Facebook data mining for CIA and US Defense?

[lynnejanet]

Someone on my Facebooks friends list posted this video, which claims that Facebook has links to the CIA, and US Defense Department.

I think it's unwise to indiscriminately post personal details, but the video is a bit tin-foil-hat-ish.

Thoughts?

What happens in the facebook stays in the facebook?

[lynnejanet]

Anyone? Anyone?

[Not_Done_Living]

I pulled the below from another forum which discussed this... italics mine


"James Breyer is the CEO of ACCEL, a venture captialist company, who funded Facebook with 13 million dollars.

May 26, 2005
Taken from ACCEL's website:



"Mr. Breyer was so taken with Mr. Zuckerberg's company, thefacebook.com, which creates online interactive college-student networks, that his firm, Accel Partners, plans to announce a $13 million investment in the start-up today."

taken from the National Venture Capital Assoc website:"

New Board Directors Also Named During Association’s Annual Meeting
May 13, 2004 – San Francisco, CA – The National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) Board of Directors today unanimously elected James W. Breyer to serve as its Chairman for the coming year. The election took place at the Association’s 2004 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The NVCA Board also announced eight new Directors who will each serve four year terms: Peter Barris, New Enterprise Associates; Michael Cronin, Weston Presidio; Joanna Rees Gallanter, Venture Strategy Partners; Robert Ketterson, Fidelity Ventures; Mark Klopp, Eastman Chemical; Gilman Louie, In-Q-Tel; Ted Schlein, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers; and Chad Waite, OVP Venture Partners.


Notice the one name in there - Gilman Louie, In-Q-Tel Let's have a look at In-Q-Tel's website. Right in there header banner

Investing in Our Nation's Future - Our mission is to deliver leading-edge information technologies to the CIA and the Intelligence Community. We're a critical link between the Agency's IT users and the most promising technologies in the IT marketplace.

"

[ganzfeld]

It probably wouldn't be hard to confirm or deny the facts listed in that sea-sickening floating text movie but to deal with the two main claims (as far as I can tell):
Claim 1: There are connections between certain Internet companies and certain government organizations. Yes, that's true. People who work in the government sector often work in the private sector as well.
Claim 2: Several government organizations (not to mention a bunch of non-government ones) are continuously gathering as much information as they can about whatever they can (including this post and all of our posts at the ULMB) and also finding ways to deal with these ginormous sets of information. Yes, that's also true. It's called "intelligence".

Have a nice day!