to keep it that way.
Cheers,
Dave
Social Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised no other people are talking about this aspect of Assange's remarks. Having a graph of the connections between (almost) everyone allows you a great level of control over how rumours and ideas spread in that graph, and as a result allows shady government agencies to socially engineer the public more effectively. I bet somebody somewhere must already have a computer model with all the connections in FB and is using basic epidemiology-style graph theory to calculate how to most effectively mind-control the dumb unwashed.
For instance, if they want to indirectly influence some official in a certain country, they could try influencing the friends of his son, who will in turn influence the son, who will then exert pressure on the official. Or, if they want to influence the largest number of people possible, they work to influence the people with the most connections. You get the idea - except on a much larger scale (think six degrees of separation).
I also have to wonder how HBGary's fake online persona "clone army" is related to this sort of thing.
Re:Social Engineering (Score:4, Interesting)
SNL's take of Assange on Zuckerberg (Score:4, Funny)
"What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? Lets take a look.
I give you private information on corporations for free, and I'm a villian. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money, and he's man of the year.
Thanks to wikileaks, you can see how corrupt governments operate in the shadows, and then lie to those who elect them. Thanks to facebook, you can finally figure out which Sex and the City character you are."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9LqnowYVQE [youtube.com]
Lack of sharing of information may be construed .. (Score:3)
I already get strange looks if I pay cash for anything over a ten in the shops (but then this is the UK, competing for the title of the most-surveilled population on the planet)
Re: (Score:3)
Cool! Now we can use you as part of the Human CentiPad!
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Informative)
it should also be noted that there's a line "Follow us on Facebook" on this site...
http://www.wikileaks.ch/gitmo/ [wikileaks.ch]
Which leads to here:
http://www.facebook.com/wikileaks [facebook.com]
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did he tell you to do anything but understand?
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not talking to you, you prick. He's raising public awareness. Get over yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fun part is that Assange is considered a criminal by most of the people he's trying to help. Oh, the irony.
Re:Yes, I know (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>is considered a criminal by most of the people he's trying to help
Well as he says, "Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance." Most of the people are simply ignorant of how they are being lied to by politicians, and controlled. - "And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone â" itâ(TM)snot understanding what actually is going on in the world. It's only when you start to understand that you can make effective decisions and effective plans. Now, the question is, who is promoting ignorance? Well, those organizations that try to keep things secret, and those organizations which distort true information to make it false or misrepresentative. In this latter category, it is bad media.
"One of the hopeful things that Iâ(TM)ve discovered is that nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies. The media could've stopped it if they had searched deep enough; if they hadn't reprinted government propaganda they could've stopped it. But what does that mean? Well, that means that basically populations don't like wars, and populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don't willingly, with open eyes, go into a war. So if we have a good media environment, then we also have a peaceful environment."
This man sounds a lot like Alex Jones.
for those who aren't paranoid enough (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>If populations never willingly go into a war, then why do we ever go into wars?
Same reason Obama drug us into Libya (or Bush into Iraq).
Because he can.
And damn what the people think (most are against the war). Of course the real power to enter war is supposed to be with the People, as represented by their representatives in Congress. Unfortunately Congress is about as powerless today, as the Roman Senate was under the caesars. The Republic has fallen. The emperor has risen. (And I don't just mean this one example - the Executive has been ignoring congress a lot lately.)
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately Congress is about as powerless today, as the Roman Senate was under the caesars.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh man, that's a good one. That must be why Congress is actively ramming technical rocket designs down NASA's (read, top world organization of rocket scientists) throat with little to no regard about what actual engineers and scientists have to say about the design. That must be why Congress has been bobbling around various bits and pieces of corrupt corporation backing copyright legislation (what's it called this time around, COICA?). That must be why Congress cast the deciding v
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Both parties are similarly corrupt, and that's a fact. Saying that one party is less evil than the other one is pretty much stupid on your part. It is really easy to point out crazy things that politicians from each party does. Very easy.
Instances are not trends. Yes, it's true that the Democrats share a few of the Republicans' failings:, in particular an over-willingness to kowtow to the whims of the media/telcomm lobby (an unfortunate necessity in today's world, where so few media companies control so much of public opinion), which leads to their unfortunate shared support for strengthening imaginary property laws. They also have the unique failing of being especially enamored of the trial lawyer lobby, and thus aren't really looking that
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The fun part is you LIE about what others think. I have yet to encounter 1 person in real life who thinks Assanges a criminal. Care to share which laws he has broken>? of wait of course you cant.
