I wish more people would ask this sort of question. Not that reading about the latest spook news or reading about people crusading for government reform isn't

I wish more people would ask this sort of question. Not that reading about the latest spook news or reading about people crusading for government reform isn't at least marginally interesting. Certainly it is. But put this in perspective in terms of actual impact on your life. Generally, the NSA or any enforcement agency does not send me junk mail and spam. They don't try to influence me to pay for things I don't need; they don't put my reputation at risk through some bizarre concept of "sharing" (as in giving people's personal details to corporations or whoever might be scraping Facebook); they don't generally annoy me and care less about it. That's not their job. They do not set out to do that. The government is not sitting on a mountain of personal information, run by 20 somethings and "in search of a business model". When you distill things down to their essence, Facebook is a next generation junk mail company. (Despite how things may appear to the naive user, they are not the medium. They do not enable connectivity, they merely utilise what is available. They are not a network; they use a network: the internet; they are a website with access control.) The amount of information they have is like nothing any direct mail company has ever seen. The level of invasiveness of marketing with this much personal information at the ready is potentially devastating; and when all is said and done, Mark Zuckerberg may have less scruples than the worst of the worst direct marketers sending you junk mail. And he can have a much larger effect on your life than someone filling your mailbox you junk mail. The government has to follow rules. They have to be accountable. In theory, at least. By contrast, Facebook, like a direct marketer, does not have a similar mandate of representation and accountability and Facebook will do everything in its power to try to bend and break the rules. There is very little to reign in Facebook.