Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
09 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Paul Marks

Who knows who"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.

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.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/jatw4 newscientist

Some people don't have enough sense to come in out of the rain. I've seen 'very personal data' posted on blogs and forums in my years of surfing the Web and it really makes you scratch your head. Of course I remember some women I worked with who were hired on Monday and by Wednesday I knew who they were sleeping with, what sexual position they favored, what birth control they used, etc, etc, etc! And I didn't ask these women they just told me and anyone else who would listen!