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Don't worry, I'm sure sure they can make up one. After all, our Swedish prosecutors managed to put out an arrest warrant for rape because he allegedly broke the condom when having consensual sex...
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I have yet to encounter 1 person in real life who thinks Assanges a criminal
Go to any mainstream new site. Find a story about Wikileaks. Go to the comments section. Then return to your real life and be very glad that you don't have to interact with those people on a daily basis. Then remember that their votes each count as much as yours...
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The "most appalling spy machines" I can think of are the North Korean/Soviet/Chinese/Ba'ath/Iranian surveillance systems, where they don't even have notions such as warrants and due process and right to reasonable privacy. Assange needs to read about some true issues in the world. We still have hundreds of thousands of North Koreans in physical labor reeducation centers, Chinese sending hundreds of citizens at a time to secret prisons, Syrian Ba'ath surveil
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I'm always shocked when I see the "There's much worse places in the world, so what we do is alright" argument.
Let me put thing this way:
- If any democratic country needs to be put side-by-side with the worse countries in the world to look good, then it's a failure.
Beyond that, there's also the issue of direction - as in, "What is the direction things are taking?" - which seems to be quietly ignored by the apologists of "We're better than North Korea" style of argument.
Given that in the US (and also, to an e
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In my opinion, a lot of this is a self-aggrandizing operation and one in which he's successfully made himself a celebrity and taken credit for a lot of people's contributions.
Despite the fact that some of what he publicizes needs to be known, I'm not going to apply altruistic motives to someone who has done what he's done to great personal advantage, despite a spell in a jail cell.
Re:Yes, I know (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to stop putting words in other people's mouths.
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Well you're the one who chose to read that.
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Truly only idiots think that anything that they put out on the internet is private. Once it's out there it's available to multiple organizations, legal and illegal. If you don't want anyone to see it, don't give it out.
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>>>Julian Assange needs to stop trying to tell me what I should and should not do.
(rereads article) Where was this? Actually the question was not about you, but whether Assange believed Facebook was used by the US and EU governments to "arrange" the revolutions in the Mideast. (I'm inclined to say yes, especially since the google CEO bragged about it.)
But a lot of people don't. (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be quite obvious with Facebook, but the fact is most people don't know how pervasive data-mining is. Still, me, I kind of trust our intelligence community at the moment. I expect CIA and SIGINT for National Security reasons, and I've met enough of them--higher-ups and lower-ups--that I know they're good people trying to do a good job. I still think we need someone with the keys, because in twenty years the culture could change completely, but right now, US Intelligence is staffed by fairly good pe
Re:But a lot of people don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>I kind of trust our intelligence community at the moment.
According to Assange, ~30 people are sitting in Guantanamo Prison and Obama's intelligence community KNOWS they are innocent, but refuses to release them. How can you sit there and say you "trust" these people??? You must be as naive as a virgin on prom night.
>>>if they lower constitutional rights in NY to allow cops to search bags for explosives, I don't think they should be able to arrest people if they find drugs
More naivete'. Drive to Texas or Maine sometime, to where random checkpoints are setup on interstates to stop cars. The checkpoints are staffed by Immigration, supposedly to look for illegal immigrants hiding in trunks, but the agents ALSO look for contraband and will happily arrest you for it. The evidence will not be thrown out, and you will spend years in jail.
Same goes for the SA at airports which is supposed to be looking for bombs, but have detained multiple people for "carrying thousands in cash". Last I checked carrying US legal tender on internal flights is not a crime, so why are they detaining innocent people? (Answer: For the same reason why SA guards happily executed members of the German Parliament in 1933 - because they are humans and humans can't be trusted with power. They enjoy smashing skulls too much.)
Re:But a lot of people don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
in reality demons are rare.
The sort of people who will do the most horrific and soul chilling things can go home, hug their kids and go to the community picnic.
I have no doubt that you're sure the people you know in the intelligence community are good people and I'm sure they're sure they're good people as well.
but that doesn't really mean anything.
it's hard to imagine but the guards at concentration camps can have coffee mugs with "worlds best dad" just like anyone else.
a good man, just following orders, who believes he's doing what is right can be far more scary than any mere psychopath.
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He isn't telling you what you should or should not do. He's telling you what you should KNOW before you hit that accept button.
As news have shown time and time again, most people do not read privacy policy of facebook, and do not think of consequences of facebook information availability.
