Assange: Facebook a ‘spying machine’

Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, media tart and controversialist, has leveled his hyperbole gun at Facebook, calling it “the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.” In an interview with Russia Today that’s bound to provide aid and comfort to tinfoil-hatters around the world, he complained that the …

[Shannon Jacobs]

Not just your weaknesses, but your strengths

I'm not surprised that Assange realizes how dangerous this kind of stuff is. Let me throw two scenarios:

1. Someone asks to be your friend. Not someone you know well, but maybe someone who went to your school and whose name you recognize, so you 'friend' him. Turns out he's actually an investigator who got one of your school yearbooks and checked to find out who wasn't already on Facebook, registered for that person, and voila. Now he has access to your so-called friends, many of whom actually are friends going back many years. Maybe he has to play the game a couple of times to get the correct contacts networked in, but can you imagine the dossier that can eventually be compiled if someone is serious about going after you.

2. Someone wants to manipulate you. From Facebook they may be able to recognize your weaknesses, possibly even find something embarrassing or illegal that can be used for blackmail, either directly or by nudging you into a position of greater vulnerability, but that isn't all. Even your tastes and strengths can be used against you. My own pet theory is that Assange himself was set up based on information about the kind of women he liked. Maybe I need a tin hat, but I don't like coincidences and I can certainly see where certain powerful people would have been getting increasingly uncomfortable about Assange's activities.

[twburger]

Facebook is Watching

Lat year I came to the same conclusion. I advise everyone not to use Facebook. Facebook is taken too lightly.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Sir

I will never use facebook, but my wife does - so I banned her from mentioning me or including any photo's that I might be in :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that ..

she obeys you in all things, but the problem with people is that they do things inadvertently.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir

Sir Runcible,

If your wife uses the sobriquet Lady Felatia Spoon, then I must tell you with sadness and regret that she avails herself rather wider than simply facebook, and that her photographs show a degree of flexibility and exhibition unbecoming of a lady of the realm.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Sir

@AC

Ahem, whilst I endeavour to ensure that my good Lady does not, in fact, inform the world of her Yoga skills in pictoral form, I cannot ignore the revenue that my wife provides the estate - without which we would soon be living with the oiks.

As I said before, as long as I'm not in them :P

[Ammaross Danan]

@Spoon

"I will never use facebook, but my wife does - so I banned her from mentioning me or including any photo's that I might be in :)"

Even though you put a :), I'm still inclined to believe you truly think you're shielding yourself. All you need to have done is a family member or friend of yours, that happens to have taken a picture of you, uploads said picture to Facebook, and then "tags" you and types in your name. You don't have to be a Facebook member to be manually tagged. If you are a member of Facebook, you at least get a courtesy notification that you have been tagged in a photo so you can delete said tag. As a non-member, you don't get such a privilege. Then the CIA could somehow *wink wink* get a hold of such tagged images and process you into some facial recognition database.

Welcome to the computer age. 1984 may not have been nearly accurate enough.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Sir @ Ammaross

You make a good point. I'm under no illusions that I am 'under the radar' so to speak, but at least I try to reduce my profile - a bit like the stealth fighers. They can still be seen on radar, just not as well and you need a good radar. At least that's the principle.

[Ammaross Danan]

@ Sir Spoon

Even with a reduced presence, all they need is one correctly identified marker to shoot you down (both stealth and personal profile).

[Annihilator]

@Shannon Jacobs

"Maybe I need a tin hat, but I don't like coincidences"

Well you live in the wrong universe and are the wrong species then. You exist due to a series of coincidences and are primarily programmed to function by looking for coincidences, its how humans evolved.

Assuming that all coincidences must be a conspiracy does give you a bit of a necessity for a new hat. It's a coincidence that the sun rises each morning I suppose...

[A. Lewis]

And your first mistake...

Is (be)friending someone on facebook, whom you don't know.

Or possibly it's making the kind of enemies who would do that!

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Well said sir!

The reason I refuse to use FB, it's just too easy to drop a bombshell and let loose some nasty secret you'd rather keep to yourself.

My Missus uses it to keep in touch with some colleagues and some family, but she's extremely careful how she uses it and what she puts up, she's aware of the risks and often advises others that the least amount of info you put up the better.

[Quxy]

St Julian may be batshit...

