Re: Facebook smackdown

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Brock N. Meeks" <bmeeks () cox net>
Date: May 5, 2007 2:39:52 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] approve:sigmanu Facebook smackdown

Leavitt asks "what's new here" and rolls on to with the profound
proclamation: "...almost any venture capitalist, professional angel  
investor
or tech company board member" has ties "to the military industrial  
complex."

Which is like saying, "every president in the recent history has had  
to lie,
fudge the truth and deceive the public in the name of national  
security."
As if just because it's common place we should all just shut up and  
take it.

Bullshit, Leavitt.

As for the larger point you make, that if you really want your  
information
private just keep it off the Internet, you're doing nothing more than
recycling the old Washington maxim:  "Don't put anything in writing  
that you
don't want to show up on the front page of the Washington Post."

So, we just suck it up and take it?  Too many of the old war horses  
in the
fight to preserve some kind privacy online have too many bruises to  
just let
things be; which is why it's important to keep pressing on issues like
Facebook, to keep track of the relationships and expose, regardless of
whether or not the information "is new."

If we let this stuff just sink into the flotsam and jetsam of cyberspace
then we have surrendered whatever hope we have of keeping our heads  
above
water when it comes to privacy.

So, while Leavitt wants to play parlor games with Kevin Bacon, others  
among
us will continue to connect the dots and draw the pictures for everyone
else, so that at least when someone rolls over our privacy, we'll  
have at
least seen it coming.

--Brock


On 5/5/07 7:23 AM, "David Farber" <dave () farber net> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Thomas Leavitt <thomas () thomasleavitt org>
> Date: May 5, 2007 2:42:20 AM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: Facebook smackdown
>
> Dave,
>
> What's new here? You could play six degrees of Kevin Bacon with
> almost any venture capitalist, professional angel investor or tech
> company board member, and wind up with (probably multiple)
> connections to the military industrial complex. The suspect part of
> Facebook's TOS is standard boilerplate. Surely no one is naive enough
> to think these issues are unique to Facebook (or even social
> networking as a whole)? The trade off between privacy and
> functionality inherent in social networking is simply more visible -
> dating sites, any sort of site where more than cursory profile
> information is gathered has this same issue.
>
> ... and if anyone is naive enough to think that a change to
> Facebook's "privacy" policy would be anything more than cosmetic in
> terms of protection from the OIA/CIA, I have just three words for
> them: National Security Letter.
>
> Not to mention the fact that a TOS can be revised at any time, and
> that an acquiring company is under no obligation to honor it.
>
> Ultimately, the golden rule of online privacy is simple: if you want
> a piece of information to remain private, then don't share it online.
> Anywhere. With anyone. In any medium. Period.
>
> The macro issue here is the potential for our government (or any
> other) to abuse their access to this information for repressive
> purposes, or, in the worst case, to simply round up people of a
> particular political persuasion and summarily execute them.
>
> ... and in reference to that, it seems that the information available
> in a social networking site about someone's political affiliations
> would be insignificant, in relation to the trail left online via
> other mechanisms... such as, say, postings to Dave Farber's IP
> list. :) The reality is that the Internet is the new town square, and
> if you've got even the slightest inclination to express a political
> opinion, in all likelihood, you're going to do it online, and leave a
> record that a repressive government would have no problem finding.
>
> In point of fact, it would be interesting to do a study of a hundred
> random individuals picked out of the phone book, and find out how
> many of them have enough of a corpus of identifiable online postings
> to enable a reasonable guess as to their political affiliation - and
> then cross check that guess against voter registration records and
> direct inquiries. I'd bet the success rate for those folks where a
> reasonable guess could be made would be very high.
>
> Regards,
> Thomas Leavitt
>
>
> From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Facebook smackdown
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 10:45:26 -0400
>
> Interesting
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Brock N. Meeks" <bmeeks () cox net>
> Date: May 4, 2007 10:04:05 AM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Facebook smackdown
>
> What do Facebook, the CIA and your magazine subscription list have in
> common?  Maybe more than you think...
>
> http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/
>
> Trust me, it's worth the look.
>
>
>
>
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