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Wikileaks Founder: Facebook is the most appalling spy machine ever invented

267 points by fosk 16y ago

nametoremember 16y ago
If it appeared that Facebook had developed a portal for government agencies to access and monitor people then it would be a big deal. If they have implemented a way of looking up or monitoring things by themselves (and they obviously have and need to) and just give that information when the government comes knocking.. that's less bad.
- forensic 16y ago
  All signs indicate that Julian Assange is correct about Facebook information being completely and easily accessible, without judicial oversight, to US intelligence. This should not be surprising either, considering laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the long history of illegal wiretapping and illegal surveillance in general conducted by American intelligence agencies, with impunity. Any skepticism about Facebook's availability to the NSA and CIA is, frankly, completely naive and ignores history among other things.
  - edanm 16y ago
    "All signs indicate that Julian Assange is correct about Facebook information being completely and easily accessible, without judicial oversight, to US intelligence." Do you mind showing some examples of these signs? I'm not particularly skeptical, but it's the first I've heard of automated interfaces like these.
    - neilk 16y ago
      Here's an article Bruce Schneier wrote about a similar system at Google. Apparently, the Chinese hackers (widely speculated to be backed by their government) hacked into Google using the backdoor put in place for the US government. http://www.schneier.com/essay-306.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-306.html And the rest of the article lists all kinds of other examples that exist worldwide.
      - ntoshev 16y ago
        Do you have any link describing this backdoor and the procedures to use it (grandparent's claim "without judicial oversight" is the critical bit here)? Schneier just mentions it without reference.
        neilk 16y ago
        I don't know how I could prove that one way or the other. The overall trend seems to be towards relaxing the need for warrants, although there are important exceptions. If law enforcement have their own backdoor, that seems to suggest less judicial oversight. I personally trust Schneier to depict the state of affairs accurately, probably using public and non-public information.
        ntoshev 15y ago
        We all know services like Gmail can be subpoenaed by court to provide information. Google is big enough for this to happen to them on a daily basis, so it's very likely they have a an automated procedure. For all we know, Schneier may be talking about this.
        trotsky 16y ago
        I think it is fair to assume that the US Intelligence Community is likely to work pretty hard to conceal or obfuscate their best methods of open source intelligence gathering. Public documentation of such extrajudicial operations is likely to be heavily discouraged, and through the patriot act tools like NSL's are available to enforce that. Consider the warrantless wiretapping program that went on for 5+ years. We know that tools for court ordered intercepts were in place through CALEA and others. We also know that the telcos were told and accepted that FISA warrants were not needed for this monitoring. Similarly, we know that facebook obviously has tools in place for responding to warrants, and that it is probably true that facebook can legally reveal much/all of your account if they want to without a warrant. Facebook is quite likely to view building a friendly relationship with the IC to be beneficial. Another way to think about it: Intelligence agencies strongly discourage the use of social networking applications both by their own employees and other federal agents. I find it completely credible that any number of friendly and hostile intelligence agencies and security services have widespread access to facebook data and other social networking sites through a variety of means. It's unlikely to be as ham handed as the https://dni.facebook.com/ https://dni.facebook.com/ you might imagine, but it's most assuredly there. It's simply too attractive to not be.
    - omouse 16y ago
      Uh, if they can build interfaces for their sysadmins and business people to use, then they can easily adapt those to be used by the US military/intelligence agencies. Have you ever used a web framework like Django? Imagine its admin interface except with way more data.
- known 16y ago
  http://youropenbook.org/ http://youropenbook.org/
evanwalsh 16y ago
Despite the article's linkbait title, Assange does have some legitimate points. It's all kind of frightening, actually.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- oliveoil 16y ago
  53 people recommended this.
  - bbk 16y ago
    I see you had replied about an hour ago. Now its 548.
- neuroelectronic 15y ago
  And like everything from Wikileaks, it makes me say, "no kidding..."
shareme 16y ago
is he aware of what is fake an real anymore? can we say HBGary..ah yes we can
mun2mun 16y ago
relevant http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic... (in a funny way).
- zyfo 16y ago
  What's with the downvotes? It's related. Just because it's satire doesn't make it cheap and useless. Upvoted.
  - ignifero 15y ago
    Favourite quote: "The people who use foursquare are people that no one would mind seeing bombed anyway..."
known 16y ago
Your FB a/c is like your http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary but public to all http://youropenbook.org/ http://youropenbook.org/
dvfer 16y ago
At least people should know that before using it...not everyone has many secrets to hide. What's the point hiding who you make friends with, and public conversations? Trying too hard to stay off the grid is rather creepy...
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  Is hiding my friends less creepy than trawling through my friends, friends' friends, friends' friends' friends, and so on?
  - dvfer 15y ago
    no. Both are creepy. Can't people use it like a normal person? It has to be either extremely conservative or extremely nosy?
- Peaker 16y ago
  Consider the hypothetical scenario of trying to organize protests against an illegitimate regime. Do you see the value of the information for the illegitimate regime to use?
