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Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machine' Ever
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."
I suspect that the relatively brief period between the breakdown of the 'symmetric transparency' of village and smaller social groups and the rise of the 'asymmetric transparency' of rationalized, technocratic surveillance will be looked back upon as a curious historical anomaly.
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.
Centralization breaks the internet.
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.
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.