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Comment by brown9-2 | Hacker News Reader

got a citation?

Facebook at one point took some funding from some people who had some tenuous connections to the CIA's VC fund. Saying they are a "CIA outlet" is pretty far out into Alex Jones conspiracy theory territory.

There were 15 different Federal Intelligence agency just in the DC White Pages! You think all the employees of 15 different Federal Intelligence agencies (that they admit to, or all the private subcontractors like BLACKWATER) take no secret actions?

All those reflexively flinging "conspiracy theory" labels are just sheep in deep, deep denial.

You are using false dichotomy here. Intelligence agencies, of course, perform clandestine activities. That does not mean these activities are in the form your favorite conspiracy theory describes. E.g., they probably watch persons of interest, but no, they probably are not in the least interested in your facebook updates, unless you happened to maintain active email correspondence with Usama Bin-Laden circles.

Ah, of course... so that means the fact that there's no evidence to support you theory is itself evidence to support your theory. Ingenious!

Do you really believe Facebook is not sending all their data to CIA?

The CIA doesn't have the infrastructure for that. FB just holds the data on their own servers and lets the CIA look at it there.

Seriously? The combined annual budget of CIA, NSA, FBI, Pentagon, occupation forces, etc. is around two trillion $ per year, but they don't have the infrastructure ...

Hm, NSA, possibly. FBI, no. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/how-fb... CIA, probably not much better off, for the same reasons.

Yes, I do. What CIA would do with so many lolcats? Unless they found a way to make lolcat-powered drones, in which case it is really scary.

Seriously, though, what CIA would do with such amount of useless data? I could in principle believe Facebook cooperates with targeted surveillance requests (though doing something secret on facebook is incredibly stupid, but there are stupid terrorists too), sending all their data to CIA would be pretty useless.

Information is power. And the guys in and around CIA are starving for power.

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