Thanks Zuck, The CIA Loves Facebook Timeline

I read a chilling story on Wired the other day: “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy On You Through Your Dishwasher.”  According to Wired,

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”

This is probably scary enough, but when you look at all the information readily available online, it shapes up to be positively frightening.

From Wired

History From Birth

The article poignantly points out, with the arrival of Timeline, Facebook made it super-easy to backdate your online history. While neither me, nor you probably have information on there backdated to your birth, there will come a time where longer histories will be available as the user base gets younger and younger.

Now, let me be clear. I’m not anti-Facebook. I use it, I think it’s great for keeping in touch with family, and has a very valuable business purpose, but the part of me that wants to make sure people’s civil liberties aren’t abused goes on red alert when I read articles like the aforementioned Wired piece.

What Do You Think?

Have we gone too far in the public sharing of our information, or are we truly going to enter a brave new world where simply everything is tracked and tagged electronically, including our own personal timelines? I don’t think Zuckerberg meant it, but one thing is for sure: Social media certainly makes it a whole lot easier for people… not just friends… to know a whole lot more about you.

Images: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/  http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/facebook-timeline-tips/all/1