Facebook a CIA Front?

Facebook is a Social Networking Website akin to Myspace and other similar networks. It allows you to communicate with others, and gives you space to post personal information to make your facebook more "personal."

But what information do you use, and how do they use it? They're terms and Conditions state:

By posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorpoate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Facebook has a "pulse" feature takes your information, and if you go to a university or college, will use that to compile statistical trends of college students. Essentially they find out about you, and use it to make a picture of the college based community on a whole. These statistics compiles data given by universities of members of Facebook. These statistics range from the mundane ("percentage of female college students with conservative views") to the odd ("Percentage of college students that have read Catcher in the Rye")

Okay, so basically, they'll give out your information out to the highest corporate bidder. Not that big of a deal. This will just help Coca Cola make a new corporate jingle. Right? but is there more? Who funds Facebook?

Facebook was given funding of upwards to 12.7 million US dollars from Accel Partners. The managing partner of ACCEL is a man named James W Breyer.



James Breyer was on the Board of the National Ventures Capital Association. A washington thinktank agency. He served personally with a man named Gilman Louie.



Gilman Louie is the founder and CEO of In-Q-TEL

In-Q-TEL is a non-profit venture capital firm, a firm run by the Central Intelligence Agency to:

invest in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.

In-Q-TEL's primarily invests in new Data Mining Technologies.

What does that mean? essentially, In-Q-TEL ciphers the internet in search for "systems" which can help the CIA data mine with ease. Something like myspace, and facebook, essentially gives the CIA access to trends in various demographics aswell as they're thought patterns and behaviors.

Back to James Breyer. He also was on the Board of Directors of Bolt, Beranak and Newman Technologies. BBN is a defense contractor, dealing primarily with High-technology development. BBN Technologies was the creator of ARPANET, the first operational packet switching network, essentially the first internet system, run by DARPA.

In 2004 (the same year Facebook was created) Gilman Louie, the CEO of In-Q-TEL, jumped onboard with BBN Technologies with a one Doctor Anita Jones.



Dr Anita Jones was a former Board of Directors of In-Q-TEL, and was the former director of Defense Research and Engineering with United States Department of Defense. Her position placed her as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense, aswell as an overseer to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

As an overseer of DARPA, she was involved with DARPA's venture in information gathering when DARPA formed the Information Awareness Office in January of 2002.



THe IAO, with its rather Omnious logo pictured above, was a combination of various DARPA research programs, all based around information gathering, were all combined together. IAO's mission swas to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness"

one of IAO's many projects was something called the Scalable Social Network Analysis project.

Scalable Social Network Analysis: A project involving the development of techniques based on Social Network Analysis for "the key characteristics of terrorist groups and discriminating these groups from other types of societal groups.

Essentially, it was to find a method to analyse social networks and find "characteristics" of terrorist groups.

IAO's goal was to gather information all into one centralized spot, to essentially make a snapshot of society on a whole, to game "Informational" awareness. They're goals of ciphing information include, but are not limited to: Credit Card History, Airline Purchases, Internet Activity, Car Rentals, Educational transcripts, Tax Returns, Medical Records, Utility bills, and "any other available data."

The IAO was shrunken down in size and moved about, convienantly around the time of 2004, when Dr. Anita Jones and Gilman louie jumped aboard BBN. The new IAO project is under codename Topsail, now under the overseeing of both DARPA, the DOD, and also the NSA.

All of this went down shortly before Facebook emerged, a site that shares strikingly many similarities with a data mining operation. It takes personal information, it exploits said information to gather more detailed information, and compiles it into bite sized chunks.

Back to the statistic on the Catcher in the Rye. Why is this a statistic? Both Mark Chapman and John Hinkley Jr, the man that shot and killed John Lennon, and the man that tried to kill Ronald Reagan, respectivelly, both carried Catcher in the Rye with them. Both could be considered domestic "terrorists" in an way.

Could this be a insight into the IAO's Topsail project? The Scalable Social Network Analysis? Trying to find "terrorists" through social network traits?

When they break you down into bite sized chunks, what will they see?

"What does a scanner see? I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner … see into me — into us — clearly or darkly?" - Quote from Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkley




[edit on 7-14-2007 by WolfofWar]

I've always been suspicious of Facebook, it looked to me like a datamining site from the start.

Having someone else with the same suspicions just lets me know I'm not alone.


My friends say that it's safe, and that you have to have a membership, and be someones 'friend' to view their information... I know for a fact that's completely wrong.
Maybe the layman needs a membership, but thats exactly what they are supposed to think.

