Hi,

When you buy a book or movie online--or make a political
contribution--do you want that information automatically shared with
the world on Facebook?

Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But social
networking site Facebook began doing just that. People across the
country saw private purchases they made on other sites displayed
publicly to everyone they know on Facebook. Why? To benefit corporate
advertisers.

Other sites are looking at Facebook's example to see if they can get
away with similar privacy breaches. We need to draw a line in the
sand--making clear that the wish lists of corporate advertisers must
not come before the basic privacy rights of Internet users.

Let's get Facebook to stop invading our privacy. Sign the petition at

http://civ.moveon.org/facebookprivacy/? ... ivacypaste

Then join the Facebook group "Facebook, stop invading my privacy!"
and tell your friends.

By Ari Melber, The Nation. Posted January 16, 2008.

Facebook's growing dominance reflects a society that is increasingly complacent with spying.

When one of America's largest electronic surveillance systems was launched in Palo Alto a year ago, it sparked an immediate national uproar. The new system tracked roughly 9 million Americans, broadcasting their photographs and personal information on the Internet; 700,000 web-savvy young people organized online protests in just days. Time declared it "Gen Y's first official revolution," while a Nation blogger lauded students for taking privacy activism to "a mass scale." Yet today, the activism has waned, and the surveillance continues largely unabated.

Generation Y's "revolution" failed partly because young people were getting what they signed up for. All the protesters were members of Facebook, a popular social networking site, which had designed a sweeping "news feed" program to disseminate personal information that users post on their web profiles. Suddenly everything people posted, from photos to their relationship status, was sent to hundreds of other users in a feed of time-stamped updates. People complained that the new system violated their privacy. Facebook argued that it was merely distributing information users had already revealed. The battle -- and Facebook's growing market dominance in the past year -- show how social networking sites are rupturing the traditional conception of privacy and priming a new generation for complacency in a surveillance society. Users can complain, but the information keeps flowing.

Facebook users did not recognize how vulnerable their information was within the site's architecture. The initial protests drew an impressive 8 percent of users, but they quickly subsided after Facebook provided more privacy options. Today the feed is the site's nerve center. Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said that when he speaks on campuses these days, students approach him to say that while they initially "hated" the feed, now they "can't live without it."
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Hodgkinson goes much further. Digging deep into the background of board member Jim Breyer asserting that his connections bring Facebook uncomfortably close to the CIA:

Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA.
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