...but he's probably right about Facebook. Just remember, kids, friends don't let friends use Facebook!

[Andrew Moore]

exactly what I was thinking.

like the old saying goes 'just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you"

[beep54]

well said

see title

[DelM]

d'oh

The only reason I joined Facebook was to spy on my kids. Works pretty well for that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overreaction

Well, he's right... but it's also optional, which kind of makes it a little less threatening. There's nothing I put on there that I'm not comfortable being public knowledge.

My biggest concern would be being linked to someone through circumstancial evidence because of Facebook. I don't know some of those people all that well.

[James 139]

Thing is

whilst you say its optional, Facebook pretty much encourages you to provide it with information.

Personally though, Im less worried about government agencies and more worried about just how useful the information might be for identity theft.

[TJ McVickers esq.]

Yeah but...

If Facebook "encouraged" you to jump off a cliff...

[James 139]

Sadly

Some people probably would.

The difference is, most people know what jumping off a cliff is, at the very least, dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ AC 04:08

Not to be seen to be supporting Assange but one of the main problems with facebook (and similar sites) is that it is used largely by children. Children are generally not that savvy (or paranoid) when it comes to posting information online - not just about themselves but about their friends, family, acquaintances and so on.

If young people (and some older ones as well) were educated to the realities of posting shit on line (nothing is truly anonymous, people often aren't quite who they say they are, nothing ever gets deleted & the biggie - what looks and sounds really funny/cool/maverick/special now may well come back to bite you once you get older) then they may change their behaviour - but knowing what I was like as a teenager I suspect not.

[James 139]

Young

children are easily taken care of on Facebook, at least those under 13.

Just report them and Facebook will ban their account.

Of course, Facebook doesnt help it self by making things fairly open by default, rather than totally closed requiring the user to allow rather than deny.

[sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD]

Under 13?

You just brought up a very interesting point.

Minors should definitely not even be allowed on these sorts of places. 18 and above, imho.

Although when *exactly* one stops becoming a minor and is considered an adult is a matter of considerable debate. After all we have all seen the 30 year old behaving like a 5.

[Michael Baines]

Yawn...

The Onion already broke this news months ago...

http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

[Tree & Tree = Dirty Tree]

Good one!

You almost got me there for a moment. While we all know that this is not far from the truth.

[Ralph B]

Someone's been watching The Onion

The Onion had this vid on the story some time ago:

- http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

And that's not to say it isn't true. Sometimes it's best to hide the truth in plain sight. (Eh, Osama?)

[Anonymous Coward]

"free work for intelligence agencies"?

Hardly. Any Intelligence Agency that wallows in Facebook will find itself neck-deep in crap. Sorting out the valuable intel from the junk would tend to be a full time job. Who, of interest to them, would really expose anything worthwhile via this medium? Twitter might be a better source of up-to-the-minute intel.

[Fred Flintstone]

Wrong..

Agencies already have the ability to filter to wads of crap. Their problem is getting the source data, a problem which Farcebook has neatly solved because it exploits the stupidity of people.

Farcebook also contributes to much of the spam you get. Every time a "Friend" plays a Farcebook game, they give permission to access their Friends profiles. Let me translate that for you: the fact that YOU have set privacy for your account is not a barrier if someone else can grant access to your data. All legal, of course.

If you don't believe me I suggest you start reading through the T&Cs of games like Cafe World. It ought to be an eye opener.

In summary, as much as I hate to admit it, Assange is actually right here. If people listen he may be good for something after all. But I still want to see what happens in Sweden..

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the ability to filter to wads of crap..."

I'm sure they do have abilities, but do they really have the ability to process millions/billions of daily entries and dig out the semantic meaning of what is there and then normalise the data and then pass it through filtering and then pattern recognition and then come up with something of use that justifies the effort? I don't think so - not on this scale. I'd rather they spent their efforts on targeted intelligence gathering - which I suppose facebook would aid, if only the bad guys were kind enough to post their lives on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes they do.

"do they really have the ability to process millions/billions of daily entries and dig out the semantic meaning of what is there and then normalise the data and then pass it through filtering and then pattern recognition and then come up with something of use that justifies the effort"

Yes, they do. The concept is called "semantic web" and took a good 16 man years to develop. It's basically building on what Sir Berners-Lee was going to suggest as the next step of the URL.

