Controversial figure, Julian Assange said in an interview with Russian news site RT yesterday, that Facebook is an ‘appalling spy machine’.
When asked what his thoughts of the role of social network sites in regards to the revolutions in the Middle East he said "Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence."
The interviewer was curious to find out what Assange knew about how government decisions are made.
Assange went on to say that major U.S organizations such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo all have built in interfaces which they developed for use by U.S intelligence. By automating the process, instead of handing the records out individually, it saves the companies time and money when the government ask questions about an individual or collective group. Soon after he said “Everyone should understand that when add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for U.S Intelligence agencies in building this database for them.”
You would think Assange could have been a little more complimentary when talking about Facebook since when services such as Paypal and GoDaddy were being pressured by government to prevent WikiLeaks from using their services; Facebook didn’t bow. The WikiLeaks Facebook page remained online and Facebook themselves refused to bring it down, noting that the fan page didn’t "violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies."
58 Comments - Add comment