New Scientist Tech - Technology - Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites:
Always remember that the web is one big, huge neighbourhood, and someone other than benevolent readers (others like voyeurs, bosses, CSIS, RCMP, NSA and other acronyms) is peeking at you from some vantage point. So be somewhat circumspect about what you post - it could come back and haunt you - or your descendants...
"'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."
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"or your descendants" is an interesting tag to the end of your article...I read about how someday people might pass on digital heirlooms, or in this case digital reputation. Interesting thought.
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