I've seen it at work, on mass data sets. It's positively scary how quickly you can find data correlations. The problem is that most people working with such sets never were told that correlations are PROBABILITIES, not absolutes. If 100 out of 500 people that buy BMWs also have red hair, you have a probability that the next red haired guy will buy a BMW too. But it's not the certainty that government and law enforcement treat it as.

This is why FB and Google worry the crap out of me - there is enough data there to come to completely stupid conclusions.

[Anonymous Coward]

cutting through the crap.

I think Assange suggested that Facebook has built in interfaces for intelligence agencies for sorting through the crap. Hell, sorting through all the crap on my own facebook page is a full time job. It would be counter-productive to look at all the quizes that some people do, but you can build up a picture of people from their actions on Facebook, e.g. people who take quizes versus people who play games. Listing all the things people like would also help build up a picture. The frequency of people's posts to their wall, the counting of common wording among their posts.

Some of my 'friends' say "good night" to their other 'friends'. There is a number of things we can deduce from this, apart from the fact they are sad. One being, assuming they retire not long after the post, we can find out when they go to bed, and from that when they get up, and from there how their day is organised. As an intelligence gathering tool it is immensely useful.

[Tree & Tree = Dirty Tree]

Not using Arsebooke at all....

... but my wife does.

Personally I am not willing to drop my pants in front of the whole internet community. Especially not as long as I don't trust Arsebook's security policy. That company is totally incompetent to develop decent code, and I don't trust it's integrity either.

Your privacy against a good standing with the authorities? Take a guess.

But that's just little tinfoil hatter me. There is basically nothing wrong with sharing your whole life on the internet- as long as you censor it a bit ;-) Everyone has full control over what they share and what not, and if you think that your life is really that interesting to the rest of the world, be my guest. What people fail to see is that there is:

NO SUCH THING AS PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET

Never was, never will be! Once you have understood this, go ahead and share whatever you like!

I am aware that there is a wealth of information about me all over the internet, indirectly through my wife's Facebook account, in this forum, and in many other places. Its inevitable if you work in IT and have public appearances over many years.

If "the powers that be" want to frame you on something they will succeed anyways. If a government goes rogue your Facebook account is your least concern.

This whole paranoia thing is like jealousy in marriage. As long as there is no reason the whole thing is ridiculous, immature and unfair to the other side. If there is a reason its too late to worry, and its time to take consequences. But apart from staying decent and not causing a situation yourself there is very little you can do to avoid it. You will have to cross that bridge once you reach it, so you might as well ditch irrational paranoia and just live your life.

P.S: This is not an appeal to neglect ones social and political responsibilities! But in my experience the biggest conspiracy theorists and other paranoia addicts are the least active where it matters and don't even try to make a constructive change to anything.

[The Alpha Klutz]

"don't even try to make a constructive change to anything."

They donate heavily to local Pizza establishments everywhere.

[Bilgepipe]

And he's(tm) back

Oh, hello Julian(tm), slipped down the news ratings again, have we?

[John Smith 19]

Asanges facebook page.

Status Being watched.

Location. MYOB

Friends See above.

[Justin Bennett]

Wow, surprising news!

I'd never realised that the NSA and co had access into social networks!! What a mind altering amazing fact that is, Intelligence agencies doing their jobs!!

And now for some news...

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Title, telltail! Tittle tattle!

You know this, I know this, 99% of those on here know it. The problem starts out there with the other 99.999999% of the internet users who don't have a fucking clue that even posting your real name can be a bad idea, let alone those dodgy snaps you and you mates posted of you and that hunky Greek waiter you befriended last year in Kos!

If a few people listen to Assange and think just a little bit more before using FB, then it's helped to make the world a little better.

Now save the sarcasm for a more deserving cause!

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Venn

I've put together a Venn diagram showing overlap between the "Hate Assange" and "Hate Facebook" social groupings.

Where they intersect a hole in space/time has been created by the power of sheer, illogical confusion and conflict.

[Anonymous Coward]

spacetime holes?

Intersection of Hate Assange & Hate Facebook ?

Sounds like a little island of calm sanity to me...

[It wasnt me]

Venn......

"Where they intersect a hole in space/time has been created by the power of sheer, illogical confusion and conflict."

Thats where IMG and Scorchio live, that is.

