Facebook, Privacy, wikileaks, anonymous 3b

Are there agents that go on Facebook?  Just what powers does the government have to investigate anyone in a social network?

"...information does not have to be true to have an impact..." Doug Naquin CIA


In 1986, the Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  The law went a distance to provide more protections for your data online.  For instance,

The Stored Communications Act also strictly limits the information that an electronic communication service may provide to the government. A government entity generally must provide a subpoena, warrant or court order to obtain information about a user that is stored by the communication service provider.

However, the law as ammended by the so-called "Patriot Act" which allows

...provisions to permit disclosure of such information to the government if the service provider has a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.

See These Pages: FUTURISM TECH TRENDS SINGULARITY SCIENCE CENSORSHIP SOCIAL NETWORKS eREADERS MOBILE DEVICES


At the present time, different companies require different procedures for law enforcement.  The question as to whether law enforcement uses social networks to "map social relationships/networks" on potential persons of interest in legal cases is yes.  The EFF through a freedom of information request obtained this presentation to law enforcement personnel from the the Department of Justice.  Facebook out of all the social networks has stated that anyone, including law enforcement agents who create a false profile on the site will have their accounts deleted.  The EFF states that only Craigslist and Twitter provide to its users on their procedures for releasing information to law enforcement or security agencies.  An example of how a social network is being used when it comes to immigration fraud and how it might be used for other security or law enforcement purposes is cited in a document obtained by the EFF, dated July 20, 2010, titled, Social Networking Sites And Their Importance to FDNS.

EFF information request
click to enlarge

Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuels a need to have a large group of 'friends' link to their pages and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don't even know. This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities. Generally, people on these sites speak honestly in their network because all of their friends and family are interacting with them via lM's (Instant Messages), Blogs (Weblog journals), etc. This social networking gives FDNS an opportunity to reveal fraud by browsing these sites to see if petitioners and beneficiaries are in a valid relationship or are attempting to deceive [United States Citizen and Immigration Services] about their relationship. Once a user posts online, they create a public record and timeline of their activities. In essence, using MySpace and other like sites is akin to doing an unannounced cyber "site-visit" on a [sic] petitioners and beneficiaries."

We include some video discussing Facebook privacy issues. If you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link: http://bit.ly/oIhdAa

According to documents obtained again by the EFF, dated September 12, 2008, titled, Media Highlights - Intelligence Turns To Open Market For Data, the CIA is also monitoring social networks.  A section of the report states,

Doug Naquin, director of the Open Source Center, said media monitored by his analysts include blogs, chat rooms, and social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace.  Hayden said such media allows intelligence analysis to engage in the kind of social interaction which foreign societies that had had to do in person while serving as an Air Force attache in the mid-1990s.  Monitoring those ties requires analysts to develop modern technical and analytical skills to integrate information derived from those sources....Besides tracking new media sites, analysts must be able to figure out how participants should recruit young analysts from what he called the "mash-up generation" who can integrate data from disparate text, data and video sources.  The insights derived from such exercises can make "open source the first source."

The report goes on to speak about misinformation,

 Adversaries have learned to use new media to spread disinformation, and Naquin pointed out that "information does not have to be treu to have an impact."

No doubt our adversaries are not the only ones who use disinformation on social media sites.  We suspect the CIA also deals in this kind of business. We post here a rather interesting youtube video concerning the connections between Facebook and the CIA.  If you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link: http://youtu.be/mElVLHdFACU.

After examination of the facts, what this video does demonstrate is the interlocking and close knit relationships between many corporations and the members of their boards.  The examples they list are valid.  Peter Thiel was of the main funders of Facebook.  He was on the board of directors of NVCA (National Venture Capital Association).   On that board is James Breyer who is a partner of Accel Partners which is a venture capital company assisting startups.  On the board of NVCA also is Gilman Louie, a venture capitalist who founded the company In-Q-Tel, a company funded by the CIA whose purpose is to assist them in using computer technology for the purpose of spying and intelligence.  We quote George Tenet about one of the many functions of the company founded in 1999:

We [the CIA] decided to use our limited dollars to leverage technology developed elsewhere. In 1999 we chartered ... In-Q-Tel. ... While we pay the bills, In-Q-Tel is independent of CIA. CIA identifies pressing problems, and In-Q-Tel provides the technology to address them. The In-Q-Tel alliance has put the Agency back at the leading edge of technology ... This ... collaboration ... enabled CIA to take advantage of the technology that Las Vegas uses to identify corrupt card players and apply it to link analysis for terrorists [cf. the parallel data-mining effort by the SOCOM-DIA operation Able Danger ], and to adapt the technology that online booksellers use and convert it to scour millions of pages of documents looking for unexpected results.

Of course this alone does not prove anything except the close association of corporate America with the Intelligence community and the military, but it is interesting.  We wonder what kind of influence could bring to bear on Facebook and other internet companies through this kind of network.

Those who saw the post picture for this article noticed that we included the Information Awareness Office, a little known agency.   On that subject, we post this interesting video.  If you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link: http://youtu.be/vDgC0n3vyII.

We leave it to our readers to form their own conclusions.