hi - Hugh Manatee here. Korova originally invited me to chuck up the odd (preferrably very odd) post here to expand the potential worldview at MoA. If anything, mostly to confirm that from which ever hemisphere you check out Western snivilization it's a clusterf$%k. This post doesn't fit that purview (o crap, i can't splel at awl toodae) BUT it perhaps will trigger some conversations that don't appear to have rippled across the web in any seismic way yet. Or maybe they have. Perhaps there was a meem while i was making toast and pebbles. Onward Hoes!!
For some reason people who I would have expected to shun online data mines keep inviting me to Facebook. I haven't seen the issue covered anywhere quite as well as in this article on New Media by James Massola in New Matilda earlier this year:
Given the volume of information that Facebook gathers, the question of who has access to it is an important one. A Privacy International report on the privacy policies of some of the biggest websites in the world — think BBC, Google and MySpace — gives Facebook its second lowest ranking.
This article by Marie at CommonGroundCommonSense (!!!! - sheesh - there's an idea, hey?) gives a very good rundown of some of the most concerning elements to the Facebook back story.
The Information Awareness Office seems to have survived some of its original purposes in a mutated form, found in today's Facebook. In fact, one of IAO's original example technologies included "human network analysis and behavior model building engines," [10] a surprising echo of the social networking mapping that Facebook does using SVG visualizations. [11] Add that to the information that Facebook collects and compare it to the startlingly similar goal of the IAO. It appears at first glance that DoD, along with the CIA, has managed to circumvent its previous Congressionally established limitations and find corporate sponsorship for its programs, under the thin veil of a useful social network for unwitting college students.
Of course, if you don't fancy a long read for some particular reason (what's wrong with reading you sick f&^%? you vote for Bush or somethin'?) then check out the slightly conspira vid at Album Of The Day. It's easy to see evil everywhere, but the trouble in identifying all things as evil is that the genuinely creepy stuff slips by for the same reason that nobody cared when the lonely kid in the fairytale cried wolf for the third time.It's for this reason that even though I don't think the World Trade Centre 9/11 was what Bush said, I still don't buy the Loose Change version of things. In fact I think conspira panic of this ilk does more harm to public interest and genuine investigative reporting than it does to the credibility of government-funded bullsh%&. Even sites which insist that 9-11-01 was actually what it was presented to be probably do more to cut through Bush-lit than conspira panic sites.
What was I saying?
Oh yeah.
F%$k Facebook.
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