[Winkypop]

Blah blah blah Assange blah blah....

.....hang on, he's got a point.

[Anonymous Coward]

As the old saying goes:

'Even a broken clock is right twice a day.'

[A. Lewis]

Good luck with that.

I'm sure the intelligence services will get lots of crucial data to use against me. My holiday snaps. Those pictures which include me with a mildly silly expression. Those invites to a BBQ. Dun dun duuuuun!

[Anonymous Coward]

And your friends? Your friend's friends? Their friends?

Odds that you are connected in some way to someone that has done something to catch the attention of someone that can make life very annoying indeed for you? Very good actually.

See story about college student that found FBI tracking device under his car and his friend that got a visit by the FBI for no other reason that he had the person on his FB page.

[Sean O'Connor 1]

Big deal

Is that really the very worst actual scenario you've got for the case against Facebook?

When we were kids our house was raided by armed police all because a drug dealer had befriended my parents on holiday so he could slip through customs more easily tagging on to a family. He'd kept my parents address in a notebook and that was found by police looking for him. Maybe we should ban biros and paper before moaning about Facebook?

A student got a tracking device and one got visited by the FBI. Big deal. And not nearly as exciting for a kid as a bunch of armed coppers either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal?

So it's not a big deal for someone to suddenly become a 'terrorist suspect' because of a 'friend' connection on a website. Not even when suspicion of terrorism can result in 6 month detention with no charges (US) or a month (UK), not to mention loss of job, having 'terrorist suspect' on your permanent record and so on. No big deal eh?

/sarcasm

[Sean O'Connor 1]

No not a big deal

But my dad became a suspected armed drug dealer on account of his name and address being found on a piece of paper in a bad guy's house. It could have turned out that the bloke was a terrorist (we didn't choose him) so I don't see how Facebook is any different from anything else, eg a bit of paper. At least on Facebook my dad could have un-friended him.

The trick seemed to be for my dad to politely explain to the armed policemen that he wasn't actually an armed drug dealer.

And has anyone actually become a terrorist suspect purely because they have a friend connection in FB and they've spent 6 months (US) or 1 month (UK) in jail and lost their job? Or are you just hoping that someone does eventually so you can say that your tin foil hat theories were right?

[Tom 13]

How Facebook is different than the situation with your dad

is that on Facebook the drug dealer can have hundreds and hundreds of friends whereas in the case of your father, there were probably only a handful. Therefore the Facebook leads are worth considerably less than the one to your father, wven though that one was erroneous. Of course, if one of those Facebook leads does pan out, they'll also have him on wire fraud or mail fraud or some such.

[Wild Bill]

Odd one out

Unlike the rest of you obviously I am of no importance or interest to anyone outside of my group of friends. I'm therefore perfectly happy to share select bits of info about myself with that group (the shocking fact that I like Cheap Trick for example)

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why

you do not use your real name on this forum?

[Wild Bill]

This forum isn't Facebook

Anyone can read this. Not anyone can read my facebook page

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Cheap Trick?!

Someone has to pay for Dennis' pension plan I suppose!

[Tree & Tree = Dirty Tree]

Not anyone can read my facebook page

That's what YOU think! :-P

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh.

I don't post anything I'm not happy for the world to know. I don't mind them knowing who I know, knowing my political views, or seeing pictures of my holiday, because we don't live under a repressive regime. Much as I hate them, the Conservatives aren't about to kidnap my close friends in order to make me do something they want me to/stop doing something they don't want me to do. If I was a Saudi, or a Libyan, or Chinese however, I'd be a bit more careful.

As it is, I've got nothing to fear from the information I share. Which makes me happy, incidentally. Whinge all you like about the state of our government/society- we've got it pretty good compared to a large fraction of the world, so stop stressing.

[CaptainHook]

Not a repressive regime

Do you trust that all those with access to that information in the now and in the future is going to be equally unrepressive? although at the moment our government isn't knocking down the doors of anyone that doesn't agree with it's policies doesn't mean that the next government will be.

That data which may well be completely harmless to you at the moment, has a long life expectancy than you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I think most of the people who helped make it pretty good in the first place took the view that you should never stop stressing. Things can go down as well as up you know.

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Well...

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

[Elmer Phud]

"You want the truth?"

