Is your Facebook in the wrong hands?

You might not feel threatened when the CIA's number-two man announces he doesn't take online privacy that seriously — unless you believe he has your Facebook password.

"(In) our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity — or the appearance of anonymity — is quickly becoming a thing of the past," said deputy director of US intelligence Donald Kerr late last month.

"Privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured."

Mr Kerr basically announced that the US Government is to be trusted when it comes to monitoring internet activity and correspondence.

And why would the average Australian Facebook user care about this?

Any Facebooker who bothered to read the fine print when signing up should already know they've granted the social networking giant "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use" their personal information at leisure.

If conspiracy theorists are right, the more than 50 million Facebook users who agreed to those terms may have unwittingly sold their online souls to the US Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1999, long before it became the multi-billion dollar enterprise it is today, Facebook received close to $15 million funding from Accel Partners, a venture capital firm whose manager James Breyer sat on the board of the National Venture Capital Association alongside members of CIA data warehousing organisation In-Q-Tel.

Mr Breyer also served on the board of internet development firm BBN Technologies alongside Dr Anita Jones, the former director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

At the time, Dr Jones was overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and its Information Awareness Office project — allegedly aimed at gathering and storing as much public information as possible for the government's perusal.

The information they were seeking reportedly included internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licences, utility bills, tax returns and any other available data.

Scary stuff in a world full of online shopping and for-your-eyes only emails, and Congress agreed — cutting funds from the IAO in 2003 following uproar from civil libertarians.

But that wasn't the end of it, according to conspiracy buffs: they say that Facebook is simply the IAO under a different name.

Adding fuel to the rumours, late last year the CIA made their interest in Facebook known when they opened a page on the site dedicated to recruiting staff for their National Clandestine Service. The page includes a YouTube video advertising work in the agency.

If you've got a Facebook and are worried about the men in black peering into your life, unfortunately it's too late to escape.

You can't delete an account on the site, you can only "deactivate" it. All of your information remains with the site, ready to be re-activated (or data-mined by people with the right credentials) at any time.

One possible solution — change your profile name to Donald Kerr, and your interests to "controlling the internet". Delete your contacts, format your hard drive and move to Mexico.

msn Nov 15, 2007