On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 12:17 PM, Rick Root <rick.r...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Michael Dinowitz > <mdino...@houseoffusion.com> wrote: >> >> A privacy watchdog's freedom of information request has revealed a >> government memo encouraging agents to befriend people on a variety of >> social networks, to take advantage of their readiness to share -- and > > This hardly fits my definition of spying. It's no different than > reading a blog or any other "public" information. Because if you put > it on facebook, and you're friending people that you shouldn't be > friending, then your information is essentially public. > > so to this, I say.. big fucking deal.
I have to agree with Rick here. I do think that it is wrong for the government to intercept communications without a warrant (tapping major backbones for email/web/IM traffic and feeding it through Carnivore for instance) but I don't have anything inherently against watching a public posting or reading something that someone has explicitly given the government by befriending them on Facebook. Of course I don't necessarily think that it is a particularly good use of government resources but I have no idea if these programs are effective or not. There is also a distinction to be made, I think, on targeted versus mass surveillance. I'm against programs like Carnivore that just suck up all data that comes along, including a bunch of data not meant for it, as I'm against a big web of surveillance cameras in public places like they've been battling in the UK. But I think that targeted surveillance, especially of publicly posted information, makes sense from the point of view of balancing privacy concerns with the desire to have government keep a heads up on potential threats. Jud ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:329170 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