You certainly won't find it on Facebook, the kids lie to get an acount, thier parents lie about how wonderful thier kids are, the teenagers lie about drinking and shagging and many of the rest of us just don't put info in on tags etc.

There are the ones who will comment on everything and beleive their flea-ridden dog is 'cute'.

It's usually those who want to be noticed, who feel unloved and need the attention, the same ones who will chatter loudly on the phone in pubs etc., those who will make just about anyone their 'friend' and are not necessarily aware they have linked thier concious and subconcious to provide a constant stream of blather.

Julian -- Sony released more usable info than Gacbook ever can.

[peyton?]

meh

Where's our coffin dodger icon?

[David Lee]

The mans an arse but....

Assange is doing his level best to ensure that no stone is left unturned, that no one is left behind, that every human being alive will know the truth that he is an insufferable arse.

However, that don't stop him from being right occasionally (every stopped clock is right at least twice a day). If you don't put sh&t on facebook you don't leave yourself open to this sort of thing.

Anyhoo now that the navy SEALs have taken out public enemy number 1, shouldn't Assange be making alternative accomodation arrangements?

[multipharious]

Not using doesn't protect you

A good bit of intelligence is available from what is not ostensibly there. The more prolific users are around you, the more of a doughnut hole is left in the middle where you may be inferred to be. Plus with all the surplus budget intelligence agencies have left over, they can now concentrate on tracking the ones that try not to be tracked if they want since they are obviously shifty types.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'm going to start a Facebook group

called "Assange is an asshat and I'll bet we can get 1 million friends for this group before the end of the month."

[Doug Glass]

Sheeple ...

... must love to be fleeced; they line up by the thousands to have it done.

[NoneSuch]

@Sir Runcible Spoon

Your certificate of marriage to your Facebook loving spouse was digitized and uploaded to the mothership long ago. So the link between her friends and you is already set under the Homeland Security databases that suck up all that lovely data from around the globe.

The danger is not one database. The danger is the linking of multiple back room databases under the aegis of "security'. With that comes trend / relationship analysis, then eventually "Thought Crime".

Mr Orwell; we should have paid more attention.

[Anonymous Coward]

JuleAss is not mad that FB is spying on people.

He is just mad that he cannot publish it all.

[Matt Bryant]

RE: JuleAss is not mad that FB is spying on people

Don't you mean because he can't make any money out of it?

[Justin Clements]

FFS

Who gives a crap if Facebook knows this stuff? If the security services want to know who your friends are they will simply pull your telephone records, sms texts, follow you, etc.

Gees, so people know who my friends are on Facebook and when I'm going to the pub. Big fucking deal.

If there was a reason I didn't want to be tracked through Facebook, I wouldn't sign up in the first place.

Or is His Highness Julian still upset that people were dumb enough to use Twitter in a private mode and discovered it wasn't so private. Dimwits.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? This is news?

Come on Reg, you can do better than this.

[Daon151dh]

Assange spot on !!

the Wikileaks founder attributes “nearly every war” in the last half-century to “media lies”

And he is 100% correct. I would point those who disagree at America's global terrorist activities (and those of their allies) at Prof. Noam Chomsky's excellent work.

[Jimbo 6]

Chomsky

Six months ago I would have totally agreed with you regarding Prof. C, but after reading 'Towers of Deception' by by Barrie Zwicker I've seen him in a totally different light (like most of the 'mainstream media', Chomsky totally accepts that 9/11 happened exactly as the Bush administration told us... nothing to see here, move along). Essential reading for anyone who thought Chomsky was the scourge of the media.

Not anonymous, cos *they* (the MIBs, not the Chomskybois) probably have ways of knowing who I am anyway...so if 'Jimbo 6' never posts on El Reg again, avenge my death !

[Anonymous Coward]

Appalling Spying Machine

“the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”

More appalling than the dog turd camera?

[stu 4]

I've given up

I used to point out the feckwittedness of the tesco clubcard for the same reasons.

I decided if one more friend said 'I've got nothing to hide' I'd kill them.

Now I just grin piously and let them do what the fuck they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Pious

You could argue that your commenting on el reg is flying in the face of your own advice...

[WinHatter]

The idiots are legion

and willing to share their intimacy with other barely known idiots.

Big brother would be daft not to peek ... but is it worth it ???