  - rapala 16y ago
    You don't organize a protest against the goverment using your real identity if there is a fear of retaliation. Not in the real world and definitely not in the web. Mapping someones friends by good old detective work is not that difficult. It just takes time. It will also reveal much more than your facebook account will. What is frightening to me is the automation. It simplifies your relations to people and can lead to some unpleasant connections. People should also be educated about the fact that facebook is not a private forum. Everyone knows not to bitch about their boss too loudly in the cafeteria. But for some reason they are happy to write about it to their wall.
    - bilban 16y ago
      The automation is such a huge win. Algorithms can be run on the network to highlight anomalies in microseconds. A Facebook profile is better in someways than a thumb print or DNA. Net-citizens can be automatically character profiled. You also don't need everyone to use the system to grasp a people's mindset.
sethg 16y ago
The other day I met a guy who belonged to the MIT card-counting team portrayed in the book Bringing Down the House. He mentioned that casino security departments are now looking up their patrons on Facebook: if five people show up at the blackjack tables at the same time and act like they don’t know each other, but they are friends with one another on Facebook, then they are presumably Up To Something.
- ssharp 16y ago
  This is pretty interesting. I know casino security is a business where a consultant can develop a technique and sell them as services to casinos (allowing them economies of scale), but it's still pretty crazy how much effort casinos will put out to thwart non-mechanical card counters. I wonder what casinos estimate their annual loss to card counters?
  - sethg 16y ago
    If you (where “you” can be an individual or a team) know how to count cards and are disciplined about following the technique, and you patronize a casino that doesn’t catch you, there is a slow leak of money from the casino’s pocket into yours. The whole business model of casinos depends on the slow leak going in the other direction.
    - dtby 16y ago
      This comment is completely unhelpful.
      - raganwald 16y ago
        Did you mean to imply that another comment is completely unhelpful, or was it your intention to invoke the Epimenides paradox by writing a comment that claims itself to be unhelpful? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epimenides_paradox https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epimenides_pa...
        16y ago
mahrain 16y ago
Not surprising that Assange doesn't do much social networking, it seems all he publishes is through Wikileaks, which does have a Twitter account. This explains why. He used to have a blog which can only be found through archive.org.
- e40 16y ago
  I find it interesting that the people that founded FB don't do social networking much. Telling, IMO.
  - code_duck 16y ago
    Sure, but does patio11 play bingo every day? You don't have to be passionate about the particulars of a product to decide to capitalize on an opportunity. (Seems like this has been an example around here before! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520311 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520311 )
    - omouse 16y ago
      This is different, this is about personal information being made publically available.
      - code_duck 15y ago
        One can't assume they don't use it due to worries about personal information being public. Perhaps they really just aren't as interested as the people who use FB daily. Also, since they're very wealthy public figures, they really do have to be more careful about their private info vs. the care Joe Schmoe in Hoboken should take.
        omouse 15y ago
        they really do have to be more careful about their private info vs. the care Joe Schmoe in Hoboken should take. You know that poorer people have property and troubles of their own that requires personal information staying personal.
aksbhat 16y ago
I believe that the benefits of a social network such as Facebook outweigh the risks. The problem is that, it is very hard to quantify the positive effect which arises from small interactions. Sure there is huge scope for improvement, but one could have made similar arguments against telephony when it was invented. I believe we are still to see rise of real social network based applications. e.g. something that allows us to estimate trust for a person, given his and your social network.
- alecco 16y ago
  > I believe that the benefits of a social network such as Facebook > outweigh the risks. That's a false dichotomy. There are systems for social networks with decent privacy schemes.
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    He is stating his belief. Are people not allowed to believe in false dichotomies?
  - eropple 15y ago
    There are systems for social networks with decent privacy schemes. Those systems also have a number of users that approximate a rounding error. As such, the dichotomy is not false in practice.
- dasil003 15y ago
  On the other hand you don't know shit about the risk. If the US government takes a totalitarian turn, and they start taking away your friends and family under the guise of homeland security then Facebook suddenly becomes your worse nightmare. And don't get me started on Color: Wilhelm Zaisser's corpse is busting a nut about that 50 years posthumous.
defroost 16y ago
Last year we read about the Administrations proposed legislation that would require software companies to build "backdoors" into their online communication systems [1], but as Assange points out, they may already be in place. [1] http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12196 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12196
darksaga 16y ago
Oh Julian, how arrogant you are. Every time I read this guy spouting off, he just continues to lose credibility and respect. If you don't want employers or any other companies looking you up on social media, then don't use it - or just use an alias or a fake name. Nobody HAS to have a Facebook page or partake in social media. If you don't want people tracking you, then don't use it. DUH
- aw3c2 16y ago
