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Facebook and the Federal Government owns your identity...and you can't do jack about it. Why? You used facebook.

http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/

Just watch this short documentary. With information derived directly from facebook's "privacy" policy, it explains that facebook has proprietary rights not only to potentially sensitive information you volunteer them, but also to data they possess by tracking your internet surfing habits, IMing, and newspapers (good game beacon and pulse). ONCE YOU USE FACEBOOK, they have the right to gather information about you and then distribute or even DISPLAY it whenever, wherever, and to whomever -- and as often as -- they want, regardless of whether you're using their site. If it were technically possible, they could legally do this tracking for the rest of your life and you wouldn't be able to do jack about it in a court of law. Of course, supposing they're no longer tracking you, they still control a mountain of private personal information about you.

It gets better... facebook has financial and if not official, indirect, ties to corporations and individuals affiliated with the CIA and Office of Information (a D.O.D./DARPA intelligence operation.) If Uncle Sam were a real person, he could sit down by the fireside and read a file entitled "Joshua Lam" and know anything from my date of birth, WHERE I LIVE, who my friends and parents are, what my daily routine is, what I like to read, my political and religious beliefs, my clubs and hobbies, consumer habits, to the websites I go to and more. In fact, anyone who has dealings with facebook could find this stuff out about me EASILY.

So...it's not even a question of "Shut up, you chose to volunteer them the information and you're using their service in exchange," as some people have said. It's more like, "facebook can indiscriminately gather, own, and do almost whatever it wants with virtually any personal information they can and have digitally sniffed out about you." This translates to using it for their own purposes, which could mean anything up to putting your face and all your personal information (including websites you visit) on a highway bill-board (or more realistically, in a mass e-mail) OR sell to the highest bidder...including government agencies, political organizations, and all corporations. I'd say this goes WAAAAAAAAAAAAY frickin' beyond simple advertising schemes and runs straight to an Orwellian theme.

So what now? Well, the government doesn't want to see facebook change. And as long as facebook makes money, facebook doesn't want to see facebook change. Therefore, in order for this blatantly disrespectful, more than sketch "privacy" policy (or lack thereof) to change...facebook has to believe its users will stop using it. It needs to believe people will quit facebook over this. But we won't and the execs at facebook know this, so nothing will change. Nothing will change if we don't quit facebook and go elsewhere.

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Originally by ADoS
*sheepishly crawls into corner and hides*

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There are enough things that divide us already without adding that to the mix. How about we concentrate on that which joins us together. Wouldn't that be nice?

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Yeah, there's always been surveillance, but it's increasing, and the growth has accelerated since 9/11 (2001).

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Originally written by Excalibur:

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Yeah, there's always been surveillance, but it's increasing, and the growth has accelerated since 9/11 (2001).

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I doubt internet surveillance has increased because of 9/11.

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