[Air-L] and now for *the dark side* of facebook

[Alexis Turner]

I'd actually like to go even further than Alex and ask, do we really believe 
that the only way interested spy agencies can obtain this information is by 
getting it siphoned through companies they have a *friendly* relationship with?  

In other words, I agree that none of this information specifically points 
to Facebook being part of some conspiracy, because, in addition to Alex's 
point of the nepotism amongst companies, the named agencies certainly 
have the abilty to log in to a system and build some simple little scrapers to 
retrieve the data they want all by themselves, with or without assistance from 
the company.  For that reason, I do believe the entire structure of Facebook and 
ALL business models like it raise serious privacy concerns.  Facebook's 
connections are public knowledge and make it an easy target.  But perhaps we 
should really be asking this question of ALL social networking sites.  I think 
the Facebook discussion has lost the forest for a single tree.
-Alexis


On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Alex Halavais wrote:

::Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:53:31 -0500
::From: Alex Halavais <alex at halavais.net>
::Reply-To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
::To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
::Subject: Re: [Air-L] and now for *the dark side* of facebook
::
::On Feb 20, 2008 12:12 AM, Kimberly De Vries <cuuixsilver at gmail.com> wrote:
::> Anyway, has anyone from Facebook ever commented on the whole intelligence
::> community connection?
::>
::
::Is it just me, or is this a serious association fallacy. No doubt,
::network visualizations can help to root out conspiracies, criminal or
::not. But the mere fact that people associate with one another means
::little more than that: they associate with one another. Given the
::degree to which corporate boards interlock, I would be surprised if
::most companies could not be similarly associated with the intelligence
::community.
::
::Let's take one of the claims in plain English:
::
::Facebook is a site that collects a lot of information in order to
::create profiles of individuals;
::ACCELL is a VC company that invested in Facebook;
::James Breyer is on the board of ACCELL;
::James Breyer is also on the board of BBN Technologies;
::Dr. Anita Jones is on the board of BBN Technologies;
::Dr. Anita Jones at one point "oversaw" DARPA (among others);
::DARPA funded the Information Awareness Office,
::The IAO aimed to data mine profiles of individuals;
::Kevin Bacon started the IAO!
::
::(OK, I added the last one.)
::
::It's worth being critical of the overlapping membership networks of
::corporate boards, but to my mind, the above chain of connections is
::not particularly interesting.
::
::Alex
::
::
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