Do you have a Facebook? The CIA will know you!

As a willful citizen of the web 2.0 *yawn* continuum, there is a lot of information about myself all over the net. Publications, photos, articles; they’re all there for anyone to see. But one thing that many people (about 2 billion) like myself hold to be true is the ability to control some of that information- namely profiles on networking sites. Who knows how your information is being used?

Myspace, Orkut, Facebook each allow you to (and encourage you strongly to) put much of your personal information up on their site. But what else is the information being used for?

We know Myspace is owned my Rupert Murdoch, Orkut is owned by Google and Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg. We also know that willingly putting up information is like leaving the front door of your house wide open.

But the real question is who really owns Facebook? Where has their VC investment stream come from? And what can they do with personal information?

After over a decade of being immersed in the conspiracy theory culture—and I’m still there wether I like it or not—my core beef remains the same. It’s not something unique to conspiracy research. It’s a universal problem with all true believers: exaggeration for dramatic effect. Subtlety is interesting. Details are brainfood. Overstatements are good for getting people alarmed and worked up, but what happens when people start realizing they were decieved?

Is Facebook a CIA front, devoted to identifying, tracking and crushing dissent in the college generation? Actually, no. Facebook is a website, devoted to “social networking.” However, there’s also a lot more going on behind the curtain. As always, it’s the grey areas that interest me the most. So with this article, I want to ask refined and specific questions to get accurate and detailed answers. Because it’s not an exaggeration to say that there are very real ties between Facebook and CIA—and there’s a whole covert landscape of semi-legal databases, companies selling private information, and the new horizon of computer-driven “Data Mining”.

In short, this is a great angle to sneak a peek one of the most hidden, and profitable, sectors of the US economy. What we’ll see is a lot less simple than a good conspiracy theory, but I also think it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than the “Facebook = CIA” mantra that passes for “investigation” on the internets.

Let’s start right there. The quote above is from Facebook’s Terms and Conditions—specifically, their privacy policy. With a declaration like that, you have to give these folks credit for being pretty damn blunt about the nature of the game. Facebook is a long-term investment in my generation, just like MySpace. The payoff these days is millions and millions in advertising revenue—but what about the payoff one decade from now, when their databases have multi-gigabyte files about you? Your interests, habits, porn preferences, mindless surveys, purchases, friends, bulletins, and little sparkly animated .gif files? How much do you think that information will be worth—to advertisers, to corporations, to the military, to intelligence services?

Anyone who has concerns about their “privacy” being violated by Facebook is completely, unconditionally justified in their concern. After all, Facebook was born out of data theft—founder Mark Zuckerberg stole tens of thousands of digital files on his fellow Harvard students, directly from the University’s “secure” servers. Maybe that’s alarming to you, but I find it endearingly psychotic. Anyone who can found a multi-billion dollar business with stolen property is worth paying attention to.

- brainsturbator.com