  Even if you do not actively register at Facebook yourself, your friends might give them your identity and social group by allowing Facebook to harvest their e-mail accounts.
  - olalonde 16y ago
    Don't make friends who will do this. Don't give your real name to friends. Don't get out of your house. etc. I'm taking this to the extreme simply to illustrate that anything you do publicly has a privacy trade off. Why single out Facebook?
    - darksaga 16y ago
      You don't have to go these lengths. I use quite a bit of social media and none of the sites I use, has my correct personal information. All my ID's are all made-up personas and connected to junk email accounts. It would take a lot to get to my real identity. It's not hard to do, and it keeps me plenty safe.
      - olalonde 15y ago
        For the record, I wouldn't recommend what I wrote to any sane person. I was just pushing the privacy rhetoric to the extreme to illustrate that there will always be a trade off between privacy and social life. People seem to forget this fundamental principle too often when they talk about the evil social networks. Edit: To the people who down voted to disagree, I'd like to ask: Do you think the world would be a better place without Facebook?
atacrawl 16y ago
I guess I sort of see his point, but isn't he overstating things? Take Facebook out of the equation, and it's still incredibly easy for intelligence agencies to find out everything about you. They can still tap your phones, do surveillance, check your bank records, bug your home and read anything you write online that doesn't happen to be on Facebook. Maybe Facebook made some of that easier, but it certainly didn't make possible the impossible.
- sp332 16y ago
  Surveillance generally requires someone to know ahead of time that you're a person of interest, in order to order phone taps, pull your mail, put a tracker on your car etc. Facebook logs all your data ahead of time. If I want to know about you, I can just check your FB in a few seconds and know months of data about you. FB also includes lists of your contacts, logs of (some) communications, pictures of you, and maybe location data to boot. Also, all of everyone's information is now available from a single broker. With law-enforcement API's that (I'm assuming) FB provides, it's possible to track thousands of people in real-time for months without leaving the room or investing in lots of equipment. So it's not just that surveillance is "easier" but that it's now accessible to lots of people who couldn't do it before.
- omouse 16y ago
  I think the other problem is that Facebook makes it more acceptable to use your real name and real information. I remember the old days of the internet where you were wary of marketers and spammers and used as much fake information as was possible in order to use a website/service/whatever. Facebook definitely makes all of that easier mainly because it puts it in one place. Instead of having to do multiple things (talk to bank, phone company, visit your house, monitor all the places where you're writing), it can do just one thing: ask Facebook for all your data. Centralization and acceptability of personal information being public are the two main problems.
- forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
  No, it is not. With facebook they could know about you EVEN when you are not into facefook. You know , they make people tag their photos with the names on it, with face detection. So the tree letter agencies (NSA..) have registering of events they previously did not have access to: Your friends weeding photos tells them you were there. They do not have to ask anymore. They know everything about anyone with redundancy(multiple people making photos). You are your friends spy. Once you tag your photos you do their work, instead of having to analyze 5 million pixels x 4 bytes = 20MBytes of data per photo, you reduce it to a 20Bytes name they can plot on a link graph with 1 million more with minimum effort.
forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
Shocking but true. When I read my grandparents diary about the Spanish civil war(1936), I see they killed people for getting info about the relationships, friendships of the principal leaders so they could kill selected people and destroy entire public movements. That happened in WWII too. When Soviet Russia entered Poland, the first thing they did was to investigate the links of relationships of the Polish resistance. They kill every single of them so nobody opposed the Soviets(if they opposed German domination they would oppose Soviet too). That was not far ago. Today a single American company could store all your public information, and your messages(audio transcribing is starting to work) because you give them. Facebook is great as a concept, but It would be a better idea using private implementations with your own servers not depending on a commercial company. Something simple to use with open communications...
- theklub 15y ago
  Wasn't Zuckerberg actually quoted in an email he wrote as saying his first users were complete idiots for trusting him?
  - jpk 15y ago
    Indeed. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
  - rglover 15y ago
    Wow, I'd never seen that before. But to be honest, we can't be too critical of a 19 year old Zuckerberg. We were all absolutely obnoxious at that age. We think we know everything and we want to believe that our ego is limitless. As this was written supposedly in the dorm room era of Facebook, it's easily dismissed. It's rude, yeah, but wouldn't you have boasted the same thing if you'd invented Facebook? I probably would have, too.
- shazow 15y ago
  On the upside, the prevalence of things like Facebook also introduces a lot of noise and weak social links. Half a century ago you coud make a precision strike and kill half a dozen people to cripple somebody's life. Today you could start clipping off someone's 500+ Facebook friends or Twitter followers, but it gets really impractical really fast and the impact wouldn't be as strong. Back in the day, you'd find a stash of letters and find your targets. Today Google, Facebook, and Twitter have hundreds of thousands of messages between me and thousands of other people. Where do you start? Especially if you're looking for something very specific like signs of strong relationships, your thesis on this could very well be its own startup or sociology study. Having more data than you can swallow is cool and all, but pulling something valuable out of it is its own non-trivial task. Throwing raw computing power at it doesn't fix it either. (Side note: I'm all for private/secure/distributed/federated implementations of... everything.)