So I created a fake facebook page, with absolutely fake information. Just for fun.


Clearly this is done so that the government knows which colleges and universities they have to campaign at in the next election... I say you should fake it... call yourself a republican on Facebook, and vote Democrat.

I have seen a thread on here before about this but, you put allot of information and made it more clear to me... I knew something was up when i had to use my real name to register, I didn't get at the time how a myspace wannabe knew if the name was fake or not.

I don't know how facebook got me but, I registered right when I heard about it. I held out from myspace forever, after facebook actually and after I heard they were doing this. Well, I'm not old enough to vote and I'm Canadian so they probably don't give a flying puck about my information.... When i heard about it though, i did change the info on my existing account to BS but couldn't change everything.

so whats the big deal??? I really dont know why people make it out to be such a big deal. You know that people can look at your info so why does it really even matter???

Originally posted by cav01c14
so whats the big deal??? I really dont know why people make it out to be such a big deal. You know that people can look at your info so why does it really even matter???

It's not so much that people can see what information that you have on there, but they are actively using your personal information to ciphen more information about you and others from universities and colleges.

but most importantly, based on my research, Facebook may infact be a part of the IAO (Informational Awareness Offices') Operation Topsail, and actually datamining you to potentially use against you.

for those who want to know where wolfofwar got the information..

go here: www.albumoftheday.com...

it's basically a written transcript.

It's a good video, one that actually started me thinking to research a bit deeper.

The fact remains, you gotta follow the money trail, and it's odd that so many people that were working for essentially four different government agencies all are investing or active within Facebook.

all too familiar with the situation as Toronto is home to the largest Facebook population. It's like the new crack.

oh... and if you want to add me to your friends list...

Conspiracy Culture.

Thast the thing use waht against me???? I really dont get it why do people care about it so much. Anyone can look at your facebook as long as you sign up.

Originally posted by cav01c14
Thast the thing use waht against me???? I really dont get it why do people care about it so much. Anyone can look at your facebook as long as you sign up.

No they cant, how can I view someones profile who I am not friends with? You cant AFAIK.

Ditto with MySpace if the profile is set to private. No way around it for the average person unless your a hacker or your Tom the MySpace Guy.

Yep totally i mean the CIA justs love teenagers and kids. Yep so real so real. Try MySpace next time then people will go OMFG! The CIA on MySpace OH SHAT!

yeh i figured facebook was dodgy when i saw the conspicuously overhyped news conference the other week, without ever having heard of facebook before that despite living on the net. great post which conveys the point quite clearly & convincingly, dont forget to quote your sources & references mate. i wonder what data they extrapolate from ATS

[edit on 14-7-2007 by Shar_Chi]

I don't like those type of web pages/services. I always think either the gov. will have my info and catch me if I do something they don't like or approve, or some crazy nut will steal my identity. Both of which I don't like.

I have seen some posts that some people have had their identity stolen by posting info in similar web pages. Be cautious...

Seriously though, why do people use these sites? If the CIA is involved, and you know, why are you still using it? Isn't that...you know...stupid?

Look, the internet is "supposed" to be a pretty anonymous place, I don't think people understand this. Of course, I've had conversation with people who say "well, I use myspace to keep in touch with my friends"...and I ask "but at what cost?" Obviously they don't completely understand that if a complete stranger can visit your site (which happens ALOT), what would make it any harder for the CIA too?

Incredible thread, good job. It makes me think from their intro, that they have the right to change without reason or cause what you type as well and that is very unnerving. This seems too familiar although I know this is the first I have read about it. I will not be joining facebook for any reason thankyou very much.

Originally posted by zlnetworks
Yep totally i mean the CIA justs love teenagers and kids. Yep so real so real. Try MySpace next time then people will go OMFG! The CIA on MySpace OH SHAT!

Well, Facebook was never designed as a "teen meetup" ala Myspace. Facebook was designed to data mine College students, 18-25. People that have a political say, people that are the "current generation" that have enough information that can be used to skewer and make agendas on.

We always need a new enemy, a new "war on" something. Thats what these Data Mining operations are for. for Global Informational Awareness of our citizens, so if need be, they can use it against us.

Originally posted by douglas2k4
Seriously though, why do people use these sites? If the CIA is involved, and you know, why are you still using it? Isn't that...you know...stupid?

