Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

As reported in CNET News, “WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are actually tools for the U.S. intelligence community.”

No surprises there….

If you do not already believe such things, then you have not been paying attention! (Of course, such companies have MANY positive roles.) Having conclusive proof is much harder, of course, but the public evidence alone is pretty damning. Oh, then think about Google and 33 other Silicon Valley companies being hacked by the Chinese in late 2009 and early 2010….)

In an interview with Russian news site RT that was published yesterday, Assange singled out Facebook for special focus:

“Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.“

Of course, we have seen such an interface before, notably at AT&T offices on Folsom Street in San Francisco, CA, a room for which I was assigned the task of developing an inventory of Sun equipment (remotely, of course! 😉 I was unsuccessful, but nobody seemed to mind! ), while SBC was my customer while I was employed by Sun Microsystems.

According to the RT interview, as quoted by CNET, Assange stated:

“Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.”

Facebook provided a written statement to CNET that I will quote here, because I believe that it is necessary to read all statements as a lawyer would, anymore, even things like TV commercials (what does it mean to be “professional grade” anyway! 😉 ):

“We don’t respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process,” the spokesman told CNET. “There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data [and] we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.”

If you read that statement quite LITERALLY, as a lawyer might, the statement says little to nothing about the accuracy or truthfulness of Assange’s charges.

(I was actually OVERWHELMED tonight by the sheer VOLUME of important news, about the economy and employment, and especially about privacy. I thought that Assange might be a good place to start.)

-Bill at

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