njharman 15y ago
That's like PETA founder saying foie-gras is bad. I'm be more impressed/interesting if NSA/CIA director said something similar.
- kragen 15y ago
  I have heard rumors that the NSA and CIA directors have promulgated policies against their employees using Facebook and similar sites.
maigret 15y ago
What I am missing in this discussion: how do we develop a system that is not spying that way? Let's propose and find ideas.
- Ixiaus 15y ago
  Owning your data is the only way to keep "other people" from owning your data! A distributed F2F (friend to friend) graph of nodes (people) in which every node (person) has the "software" to connect with the other nodes and share information with their social graph. The hard part there is securing it. But, with an underlying framework (like http://gnunet.org http://gnunet.org) that handles anonymized, F2F, and encrypted network topology you can build a "distributed facebook" that can share photos - events - stories - timelines - videos - &c... The cool part about software like that is the individual user is in 100% control (if it's open-source) of their data and what is done with it (want to share that sexy-time video with just your gf?). GNUnet is a viable solution at this point because the project is building an open-source framework that handles the really hard features of a distributed, secure, and anonymous F2F (or P2P if you want, but that's less securable) stack on-top of the network stack. With GNUnet, all you need is to build the "features" on-top of it - the other cool thing about it too is that it would be a desktop application (not through the browser). There are other issues to overcome with such an implementation, but, in short that is how you would do Facebook the "alternative" way. It's how Diaspora is "trying" to do it (without much success because the underlying network topology and security is a very difficult problem).
  - maigret 15y ago
    Yes. I know a bit (not much) around the principle of distributed soc nets. I have a diaspora account, but not much is happening there, partly because they are very few features (no chats, no photo app...). This system is interesting, but maybe an alternative solution would be needed? Frenzy is the kind of idea I'm thinking about... It has flows, but it seems much more doable - builds on another network, but could possibly be platform agnostic (what about a Frenzy working on Ubuntu cloud or even directly on AWS?). Something with few features, but exciting like Twitter. Maybe I am wrong... It seems to me that the biggest problem here isn't to have a minimalist app running, but rather getting the critical mass joining. Feel free to comment :)
ignifero 15y ago
Spying? - maybe, for lame spies. It's manipulative, deceptive, hideous in its exploitation of group psychology, but the information it contains is trivial and only the lamest of spies or terrorists would use it. It's the world's greatest reality show and that's all. If I were CIA i would search for suspects among the people that are not on facebook. Assange himself is on facebook. He's a smart guy, and i don't think that statement makes him justice.
theprodigy 15y ago
This guy is definitely correct. Information Awareness Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office I am pretty sure something similar to this exists now. The new threat to america are not from soverign nation states, but from non state actors. Solving the data fragmentation problem by combining sources of personal information about behavior and life will make it easier for the gov to stop attacks or catch a person. Combining sources like your facebook, financial transactions, credit card bills, websites you visit (by using facebook connect), travel history (past plane tickets that are linked to your credit cards) can all be combined together and a predictive analytical tool can be developed for automated red flag for things that are deemed suspicious. Facebook can do the same thing but use the information to predict who you are as a consumer, who you influence, how popular you are, etc to deliver targeted ads, etc.
r00fus 15y ago
I like what one commenter said on slashdot: Facebook is a reverse wikileaks. Everyone puts all your information into a corporate-owned box, to be aggregated and analyzed by powerful players. Hell, you can even "finger" others by tagging them on photos.
wildmXranat 15y ago
Never let yourself, your loved ones, family and friends be cataloged by any company other than the mandatory government citizen list. Call me paranoid, but there is absolutely no reason for a social network at all. Social engagement and links, and poking and other shit is not a benefit to me. It's not a benefit to people even though they like to pretend it is. In return for handing over all that information you have gained a monitored, controlled, censored and limited way of communicating. There is a reason why speech is protected. Why put a secondary layer of control on how you choose to express yourself. Taking a page out of a way-back-machine, making links between people for complete eradication of opposition during WWII, was key in killing off most of noble and intelligent opposition in Poland.
rglover 15y ago
Assange's claim that Facebook and the other myriad social tool's he mentioned are spy tools is a bit embellished. He's right in that U.S. intelligence agencies can and will gain access to the data stored by these services (if necessary). However, saying that it's inherently a spy tool just seems a bit on the Salem side. If there's information about us or our lives that we deem sensitive, the last place you want to put it is online. There's noted security flaws in pretty much every system out there and to dismiss that reality is a bit naive. There's most definitely a problem with security in this era, but it's important to note that we're the one's doing it. Honestly, anyone who may expose sensitive information should have Facebook or any other online presence on the top of their list as things NOT to use. When you're being nefarious communication is a bit difficult, eh?

