And if that wasn't enough...

[funeralcrasher]

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19025556.200

"I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves." So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop's dream.

I love how the article begins by blaming people who use these sites, rather than slamming the NSA for mining data in the first place. Sure, nobody should post their entire lives on the internet if they value privacy. But that doesn't make wiretapping and surveillance acceptable.. Sorry.

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Americans are still reeling from last month's revelations that the NSA has been logging phone calls since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The Congressional Research Service, which advises the US legislature, says phone companies that surrendered call records may have acted illegally. [MAY HAVE?] However, the White House insists that the terrorist threat makes existing wire-tapping legislation out of date and is urging Congress not to investigate the NSA's action.

I enjoy posting on livejournal. I like reading about what's going on in others' lives, and I enjoy conversing with people I might otherwise never have met due to geographics. But I also don't relish the idea that the NSA is intent on combing through MY entries looking for patterns and making an even larger dossier on me (and you) than they already have. I don't want to be spied on. I don't want peeping toms looking in my windows. The idea that anyone would stalk me is creepified beyond belief, especially when it's my own god damned government.

If I can find a way to download all of my entries to my local pc, I may begin manually editing & deleting every entry I've made, at least in this journal. But who knows, the NSA may already have all of this data logged elsewhere thanks to Narus & AT&T.

9/11, decreasing constitutional rights, corporate and congressional corruption, presidential signing statements that prevent accountability, domestic spying.. and sooner or later, bird flu..

I can't help thinking of that image of a bloodied human face being stomped on repeatedly by a large black boot.

Over and over and over.