Privacy is Dead — Big Brother is Here
Earlier this week we learned it's possible for someone to read your text messages off your i-Phone screen from as far as 200 feet away.
Today we learn that everything you write on Facebook could show up in Google Search results.
And we learned that the CIA is now monitoring Tweets and Facebook. Really.
In an unassuming brick building in an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.
Inside the CIA's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the "vengeful librarians", pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.
This facility was set up in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation. But its several hundred analysts — the actual number is classified — track a broad range, from Chinese Internet access to the mood on the street in Pakistan.
It's against the law for the CIA to engage in domestic surveillance, but it can and does monitor communication between Americans and people in foreign countries. Keep that in mind if you're thinking of tweeting your old college roommate in Iran.
This brings us to what Google is doing. Google has expanded its search engine parameters. This means a Google search now casts a much bigger net, and all comments on any publicly visible website could show up in Google search results.
Previously, search engines were unable to read comments on Facebook, Disqus and Intense Debate, because they use programming that was not easy to read automatically. Now they can pull up your comments.
Note to self: Don't write anything on Facebook that I wouldn't want the world to see in a Google Search.
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