267 points by fosk 16y ago

If it appeared that Facebook had developed a portal for government agencies to access and monitor people then it would be a big deal. If they have implemented a way of looking up or monitoring things by themselves (and they obviously have and need to) and just give that information when the government comes knocking.. that's less bad.

forensic 16y ago
All signs indicate that Julian Assange is correct about Facebook information being completely and easily accessible, without judicial oversight, to US intelligence. This should not be surprising either, considering laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the long history of illegal wiretapping and illegal surveillance in general conducted by American intelligence agencies, with impunity. Any skepticism about Facebook's availability to the NSA and CIA is, frankly, completely naive and ignores history among other things.
- edanm 16y ago
  "All signs indicate that Julian Assange is correct about Facebook information being completely and easily accessible, without judicial oversight, to US intelligence." Do you mind showing some examples of these signs? I'm not particularly skeptical, but it's the first I've heard of automated interfaces like these.
  - neilk 16y ago
    Here's an article Bruce Schneier wrote about a similar system at Google. Apparently, the Chinese hackers (widely speculated to be backed by their government) hacked into Google using the backdoor put in place for the US government. http://www.schneier.com/essay-306.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-306.html And the rest of the article lists all kinds of other examples that exist worldwide.
    - ntoshev 16y ago
      Do you have any link describing this backdoor and the procedures to use it (grandparent's claim "without judicial oversight" is the critical bit here)? Schneier just mentions it without reference.
      - neilk 16y ago
        I don't know how I could prove that one way or the other. The overall trend seems to be towards relaxing the need for warrants, although there are important exceptions. If law enforcement have their own backdoor, that seems to suggest less judicial oversight. I personally trust Schneier to depict the state of affairs accurately, probably using public and non-public information.
        ntoshev 15y ago
        We all know services like Gmail can be subpoenaed by court to provide information. Google is big enough for this to happen to them on a daily basis, so it's very likely they have a an automated procedure. For all we know, Schneier may be talking about this.
      - trotsky 16y ago
        I think it is fair to assume that the US Intelligence Community is likely to work pretty hard to conceal or obfuscate their best methods of open source intelligence gathering. Public documentation of such extrajudicial operations is likely to be heavily discouraged, and through the patriot act tools like NSL's are available to enforce that. Consider the warrantless wiretapping program that went on for 5+ years. We know that tools for court ordered intercepts were in place through CALEA and others. We also know that the telcos were told and accepted that FISA warrants were not needed for this monitoring. Similarly, we know that facebook obviously has tools in place for responding to warrants, and that it is probably true that facebook can legally reveal much/all of your account if they want to without a warrant. Facebook is quite likely to view building a friendly relationship with the IC to be beneficial. Another way to think about it: Intelligence agencies strongly discourage the use of social networking applications both by their own employees and other federal agents. I find it completely credible that any number of friendly and hostile intelligence agencies and security services have widespread access to facebook data and other social networking sites through a variety of means. It's unlikely to be as ham handed as the https://dni.facebook.com/ https://dni.facebook.com/ you might imagine, but it's most assuredly there. It's simply too attractive to not be.
  - omouse 16y ago
    Uh, if they can build interfaces for their sysadmins and business people to use, then they can easily adapt those to be used by the US military/intelligence agencies. Have you ever used a web framework like Django? Imagine its admin interface except with way more data.
known 16y ago
http://youropenbook.org/ http://youropenbook.org/

evanwalsh 16y ago

Despite the article's linkbait title, Assange does have some legitimate points. It's all kind of frightening, actually.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
oliveoil 16y ago
53 people recommended this.
- bbk 16y ago
  I see you had replied about an hour ago. Now its 548.
neuroelectronic 15y ago
And like everything from Wikileaks, it makes me say, "no kidding..."

shareme 16y ago

is he aware of what is fake an real anymore? can we say HBGary..ah yes we can

mun2mun 16y ago

relevant http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic... (in a funny way).

zyfo 16y ago
What's with the downvotes? It's related. Just because it's satire doesn't make it cheap and useless. Upvoted.
- ignifero 15y ago
  Favourite quote: "The people who use foursquare are people that no one would mind seeing bombed anyway..."

known 16y ago

Your FB a/c is like your http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary but public to all http://youropenbook.org/ http://youropenbook.org/

dvfer 16y ago

At least people should know that before using it...not everyone has many secrets to hide. What's the point hiding who you make friends with, and public conversations? Trying too hard to stay off the grid is rather creepy...