[Ilgaz]

I think they are struggling with overload

One may think they (evil echelon guys etc.) are struggling to setup filters, advanced filters to cope up with amazing private info overload which was unprecented :)

[Tom Maddox]

Oy

The tinfoil hat brigade is out in force today.

[Ilgaz]

and Assange is?

In Russia, Mid East and some parts of Asia, Assange is claimed to be a fake hero serving American interests.

Seen the photo of White House situation room? Seen how careful they are about some kind of photo/paper and how Hillary holds a top secret dossier? That is how the real top secrets are protected. Not with some http authenticated site which thousands knows the password. Even porn sites have better defences than that. (they account unusual activity, bandwidth).

Leak 2, not more than 2 explosive real top secret documents, lets see if you will stay alive after attempting the first one :)

[joe.user]

Not Tinfoil at all - reality

If you have half a brain, you'd realize that this is the absolute mother-load of six-degrees'ing. Facebook is the most dense collection of relationship and archived map of one's life and relationships. To think that this is not being exploited is not only naive, but downright dumb.

Tinfoil my arse.

[mhenriday]

Good that Mr Chirgwin

has vouchsafed us with an operational definition of «tinfoil-hatters», i e, anyone who finds Facebook's arrangements to protect its users' data less than ideal. Given that, in hats as elsewhere, tin foil was superseded by aluminium foil more than half a century ago and that the numbers of those who aren't happy with Facebook's «security» is rather large, perhaps the article is best construed as a subtle tip to the cognoscenti to invest in aluminium stocks ? In that event, one does hope that the author has cleared his little intervention in the working of the stock exchange with the SEC !...

Henri

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh brother!

Assange cannot stand competition, if Zuckerberg takes up cross dressing imagine the cat fight would be epic.

[Anonymous Coward]

facebook tracked everyone who read this article !

Thats not just fb members/users.

For a bunch of supposedly IT savvy commentards, you all seem pretty apathetic to the proliferation of facebook web bugs/tracker beacons, (e.g. fb-connect fb-share, etc.) to every news media, and most forum's websites.

<a title="Share on Facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://reg.cx/1NTA">

[Ilgaz]

even BBC

I am not paying license fees since I am not UK citizen but the "facebook" spy buttons all over the BBC news bothers me. If I paid for BBC and I was a UK citizen, I would certainly ask what they get in return offering free profiling for Facebook.

BBC News, some of you guys hate it but it became one of rare news sites to get information in media (commercially or govt.) opressed countries. So that is why it is globally a big deal.

If they need money, entire planet is ready to help. For example I would gladly pay for an ad free BBC news site or the famous iPlayer. They aren't doing such things and they make deals with airlines of dictatorships, facebook buttons etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

In his latest press release, Assange reports that

bears shit in the woods.

[The Alpha Klutz]

and their urine

wikileaks into the river.

[YARR]

Benjamin Freedman

Well if he listened to a certain speech by Benjamin Freedman he'd learn that the "World" wars in the half century before that were also strongly influenced by "media lies". No great revelation there!

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying under the radar

That is what I do. I researched yesterday and saw that is pretty damn hard to find any info about me on the web because I have no Facebook, no Orkut, no Twitter account, nothing. I am happy with this result. And I want it to stay like that. I might be traceble by some posts left here and there but my real info is known only by the revenue agency and my ISP. And I need to be involved in a Federal embroglio in order for the government to put their hands on that info.

Never expose your life and your friends lives on the web.

Assange is 100% right.

[Anonymous Coward]

King of hyperbole

Assange craves media attention and is the king of hyperbole. I wonder if he'll get as much attention while in a Swedish prison?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yandex and ruspil

While Julian was discussing shadowy state institutions, did he ask the pro-Kremlin RT what they thought about Yandex's revelations concerning ruspil.info, the FSB and Nashi?

[Matt Bryant]

Sheeple alert!

OMFG, just listen to the bleating! Assnut says "Facebook is BAD", and all the sheeple bleat "Facebook baaa-aaa-aad". I bet a load of them rushed to delete their Facebook accounts before posting. If he says next week "Facebook good, TV bad", they'll all be back on Facebook after disconnecting their TV aerials!

[JPQ]

Surprise, surprise...

Another anti-wikileaks post on the Reg? Surely not.

[General Pance]

Get even with the CIA

Fill your facebook gallery with pictures of turd.