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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."
Where did he tell you to do anything but understand?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
He's not talking to you, you prick. He's raising public awareness. Get over yourself.
You need to stop putting words in other people's mouths.
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.
Facebook is like a reverse Wikileaks, leaking the general public's personal information back to shady corporations and government organisations. They really do have a detailed map of your digital life, and they keep all of it - the record goes all the way back to when you joined. A database of the lives 640 million people worldwide... the fact this information is so poorly protected is deeply concerning. Once you put information up there you don't get it back. I've said it before: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1946656&cid=34845420
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.
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.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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.
You see, I've never been able to understand this sort of thinking. Why, if ignorance is such an objective evil, are there people actively trying to promote it? If populations never willingly go into a war, then why do we ever go into wars? Is it the case that the situations which justify a war never exist, but are some kind of fantasy? If so, why do people who supposedly have access to the "genuine" information still insist on going to war? Is it merely because it is in their best interest? If so, why is it always in the best interest of those who can be well informed without media intervention and always in the worst interest of people who cannot? It seems to me that this philosophy explicitly posits a good guys vs. bad guys cosmology, and the idea that the soul of mankind would be pure and lily white if it were free of these unseen Illuminati who have apparently raided the secret stash of evil that God keeps in the back of the fridge, out of reach of everyone below a certain income bracket. That worldview smells too much like shit for me to believe, no matter how much hippie-charisma it has.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
it should also be noted that there's a line "Follow us on Facebook" on this site...
http://www.wikileaks.ch/gitmo/
Which leads to here:
http://www.facebook.com/wikileaks
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.
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.
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.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()