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
Is hiding my friends less creepy than trawling through my friends, friends' friends, friends' friends' friends, and so on?
- dvfer 15y ago
  no. Both are creepy. Can't people use it like a normal person? It has to be either extremely conservative or extremely nosy?
Peaker 16y ago
Consider the hypothetical scenario of trying to organize protests against an illegitimate regime. Do you see the value of the information for the illegitimate regime to use?
- rapala 16y ago
  You don't organize a protest against the goverment using your real identity if there is a fear of retaliation. Not in the real world and definitely not in the web. Mapping someones friends by good old detective work is not that difficult. It just takes time. It will also reveal much more than your facebook account will. What is frightening to me is the automation. It simplifies your relations to people and can lead to some unpleasant connections. People should also be educated about the fact that facebook is not a private forum. Everyone knows not to bitch about their boss too loudly in the cafeteria. But for some reason they are happy to write about it to their wall.
  - bilban 16y ago
    The automation is such a huge win. Algorithms can be run on the network to highlight anomalies in microseconds. A Facebook profile is better in someways than a thumb print or DNA. Net-citizens can be automatically character profiled. You also don't need everyone to use the system to grasp a people's mindset.

sethg 16y ago

The other day I met a guy who belonged to the MIT card-counting team portrayed in the book Bringing Down the House. He mentioned that casino security departments are now looking up their patrons on Facebook: if five people show up at the blackjack tables at the same time and act like they don’t know each other, but they are friends with one another on Facebook, then they are presumably Up To Something.

ssharp 16y ago
This is pretty interesting. I know casino security is a business where a consultant can develop a technique and sell them as services to casinos (allowing them economies of scale), but it's still pretty crazy how much effort casinos will put out to thwart non-mechanical card counters. I wonder what casinos estimate their annual loss to card counters?
- sethg 16y ago
  If you (where “you” can be an individual or a team) know how to count cards and are disciplined about following the technique, and you patronize a casino that doesn’t catch you, there is a slow leak of money from the casino’s pocket into yours. The whole business model of casinos depends on the slow leak going in the other direction.
  - dtby 16y ago
    This comment is completely unhelpful.
    - raganwald 16y ago
      Did you mean to imply that another comment is completely unhelpful, or was it your intention to invoke the Epimenides paradox by writing a comment that claims itself to be unhelpful? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epimenides_paradox https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epimenides_pa...
      - 16y ago

mahrain 16y ago

Not surprising that Assange doesn't do much social networking, it seems all he publishes is through Wikileaks, which does have a Twitter account. This explains why. He used to have a blog which can only be found through archive.org.

e40 16y ago
I find it interesting that the people that founded FB don't do social networking much. Telling, IMO.
- code_duck 16y ago
  Sure, but does patio11 play bingo every day? You don't have to be passionate about the particulars of a product to decide to capitalize on an opportunity. (Seems like this has been an example around here before! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520311 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520311 )
  - omouse 16y ago
    This is different, this is about personal information being made publically available.
    - code_duck 15y ago
      One can't assume they don't use it due to worries about personal information being public. Perhaps they really just aren't as interested as the people who use FB daily. Also, since they're very wealthy public figures, they really do have to be more careful about their private info vs. the care Joe Schmoe in Hoboken should take.
      - omouse 15y ago
        they really do have to be more careful about their private info vs. the care Joe Schmoe in Hoboken should take. You know that poorer people have property and troubles of their own that requires personal information staying personal.

aksbhat 16y ago

I believe that the benefits of a social network such as Facebook outweigh the risks. The problem is that, it is very hard to quantify the positive effect which arises from small interactions. Sure there is huge scope for improvement, but one could have made similar arguments against telephony when it was invented. I believe we are still to see rise of real social network based applications. e.g. something that allows us to estimate trust for a person, given his and your social network.

alecco 16y ago
> I believe that the benefits of a social network such as Facebook > outweigh the risks. That's a false dichotomy. There are systems for social networks with decent privacy schemes.
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  He is stating his belief. Are people not allowed to believe in false dichotomies?
- eropple 15y ago
  There are systems for social networks with decent privacy schemes. Those systems also have a number of users that approximate a rounding error. As such, the dichotomy is not false in practice.
dasil003 15y ago
On the other hand you don't know shit about the risk. If the US government takes a totalitarian turn, and they start taking away your friends and family under the guise of homeland security then Facebook suddenly becomes your worse nightmare. And don't get me started on Color: Wilhelm Zaisser's corpse is busting a nut about that 50 years posthumous.

