Facebook is very much part of the system, or establishment if you prefer. Facebook was born of the CIA's program, LifeLog. Talk about your total surveillance software that people rush to daily. Brother, and I am not referring to Big Brother with that exclamation. Wikipedia explains,
LifeLog aimed to compile a massive electronic database of every activity and relationship a person engages in. This was to include credit card purchases, websites visited, the content of telephone calls and e-mails sent and received, scans of faxes and postal mail sent and received, instant messages sent and received, books and magazines read, television and radio selections, physical location recorded via wearable GPS sensors, biomedical data captured through wearable sensors. The high-level goal of this data logging was to identify "preferences, plans, goals, and other markers of intentionality".[2]
One can't help but notice that the concept for Facebook developed shortly after 9/11 [09/11/2001] and the PATRIOT Act that allowed for unwarranted surveillance of Americans. It is the brainchild of DARPA, like all things connected to the internet. UnlimitedHangout's article, whose title "DARPA's Data Mining for 'National Security' and to 'Humanize AI," reminds us how the intelligence community tries to humanize their surveillance of us:
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, DARPA, in close collaboration with the US intelligence community (specifically the CIA), began developing a “precrime” approach to combatting terrorism known as Total Information Awareness or TIA. The purpose of TIA was to develop an “all-seeing” military-surveillance apparatus. The official logic behind TIA was that invasive surveillance of the entire US population was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, bioterrorism events, and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks.
There was actually an office established in 2002, less than a year after 9/11, that oversaw an invasive national surveillance program called, "Total Information Awareness." The office overseeing that program was called Information Awareness Office. Its name sounded too sweeping to critics, so the office changed the program's name from "Total" to "Terrorism Information Awareness" to make the American public think it exclusively targeted terrorists. Ha! It's still about total surveillance.
Well, 2002, you say,' was such a long time ago. I say define "a long time ago." This program is still around, and, in fact, changes its purpose and name like any intelligence community chameleon:
The TIA projects were not actually closed down, however, with most moved to the classified portfolios of the Pentagon and US intelligence community. Some became intelligence funded and guided private-sector endeavors, such as Peter Thiel’s Palantir, while others resurfaced years later under the guise of combatting the COVID-19 crisis.
Surveillance is ongoing. Facebook is a tracking system.
Facebook is a sweeping surveillance system tool, its Wikipedia page claims that it is a cute and innocuous "student directory featuring photos and basic information." Hardly. The opening buzz surrounding Facebook was the quality of one's photo or self-portrait, better known playfully as a selfie as a way to humanize or disarm the true nature of intelligence community programs: government surveillance. Americans love to indict the Soviet Union's surveillance as an appalling assault on its citizens. But put a cutesie face on a program, called it Facebook or WeChat or Smiley Face, and you've got millions of Americans signing up and paying for every surveillance tool in the government's toolbox.
And like too many origin stories, Facebook's origin starts with a goofy, pasty-looking college kid who spent too much time in his dorm. "Zuckerberg told the Crimson that . . . ," "Zuckerberg intended to create a website that . . . ," "Upon finishing the site, Zuckerberg told a couple of friends that . . . ," always involving some miraculous achievement, "Within twenty-four hours, we had somewhere between 1,215 registrants . . . ," and "By December 2005, Facebook had 6 million users . . . ." I did not know that Peter Thiel was Facebook's first Angel Investor.
In the summer of 2004, venture capitalist Peter Thiel made a $500,001 angel investment in the social network Facebook for 10.2% of the company and joined Facebook's board. This was the first outside investment in Facebook.
But it's hard to even trust these stories about any of these high-profile techie founders since the entire industry is one big CIA, NSA, etc. network. And with the site originally created as a network for Harvard students, called Harvard Connections.com, what average-intelligence American could resist being part of a Harvard network for free?
Facebook serves this national security surveillance purpose happily, where people post what they've recently eaten for breakfast, new romances, the latest divorces, where they just returned to, and destinations for which they're making plans.
Books from James Bamford, whom the New Yorker called "The NSA's Chief Chronicler."