Look, the internet is "supposed" to be a pretty anonymous place, I don't think people understand this. Of course, I've had conversation with people who say "well, I use myspace to keep in touch with my friends"...and I ask "but at what cost?" Obviously they don't completely understand that if a complete stranger can visit your site (which happens ALOT), what would make it any harder for the CIA too?

The reason that people still use these sites is because they either don't believe the government is doing such a thing, the government wouldn't even care (see some of the posts on this thread), or they don't care. It's either those options, or they just flat out don't know it's going on. Those terms and conditions pretty much give them total ownership of the information they get. Google's privacy policy looks charitable in comparison, in my opinion.

The Internet was never designed to be anonymous to any degree, as far as I know. The Internet has its roots as a government system to alert people about the Cold War, if memory serves. From there it moved onto a place to store static information, which some people call Web 1.0, as a sort of retronym. The current trend is what has been labelled Web 2.0, and involves things such as social networking, dynamic content and the like.

At no point in this is there any amount of inherent anonymity in the Internet. If anything, the Internet is the largest open, public forum that exists on the planet. The anonymity is determined by me and how much information I choose to give out, not by the inherent nature of the Internet itself.

As a side note -- I was worried that a thread with the words "Facebook" and "CIA" might attract attention from people voraciously opposing the evidence with arguments along the lines of "the government doesn't care about kids, what's the big deal?" I suppose my worries were not unfounded

Definitely an interesting read. I would not doubt that the CIA may many other websites for collecting data.

DARPA and the government created and made the internet readily available to the public. Do you really not think that they were not going to get anything in return for it? They do, and it is boat loads of information and data. Are they going to arrest or harass you for your funky hip-hop style or love of cannabis? No.

It is so much information to sort through they are only looking for the big stuff that may lead to big time violence and/ "terrorist" activity that may occur. I think it somewhat works by using patterns of use, so the worthless chatter is filtered out. I guess you could compare it to very complex gold mining. I also think their data mining operations may also be used to figure out where the young adult demographic stands as far as culturally by recognizing patterns.

Information being used for marketing is also a possibility, but we give more marketing information away by using plastic to buy things. As far as political use, I don't think it makes much sense, because we have in the US a two party system not much of a choice. Anyway, I think many people would agree that the system is somewhat rigged.

I wouldn't doubt that our government released the internet to the masses specifically to keep tabs on the populace of the world. I think they probably know how to plan using the cause and effect rational. The government is filled with some very bright minds, especially in the intelligence fields.

I don't think that you have anything to worry about as long as you aren't planning or trying to incite violence on the populace or the government or big time criminal activity. If I used Facebook, which I don't, I wouldn't stop using it, because of this. I do not think they could ever crackdown on personal opinion or petty crimes. I am sure the IAO and the other data mining operations are just looking for trends in society and big time nefarious activity.

I don't like that in this society how we lost our privacy, but in many ways we are just giving it away. If this is just another step on our way to a totalitarian state, that is for you to decide with your own personal discernment. If you do and think this data may be used to through you into a camp for people with personal opinion, then you may want to stop using the internet completely, stop using phones and only communicate face-to-face. I for one will not live in fear of being snooped on.

BTW, I don't find the IAO logo to ominous. I actually like the Latin phrase "Science is potential." I think it means that through the understanding of the world around us through science we may possibly be able to bring peace to the world.

I know that the pyramid and all-seeing eye is Masonic symbol, but I know for a fact that not all Freemasons are "war-mongering devil worshipers" like some people on the net like to believe. Although, they may have respect for mysticism and esoteric spirituality. I am not saying that there isn't bad people within their ranks, but every large group has that.

Does anyone really think that Grand Architect of the Universe or Supreme Being is a reference to Satan or the Devil?

If you do think that, then you may want to read the beginning of the "hoax" here:
en.wikipedia.org...

I am not a Mason. Sorry for diverging off topic a bit in this long post.

I think it's scary how much facebook has changed since I first signed up. Now you can see what everyone is doing; it's really rather creepy.

Thanks for defending Freemasonry, a lot of people bash it without realizing that the very tenets that our democracy are based upon are masonic, things that we take for granted like separation of church and state (which is to keep from a government imposed religion),the declaration of independence, the constitution, so many of the founding fathers of our country were Freemasons,and rom what I see they did a decent job at laying the groundwork for democracy.

That being said, on to the topic, that truly is some scary stuff, I am not a fan of the thought that in a democracy we "keep tabs on" people whose views are outside of the box, or deviate from "the norm",to me the whole point of having a democracy is so that people can believe whatever they choose.