defroost 16y ago

Last year we read about the Administrations proposed legislation that would require software companies to build "backdoors" into their online communication systems [1], but as Assange points out, they may already be in place. [1] http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12196 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12196

darksaga 16y ago

Oh Julian, how arrogant you are. Every time I read this guy spouting off, he just continues to lose credibility and respect. If you don't want employers or any other companies looking you up on social media, then don't use it - or just use an alias or a fake name. Nobody HAS to have a Facebook page or partake in social media. If you don't want people tracking you, then don't use it. DUH

aw3c2 16y ago
Even if you do not actively register at Facebook yourself, your friends might give them your identity and social group by allowing Facebook to harvest their e-mail accounts.
- olalonde 16y ago
  Don't make friends who will do this. Don't give your real name to friends. Don't get out of your house. etc. I'm taking this to the extreme simply to illustrate that anything you do publicly has a privacy trade off. Why single out Facebook?
  - darksaga 16y ago
    You don't have to go these lengths. I use quite a bit of social media and none of the sites I use, has my correct personal information. All my ID's are all made-up personas and connected to junk email accounts. It would take a lot to get to my real identity. It's not hard to do, and it keeps me plenty safe.
    - olalonde 15y ago
      For the record, I wouldn't recommend what I wrote to any sane person. I was just pushing the privacy rhetoric to the extreme to illustrate that there will always be a trade off between privacy and social life. People seem to forget this fundamental principle too often when they talk about the evil social networks. Edit: To the people who down voted to disagree, I'd like to ask: Do you think the world would be a better place without Facebook?

atacrawl 16y ago

I guess I sort of see his point, but isn't he overstating things? Take Facebook out of the equation, and it's still incredibly easy for intelligence agencies to find out everything about you. They can still tap your phones, do surveillance, check your bank records, bug your home and read anything you write online that doesn't happen to be on Facebook. Maybe Facebook made some of that easier, but it certainly didn't make possible the impossible.

sp332 16y ago
Surveillance generally requires someone to know ahead of time that you're a person of interest, in order to order phone taps, pull your mail, put a tracker on your car etc. Facebook logs all your data ahead of time. If I want to know about you, I can just check your FB in a few seconds and know months of data about you. FB also includes lists of your contacts, logs of (some) communications, pictures of you, and maybe location data to boot. Also, all of everyone's information is now available from a single broker. With law-enforcement API's that (I'm assuming) FB provides, it's possible to track thousands of people in real-time for months without leaving the room or investing in lots of equipment. So it's not just that surveillance is "easier" but that it's now accessible to lots of people who couldn't do it before.
omouse 16y ago
I think the other problem is that Facebook makes it more acceptable to use your real name and real information. I remember the old days of the internet where you were wary of marketers and spammers and used as much fake information as was possible in order to use a website/service/whatever. Facebook definitely makes all of that easier mainly because it puts it in one place. Instead of having to do multiple things (talk to bank, phone company, visit your house, monitor all the places where you're writing), it can do just one thing: ask Facebook for all your data. Centralization and acceptability of personal information being public are the two main problems.
forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
No, it is not. With facebook they could know about you EVEN when you are not into facefook. You know , they make people tag their photos with the names on it, with face detection. So the tree letter agencies (NSA..) have registering of events they previously did not have access to: Your friends weeding photos tells them you were there. They do not have to ask anymore. They know everything about anyone with redundancy(multiple people making photos). You are your friends spy. Once you tag your photos you do their work, instead of having to analyze 5 million pixels x 4 bytes = 20MBytes of data per photo, you reduce it to a 20Bytes name they can plot on a link graph with 1 million more with minimum effort.

forgottenpaswrd 16y ago

Shocking but true. When I read my grandparents diary about the Spanish civil war(1936), I see they killed people for getting info about the relationships, friendships of the principal leaders so they could kill selected people and destroy entire public movements. That happened in WWII too. When Soviet Russia entered Poland, the first thing they did was to investigate the links of relationships of the Polish resistance. They kill every single of them so nobody opposed the Soviets(if they opposed German domination they would oppose Soviet too). That was not far ago. Today a single American company could store all your public information, and your messages(audio transcribing is starting to work) because you give them. Facebook is great as a concept, but It would be a better idea using private implementations with your own servers not depending on a commercial company. Something simple to use with open communications...

theklub 15y ago
Wasn't Zuckerberg actually quoted in an email he wrote as saying his first users were complete idiots for trusting him?
- jpk 15y ago
  Indeed. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
- rglover 15y ago
  Wow, I'd never seen that before. But to be honest, we can't be too critical of a 19 year old Zuckerberg. We were all absolutely obnoxious at that age. We think we know everything and we want to believe that our ego is limitless. As this was written supposedly in the dorm room era of Facebook, it's easily dismissed. It's rude, yeah, but wouldn't you have boasted the same thing if you'd invented Facebook? I probably would have, too.
shazow 15y ago
On the upside, the prevalence of things like Facebook also introduces a lot of noise and weak social links. Half a century ago you coud make a precision strike and kill half a dozen people to cripple somebody's life. Today you could start clipping off someone's 500+ Facebook friends or Twitter followers, but it gets really impractical really fast and the impact wouldn't be as strong. Back in the day, you'd find a stash of letters and find your targets. Today Google, Facebook, and Twitter have hundreds of thousands of messages between me and thousands of other people. Where do you start? Especially if you're looking for something very specific like signs of strong relationships, your thesis on this could very well be its own startup or sociology study. Having more data than you can swallow is cool and all, but pulling something valuable out of it is its own non-trivial task. Throwing raw computing power at it doesn't fix it either. (Side note: I'm all for private/secure/distributed/federated implementations of... everything.)

njharman 15y ago

That's like PETA founder saying foie-gras is bad. I'm be more impressed/interesting if NSA/CIA director said something similar.

kragen 15y ago
I have heard rumors that the NSA and CIA directors have promulgated policies against their employees using Facebook and similar sites.

maigret 15y ago

What I am missing in this discussion: how do we develop a system that is not spying that way? Let's propose and find ideas.