Re: (Score:2)
I hit the accept button
And enabled a 20-something douchebag to make billions. Thank you for contributing to The Idiocracy.
Re:stand up and be counted (Score:5, Insightful)
That's philosophy of openness is fine, so long as you don't fall on the government's "undesirables" list. Like those folk who were blacklisted simply because they belonged to the communist party. Or had the unfortunate status of being japanese from 1942 to 46.
Or get "extra" attention by highway patrols because they are Harley riders, or DWB (driving while black). Or suspected downloaders of porn. "We don't know if he's a pedophile, but by god he's downloaded a lot of nude images. Surely one of those girls LOOKS underage, and we can frame him for it. Oh look - he's bought japanese comics of underage boys and girls from ebay. Book him."
Or posting a "sexual" photo to facebook when you're only 17 years and 11 months. Sexting is a favorite of overzealous prudes in prosecutors' offices. (Or horror - an 18 year old boy dating a 17 year old junior.)
Et cetera, et cetera.
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>>>But most (not all) of your examples have nothing to do with facebook.
Disagree. Facebook reveals:
- party affiliation (i.e. communist)
- race (asian)
- porn habit
- sexting photos
- you're a Japanese comic book collector
- posting "My boyfriend is a college guy" when you're only 16 or 17.
Re:stand up and be counted (Score:4, Insightful)
Your examples suck.
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Go check out OpenBook, way too many people do (ew!)
Re:stand up and be counted (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is not in "hiding from government", but not allowing your personal friendships into easy view of people with potentially dangerous agendas.
You may or may not know that your friend is now an activist for a political movement that government doesn't like for example. Before, there was no way for them to tell about your level of friendship, and they wouldn't have the man power to investigate every human contact he has. Now, they go to facebook, collect the information on friendships and have a nice list of additional suspects to fine comb through.
In this regard, it's the ease of availability that is dangerous to the user. This is a change on similar scale to telephones, and wiretapping that came with it. It allows for centralised data collection on a level that was impossible before.
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We didn't sell it, we gave it away. We got absolutely nothing of value in return for it.
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Re:99% garbage (Score:2)
Nah, information analysis is easy now. It's 2011.
I can think of seven ways to do it and it's not even my field.
"Rudolf Flesch grade scale analysis grade > 11"
$Location_marker > 3
and more
Re:Make up his mind, please (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy who wants all information to be accessible to everyone is complaining the biggest collections of information are too accessible?
No, you got it wrong. He stands for open governments, not people. That's a big difference.
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Ummmm, really? (Score:2)
Then why does wiki leaks have stuff on Sigma Chi? http://www.wikileaks.ch/wiki/The_secret_Ritual_of_Sigma_Chi,_2002 [wikileaks.ch]
Seems like Wikileaks likes to leak anything that is secret, even if it is just secrets of a club.
Re:Make up his mind, please (Score:5, Informative)
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fallacy_of_division [wikimedia.org]
Thanks for playing.
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He wants all information _which should be available to public_ to be available to public. And here, he is talking about private information, which, under normal circumstances, requires governments to go to court to be able to obtain.
Seriously - are you really that stupid or just trolling?
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Seriously, I don't care if you know that I'm at the book store buying a coffee. If I don't want this information to be public I don't post it. Problem solved.
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Feature that will no doubt be added to Facebook soon: ghost profiles. They probably already have it for people who get tagged in photos but don't have a Facebook account, but I expect soon it will become an acknowledged process - you'll be able to say "I know that girl" and create a profile for her.. fill in any information you know about her.. and other people will do the same. Those of us who don't have Facebook profiles will first hear about it when someone says "hey, I sent you a friend request on Fa
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Re:Make up his mind, please (Score:4, Interesting)
Since Facebook users volunteer up the information that pretty much makes it public information.
Okay, so if I post information on Facebook (either editing my profile or posting a status) then I am voluntarily giving that information to Facebook, so that makes it public information? Even though I expect only people I have marked as friends to see such information by my privacy settings? What if I send a Facebook message? It has a clear "To" header like an e-mail; should that information be considered public? For that matter what about GMail? I am inputting information into a textbox on a website with the intent that (specific) other people will read that text. Should I therefore treat that text as public knowledge? For a physical analogue, suppose I write my text on paper (perhaps multiple copies) and put those pieces of paper into envelopes and send them to my friends via snail mail. I, once again, have written text and tendered it to a third-party for delivery to a specific set of private individuals. Should I still expect this text to be public?
