WASHINGTON — The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.
U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.
Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI.
The answer, alas, is that for professionals they've become damned near mandatory. Anybody who doesn't expect to stay in the same job for life (a condition that is sadly no longer exactly rare) has to keep up with the most common ways to keep your name and resume' out there where they can be seen. And Facebook and its siblings are the way that's done now. I've got good friends, privacy fanatics all, who nevertheless maintain professional Facebook or MySpace profiles.
I'm pretty sure none of them use their profiles to brag about their illegal activities. Or would, if - you know - they had any such...
4 comments:
There's a theme being noticed by "higher ed" these days, in which there seems to be a big crush to move people from email to FB, etc. It is said* that most of the younger set doesn't even use email any more, unless they have to send attachments around, but instead use FB for what we have been using email, telephones, letters and calendars to do.
This may be true, and if it is it has an alarming danger lurking within it. Email, as we know it now, is decentralized. Anyone can put up an email server, secure it and operate it how they wish. FB, on the other hand, is a completely centralized concept. And any technologist will tell you that it is orders of magnitude easier to exploit or seize data/content from a centralized source than to aggregate it from multiple different ones.
Oh yeah, Master wants you on Facebook, all right. Here, fishy fishy...
_________________
* The powers that be "say" a lot of things like this. In my experience, it's best not to believe a one of them without vetting it for myself first.
Hiding in plain site is my game. I also type sentences into google to talk to them. Confuse the shit out of them with your surfing and posting activities. Make a big tangled knot for them like they do for us. If everyone did it......................
Yeah, monkeywrenching should at least be fun:
http://xkcd.com/327
"Always pull up survey stakes."
"Always pull up survey stakes."
That - or just re-arrange 'em a bit.
VW: amissiv
Post a Comment