Ixiaus 15y ago
Owning your data is the only way to keep "other people" from owning your data! A distributed F2F (friend to friend) graph of nodes (people) in which every node (person) has the "software" to connect with the other nodes and share information with their social graph. The hard part there is securing it. But, with an underlying framework (like http://gnunet.org http://gnunet.org) that handles anonymized, F2F, and encrypted network topology you can build a "distributed facebook" that can share photos - events - stories - timelines - videos - &c... The cool part about software like that is the individual user is in 100% control (if it's open-source) of their data and what is done with it (want to share that sexy-time video with just your gf?). GNUnet is a viable solution at this point because the project is building an open-source framework that handles the really hard features of a distributed, secure, and anonymous F2F (or P2P if you want, but that's less securable) stack on-top of the network stack. With GNUnet, all you need is to build the "features" on-top of it - the other cool thing about it too is that it would be a desktop application (not through the browser). There are other issues to overcome with such an implementation, but, in short that is how you would do Facebook the "alternative" way. It's how Diaspora is "trying" to do it (without much success because the underlying network topology and security is a very difficult problem).
- maigret 15y ago
  Yes. I know a bit (not much) around the principle of distributed soc nets. I have a diaspora account, but not much is happening there, partly because they are very few features (no chats, no photo app...). This system is interesting, but maybe an alternative solution would be needed? Frenzy is the kind of idea I'm thinking about... It has flows, but it seems much more doable - builds on another network, but could possibly be platform agnostic (what about a Frenzy working on Ubuntu cloud or even directly on AWS?). Something with few features, but exciting like Twitter. Maybe I am wrong... It seems to me that the biggest problem here isn't to have a minimalist app running, but rather getting the critical mass joining. Feel free to comment :)

ignifero 15y ago

Spying? - maybe, for lame spies. It's manipulative, deceptive, hideous in its exploitation of group psychology, but the information it contains is trivial and only the lamest of spies or terrorists would use it. It's the world's greatest reality show and that's all. If I were CIA i would search for suspects among the people that are not on facebook. Assange himself is on facebook. He's a smart guy, and i don't think that statement makes him justice.

theprodigy 15y ago

This guy is definitely correct. Information Awareness Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office I am pretty sure something similar to this exists now. The new threat to america are not from soverign nation states, but from non state actors. Solving the data fragmentation problem by combining sources of personal information about behavior and life will make it easier for the gov to stop attacks or catch a person. Combining sources like your facebook, financial transactions, credit card bills, websites you visit (by using facebook connect), travel history (past plane tickets that are linked to your credit cards) can all be combined together and a predictive analytical tool can be developed for automated red flag for things that are deemed suspicious. Facebook can do the same thing but use the information to predict who you are as a consumer, who you influence, how popular you are, etc to deliver targeted ads, etc.

r00fus 15y ago

I like what one commenter said on slashdot: Facebook is a reverse wikileaks. Everyone puts all your information into a corporate-owned box, to be aggregated and analyzed by powerful players. Hell, you can even "finger" others by tagging them on photos.

wildmXranat 15y ago

Never let yourself, your loved ones, family and friends be cataloged by any company other than the mandatory government citizen list. Call me paranoid, but there is absolutely no reason for a social network at all. Social engagement and links, and poking and other shit is not a benefit to me. It's not a benefit to people even though they like to pretend it is. In return for handing over all that information you have gained a monitored, controlled, censored and limited way of communicating. There is a reason why speech is protected. Why put a secondary layer of control on how you choose to express yourself. Taking a page out of a way-back-machine, making links between people for complete eradication of opposition during WWII, was key in killing off most of noble and intelligent opposition in Poland.

rglover 15y ago

Assange's claim that Facebook and the other myriad social tool's he mentioned are spy tools is a bit embellished. He's right in that U.S. intelligence agencies can and will gain access to the data stored by these services (if necessary). However, saying that it's inherently a spy tool just seems a bit on the Salem side. If there's information about us or our lives that we deem sensitive, the last place you want to put it is online. There's noted security flaws in pretty much every system out there and to dismiss that reality is a bit naive. There's most definitely a problem with security in this era, but it's important to note that we're the one's doing it. Honestly, anyone who may expose sensitive information should have Facebook or any other online presence on the top of their list as things NOT to use. When you're being nefarious communication is a bit difficult, eh?