November 03, 2007

F.Y.I. Nothing is as simple as it seems.

If you use Facebook you need to check this out:

http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/


This is an excellent video clip of who owns
Facebook and the potential they have to use any
information about you including your credit
rating etc etc etc!!!!!!!

Check out the
connections to CIA and information collection and storage. scary stuff
Also look at this from Common Ground...

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/

Common Ground Common Sense

http://www.commongroundcommonsene.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/f4.html

Issues
that Affect Our Lives


http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/f7.html

Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/f77.html

Civil

Rights and Civil Liberties Archive

http://www.thecolorofinfinity.com/blog/archives/2005/07/big_brothers_bi.html

http://www.thecolorofinfinity.com/blog/arc...rothers_bi.html


Big Brothers, Big Facebook: Your Orwellian Community

A few days ago I stumbled across a couple
articles mentioning TheFacebook, and a little
start-up capital they happened to get in the sum
of $13 million. The number intrigued me, so I did
a little more research, a little more stumbling,
and found something that even I still have a hard
time accepting. So, here's what I came up with:

(p.s. - I'm hoping that someone from EFF or
people concerned with privacy rights will take
notice. This really worries me and a lot of my friends.)

TheFacebook.com, created in February of 2004 by
21 year old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, is a
student social network now active at more than
800 campuses, with more than 2.8 million
registered users. [1]

Among its features,
TheFacebook allows a user to upload a picture of
themselves and can include information about favorite music, books, movies, their
address, phone number, e-mail, clubs, jobs, educational history, and even political
affiliations. Facebook is extremely popular, attracting on average 80 percent of a school's
undergraduate population. However, there are some questions raised regarding privacy
concerns on
the site, and when some digging is done to find out who is really
behind the site's management,
there are more questions than answers.

The first venture capital money to come into
TheFacebook, $500,000 worth, came from venture

capitalist Peter Thiel, founder and former CEO of
Paypal. [1]

A Stanford graduate and former
columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Thiel is
author of the book "The Diversity Myth," [2]
which received praises from notable

neo-conservatives such as William Kristol. [3]
In
fact, Thiel is on the board of the radical conservative group
VanguardPAC. [4]

Further funding came in the form of $12.7 million
from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel's
manager James Breyer was former chair of the
National Venture Capital Association (NVAC). [1]

Breyer served on NVAC's board with Gilman Louie,
CEO of In-Q-Tel, [5] a venture capital firm
established by the Central Intelligence Agency in
1999. [6] This firm works in various aspects of
information technology and intelligence,
including most notably "nurturing data mining technologies."

Breyer has also served on the board of BBN Technologies, a research and development firm
known for spearheading the ARPANET, or what we know today as the Internet. [7]
In October of
2004, Dr. Anita Jones climbed on board, becoming a part of a firm packed
with leaders from other
areas of Silicon Valley's venture capital community, including
none other than Gilman
Louie. But what is most interesting is Dr. Jones' experience prior to joining BBN.

Jones herself served on the Board of Directors for In-Q-Tel, and was previously the
Director of
Defense Research and Engineering for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Her responsibilities
included serving as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense
and overseeing the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

While the nearly $13 million that came from Accel to fund The Facebook
certainly looks suspicious
and unfortunately disturbing after reviewing all of this
information, the only problem on the

surface seems to be the appearance of
some
incestuous relationships between the Pentagon,
the CIA, and these venture capital firms.
But
this goes further than just the initial
appearances. DARPA shot to national fame in 2002
when John Markoff of the New York Times announced

the existence of the "Information Awareness
Office" (IAO). [8] According to Wikipedia, "the
IAO has the stated mission to gather as much
information as possible about everyone, in a
centralized location, for easy perusal by the
United States government, including (though not
limited to) Internet activity, credit card
purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car
rentals, medical records, educational
transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills,
tax returns, and any other available data." [9]
Protests came from civil libertarians on both the
right and the left who saw the IAO as a new
Orwellian arm of the United States government.
After Congress investigated DARPA's project,
funding was cut off and IAO was essentially dead in the water.

The Information Awareness Office seems to have
survived some of its original purposes in a
mutated form, found in today's Facebook. In fact,
one of IAO's original example technologies
included "human network analysis and behavior
model building engines," [10] a surprising echo
of the social networking mapping that Facebook
does using SVG visualizations. [11] Add that to
the information that Facebook collects and
compare it to the startlingly similar goal of the
IAO. It appears at first glance that DoD, along
with the CIA, has managed to circumvent its
previous Congressionally established limitations
and find corporate sponsorship for its programs,
under the thin veil of a useful social network for unwitting college
students.

And those college students continue to log on to
TheFacebook, completely unaware of the massive
affronts to their privacy. The so-called "Privacy
Policy" [12] of Facebook includes a statement
saying that they "may share your information with
third parties, including responsible companies
with which we have a relationship." It goes on to
say that, "We may be required to disclose
customer information pursuant to lawful requests,
such as subpoenas or court orders, or in
compliance with applicable laws. Additionally, we
may share account or other information when we
believe it is necessary to comply with law or to
protect our interests or property. This may
include sharing information with other companies,
lawyers, agents or government agencies."

Some of the aspects of the privacy policy are
downright creepy and confusing. This particular
gem is especially disturbing: "Thefacebook also
collects information about you from other
sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging
services. This information is gathered regardless
of your use of the Web Site." And there's no
telling when the privacy policy may change. As of
when this was written (July 1, 2005), the policy
was effective as of June 28, 2005.

Who knows where the information they collect
about these three million college students,
alumni, and professors is going, or what they
intend to do with it. The fact that these
companies and agencies are all so closely
related, and that The Facebook has almost no
organizational transparency are all cause for
concern. Hopefully we can soon uncover the truth.

[1] "Accel Partners Invests In Thefacebook.com"
[
Accel.com]


[2] Peter Thiel's book, "The Diversity Myth" [Amazon.com]


[3] Kristol's commentary, as well as others, can be found here:


[4] VanguardPAC Board of Advisors [TheVanguard.org]


[5] In-Q-Tel - About Us [In-Q-Tel.org]


[6] "Jim Breyer of Accel Partners Elected
Chairman of National Venture Capital Association" [NVCA.org]


[7] General Catalyst Partners :: News - "BBN
Technologies Appoints Dr. Anita K. Jones to Board of Directors"
(This includes information about BBN's
involvement in ARPANET, as well as Jones' past with DARPA and In-Q-Tel)
Link

[8] New York Times - "Many Tools Of Big Brother
Are Now Up And Running" by John Markoff and John
Schwartz, December 23, 2002, Late Edition -
Final, Section C, Page 1, Column 2 [NYTimes.com]


[9] Information Awareness Office [Wikipedia.org]
Link

[10] The Internet Archive's archived page of
DARPA's Information Awareness Office
Link

[11] Thefacebook.com FAQ - Visualizations
Thefacebook.com
]
Link

[12] Thefacebook.com Privacy Policy
Thefacebook.com
]

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