The United States has laws about privacy and due process. New technology should not make it so the government no longer has to follow due process in collecting private information on its citizens. Unfortunately, due to the nature of network effects, a lot of information gets concentrated in the hands of a few entities (in this case, Facebook) who do not necessarily have much interest in dealing with the government, so they simply freely hand over the information. I suppose privacy laws could be written to make it illegal for Facebook to hand over information about its users to the government, but it is not clear what such laws would even look like nor who would be supporting them.
Seriously, I don't care if you know that I'm at the book store buying a coffee. If I don't want this information to be public I don't post it. Problem solved.
You are right that a lot of this information actually is not that important. At the same time, I do not like the idea that law enforcement personnel can peer into my private life as recorded by various services I use without even having to justify the invasion of my privacy to a judge.
Of course, see my sig: I dislike the idea of monolithic services that are able to collect such information and would prefer that social networking (and other) services be made up of collections of smaller separately administered nodes, each of which would have far less information. How to do that while still having a usable service is, unfortunately, an open problem.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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He can't get fame and fortune from revealing secrets if they're already all over Facebook.
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I think I might have heard YOU are a rapist.
See, now you can be an alleged rapist too!
Re:abusive boss, alleged rapist, snitch (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>alleged rapist
Only in Europe could 2 women voluntarily have sex with a single man, enjoy themselves, and then a week later say, "I was raped," and the police take her seriously. I thought Europe was more progressive than backwards USA, what with nude television and beaches and such, but I guess not.
Anybody with any intelligence (i.e. not you) realizes this was a FRAME job, because woman #1 learned about woman #2, got jealous, and they both decided to "get even" with the man. It's a classic case of buyer's remorse.
In the US this case would be laughed out of court.
Re:abusive boss, alleged rapist, snitch (Score:5, Informative)
Only in Europe could 2 women voluntarily have sex with a single man, enjoy themselves, and then a week later say, "I was raped," and the police take her seriously. I thought Europe was more progressive than backwards USA, what with nude television and beaches and such, but I guess not.
My understanding is that Assange's enemies scoured the Swedish law books until they found an obscure, seldom-invoked clause that they could use against him. The charges are very unusual, even within their own jurisdiction.
Re:abusive boss, alleged rapist, snitch (Score:4, Funny)
In the US this case would be laughed out of court.
You're talking non-sense. Judge Judy would have taken this case very seriously.
Re:abusive boss, alleged rapist, snitch (Score:4, Informative)
The women weren't even sure themselves they had been raped. They went to the police to "consult", not to file a report, and the prosecutor decided to warrant an arrest based on their story. Incidentally, the prosecutor happened to know one of the women since before.
The arrest warrant was subsequently thrown out by a second prosecutor, and then reinstated by a third.
Also note that the women admit the sex was consensual. One of them accuses Assange of breaking the condom during consensual sex, and the other one accuses Assange of molesting her while she was sleeping in the same bed as him after the consensual sex.
And, yes, even Swedish lawyers think the allegations are ridiculous.
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I really don't care. Facebook and other social media tools, web-sites, location tracking cell-phones - don't really bother me. I've done nothing wrong, don't plan on doing anything wrong, so if they want to track my life - go for it. It's quit boring.
Says the almighty and infamous AC....swimming deep in the seas of irony I see...
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
...If Big Brother wants access to my Facebook information, I'd be more offended that my taxpayer dollars are being wasted on such a frivolity than any 'invasion of privacy.'...
When you really think about the logistics and expense involved in tracking someone down and doing an investigation, having some young intel analyst sit behind a desk and with a few mouse clicks find out just as much information on you in about 20 minutes is likely a hell of a lot cheaper on the taxpayer than spending days or weeks doing intel gathering the "old fashioned" way.
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That's a pretty good analogy. I treat it like one long, endless night at the bar. Half the things I say are just jokes. The other half are half-thoughts and random observations. If you're on my friends list and you pollute my vision with endless rants of malformed political opinions, I'm going to take the bait and call you out on it. If you say something funny, I'm going to LOL it. If I have an important announcement to make, or a request, I'll try to present it as such. But as a general rule, if you take e
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Also this stuff is obvious to you and me but apparently not to all the morons on facebook that post incriminating items under their real name and where prospective employers can see them. It's not a bad thing to say if a microphone is shoved in your face by a journalist that really wants something about a very mundane sex "scandal" instead.