4 ms·
What does he mean by Facebook having CIA backing?
by tx 19y ago
What does he mean by Facebook having CIA backing?
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- yters 19y agoIt's a conspiracy theory that made the digg/reddit rounds awhile back. Here's Ars Technica's take on it: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070125-8701.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070125-8701.html The author doesn't find the theory plausible, but does link to a DARPA paper detailing how social networking principles can allow financial transactions to be better tracked.
- pius 19y agoBriefly, it's a reference to the fact that Facebook closed a round with Accel Partners, which through its manager, Jim Breyer, et al has pretty close connections to the DoD, DARPA, and the CIA. For example, Breyer was (IIRC) the founding CEO of In-Q-Tel [1], the CIA's venture capital arm founded by Gilman Louie. Indeed, some think that Facebook is also funded by In-Q-Tel. Because In-Q-Tel makes a combination of public and secret investments, it's not the sort of thing that would get covered on TechCrunch. If one considers the data mining and correlation Facebook obviously has in the works, one might think that the CIA is using the vast amounts of data as a staging ground for techniques being employed in the recently black bagged Total Information Awareness program [2] started by DARPA and initially headed by (I shit you not) John Poindexter [3]. One might even argue that Mark Zuckerberg is so blase about potential acquirers because, indeed, the company will never allow itself to be acquired. One would probably be derided as a conspiracy theorist, however. :) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter