I don't find the coke facial profiler to be creepy because Coke is king....

We don't recognize "kings" in American :)

Sic, I challenge you to provide a link to the FOIA-related docs that prove the CIA connection.

Even if you are correct about the start up cost, the CIA and other goverment orgs give cash to any new company or for research that might increase the US's tech edge.

Sicarius, there's a special court to get those warrants you refer to, the name of which excapes me right now, and the "illegal" wiretapping that the Bush administration did wasn't under the Patriot Act. If it had been there would have been no question of its legality.

Show us a link to the CIA providing start up funds to a college kid who started a social networking site for freshmen at Harvard from his dorm room.

I dont remember where I saw the FOIA, possibly the memory hole? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWz3G_gPhU

yes warsprite, thats certainly a distinct possibility.

@ invictus. I didnt mention illegal wiretapping. I was saying only that the patriot act is not for listening in on suspected terrorists, because the government could do that about 30 years before the patriot act. Also I never said the CIA runs facebook.
it's just evidence I've seen suggests that they have given $ to it.

@ druagnar, I didnt say cell phones were a conspiracy. I said they were intrusive.

also, do you really think the CIA has never broken laws? are you stupid?

You can't seriously expect me to believe that because someone put a youtube video up that it's automatically true.

The "link" is spurrious. A guy (Gilman Louie) who once was a CEO of a venture capital firm created by the NSA served on something called the National Venture Capital Association. So did another guy - James Bryer - who apparently invested in the *second* round of funding for facebook.

So it's guilt by association. So if I *ever* work with someone, I automatically parrot their views, do whatever they ask, and drink their kool-aid?


Breyer also is apparently on the board of Wal-mart, does that mean Wal-mart owns facebook?

And since pretty much any tech firm is funded by venture capital at this point, does that mean that all tech firms have your facebook data?

Doesn't that seem a bit of a stretch to you, Sic? Even a *little*?

Oh man, you just gave Sic his next great conspiracy theory. All tech companies have all the data of anything we ever had stored electronically. I can see it now. Microsoft has our entire medical history, criminal record, and income/tax history in some super computer under the Redmond campus that Bill Gates uses to decide who gets medical treatment and who doesn't based on their contribution to society...

A You-tube video is the link?

"also, do you really think the CIA has never broken laws? are you stupid?"

Yeah they've broken laws, but that doesn't mean that they never follow laws. I doubt that the CIA would be able to get away with mining Facebook for, well, whatever it is you think they're doing, and not come across some kind of legal opposition.

For better or worse we live in a society where our online actions can be tracked to an extent and used by companies and the government. Usually this means personalized advertising and the ability to catch people with child porn and who commit fraud and other crimes online. There's certainly an opportunity for abuse, but then there's an opportunity for abuse in anything.

It's one thing to be vigilant and smart about giving out your information online, it's quite another to say Facebook's a CIA puppet that's out to get you.

@Draugnar - I can prove Apple and Microsoft are in collusion. After all, they show up at the same trade shows, right? Those trade shows are obviously a front for shadowy deals made in small, smoke filled rooms...

"shadowy deals made in small, smoke filled rooms..."

Luckily for us, the heads of state and champions of industry will all die of cancer from all that second hand smoke (presumably tobacco) sometime in the next 10 years.

Do you mean smoked filled chatrooms?

I didnt say facebook is a cia puppet out to get you. I didnt say that the cia runs facebook.
all I said was that the cia and facebook have ties. direct ties? not that I know of.
I'm not suggesting that everybodys facebook is in a cia file somewhere. you are all putting words in my mouth.

I merely said evidence that I've seen points to the cia, or people involved with the cia, gave money to start facebook.
I agreed with warsprite when he said even if it happened, the motivation could have been just keeping the USA tech savvy.
all I'm suggesting is that if the cia does have money in facebook, it's not too impossible that an intelligence gathering organization would want to use a social networking site to gather intelligence, especially for dissidents, or as invictus suggested, pedophiles/other criminals.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else was disturbed by the 'facial profiler'
I mean sure it's cool, but if telescreens were cool that wouldnt make them any less invasive.

You haven't seen any evidence, you've seem a You-tube video.

We all know that the point you were trying to make was that the CIA was using Facebook to, well, creep on the millions of people who use it. You said,

"just because people do something voluntarily doesnt make it less intrusive.
for example, facebook is voluntary, and I'm sure most people here have one, but facebook is payed for by the CIA. "

That doesn't come across as a neutral statement that the CIA and Facebook have some indirect monetary ties, but that you believe that it's part of a grand conspiracy to intrude on people's privacy. When people called you on your woo-woo theory you backed down.

>Oh, and the CIA is forbidden by law from operating within the US.

What has that got to do with anything?

I think you try to hard finding a plot in everything. We have plenty of real reasons to keep an eye out for goverment intrusion without chasing shadows. I'm really more concerned about the goverment when there doing the legal and correct thing and screwing it up.

While not stating it outright, Sic implied the CIA was using facebook to collect information on it's subscribers, many of whom are US citizens which would be a direct violation of the CIAs charter and the law. It was just a response to Sic's insinuation.

@ draugnar, if you think the CIA has any regard for the law, you are sorely mistaken Even the idea that the CIA is primarily an intelligence-gathering operation is itself one of the agency's greatest propaganda triumphs. I encourage you to do some research on the subject. Despite its name, the Central Intelligence Agency's main purpose is, and has always been, carrying out covert operations involving economic warfare, rigged elections, assassinations and even genocide. The CIA is also expert at distorting intelligence to justify its own goals, and this "disinformation" leads to dangerous illusions among our policymakers. But covert operations are its life's blood. The litany of illegal, murderous CIA activity is enough to chill the bones of anyone who cares about liberty and justice, which apparently doesn't include you draugnar?

The CIA routinely makes lord of the rings seem unimaginative. While I admit the evidence is very shaky for my facebook theory, and in all likely hood is not true, the things they have done in the past are far more unbelievable and far-fetched, then them having used a "personal profiling" website to collect information. Have you heard of MK-ULTRA? Operations Gladio or CHAOS? In theory, the CIA's charter prohibits it from engaging in domestic operations. In practice, that's taken about as seriously as Somali warlords threatening the presidents life.
my point is, while the facebook theory I have, much of which was put into my mouth by others, is easily plausible when compared to other CIA projects.

last sentence in post above should read "My point is the facebook theory I have, much of which was put into my mouth by others, is easily plausible when compared to other CIA projects."

Sicarius,

Yes, the facial profiler thing is a little creepy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the people who run Facebook have a CIA 'contact', but the CIA really doesn't need this to keep track of what anyone looks like - that's what your drivers' license photo is for (and surveillance cameras, which are just about everywhere nowadays). As you've mentioned, there are already dozens of ways for them to keep track of you if they really want to - cell phones, credit cards, credit checks, ATM transactions, GPS trackers (courts have held that law enforcement can install a GPS tracker in your motor vehicle without your knowledge *and* without a warrant; but I can imagine there would be quite a fuss if one of us lowly civilians implanted a GPS in a judge's mercedes), and plain old fashioned phone tapping and physical surveillance (remember, *they only need a warrant if they plan on using the evidence in a court of law*).

(also, no warrant is necessary for private companies to 'voluntarily' hand over all their records about you to a government agency, something which I'd be willing to bet happens on an extremely regular basis. Why should your phone company fight an expensive battle to keep your calling records secret from the government, when they can be handed over in secret for free?)

IMHO, the CIA running or funding facebook is pretty low on the scale of evil (if it's true). There are far greater things to worry about - remember, Facebook is entirely voluntary and one can live an entirely normal life without it; people who don't want to be numbered, tracked, and filed probably know well enough to stay away from it (I'm not on facebook because the government doesn't need to know that I don't have any friends).

>Sic implied the CIA was using facebook to collect information on it's subscribers, many of whom are US citizens which would be a direct violation of the CIAs charter and the law.

Yeah, I don't see what that last bit has to do with anything. You might as well say that your tea leaves told you that they're not doing it for all the difference it would make.

I'm not saying that the CIA *is* using Facebook to collect information on people. I don't think that the evidence that Sicarius has presented is reliable, for reasons that other people have already mentioned.

But the idea that the government can't be doing something because it's illegal is, frankly, nothing but superstition.

>my point is, while the facebook theory I have, much of which was put into my mouth by others, is easily plausible when compared to other CIA projects.

I don't think anyone is claiming that the CIA has never engaged in tomfoolery that it should not have, and I'm also sure that they've done - and are currently doing - things they shouldn't be. I willingly concede these points

To me, that's not the issue - it is your insistence that they've done evil in the past, therefore whenever anyone dreams up some way they could be doing evil now, they're doing it. Not that they *might* be doing it, not that it is something that a little research may be called for on - they absolutely, 100% are guilty guilty guilty.....

.... because someone said so.

Which brings me back to a point I made earlier. You may see yourself as Cassandra, constantly telling the truth but doomed to have everyone ignore you, but that's not how you come across. Instead, you are... not even the Boy Who Cried Wolf, as that implies a level of malice and deliberate falsification that I do not believe is accurate.

You are... faithful. In the sense of "God/The Government/CNN/That dude on the corner told me it's true, therefore it is true".

You don't even *question* some of the stuff you spew, as long as it meets with your preconceived notions. And since this is evident, when you bring *legitimate* concerns up, they are dismissed as just more of the the same fringe ravings with no factual basis that you throw in there from time to time.

and how, exactly, does that serve your cause, except to increase level of skepticism that any claims of the nature you bring inevitable generate.

There is a saying by Carl Sagan that fits: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That is not to say the evidence is not there in some cases - but youtube videos and jumping to conclusions are not that.

Just.. just *think*, dude. Don't just parrot the company line.

@Toby - the law may not stop CIA abuses from happening, but do you really think the CIA would be *that* blatant, knowing that it would come out and put many of them in jail? Come on... And I wasn't saying it would stop it from happening. I was saying the CIA isn't that fucking stupid and that, if it is happening (yeah, right) that heads would roll *because* it was against the law. *That* was the point of the last part. Don't be so fucking thick headed.

@strategos
this government has been doing atrocious things since it has existed, things I couldnt type in my lifetime. So when presented with something that the government might be doing, I tend to err on the side of distrusting the government. Is that something you dont understand?

@ Sic
This same government has also done wonderful things over time, things that could not be typed in a lifetime. You cannot only include one w/o even recognizing the other. It's a gross oversimplification and again will weaken your arguments.

Also Draugnar, you are saying that CIA heads will roll because of illegal actions. who's being thickheaded?