On 20/12/12 13:57, Gita Hashemi wrote:

i am not an advocate of facebook or other social media per se, but i do have a facebook account, just as i have a phone line, and several email addresses. frequently, i take a break from one or all. presently, i login to fb 2-3 times a day as i follow the development of "idle no more" indigenous rights movement in canada. IDLE NO MORE.

i humbly suggest that it is possible to use fb for purposes other than checking the latest narcissistic instagram pictures of our friends and their lunch, cat or baby, or other time and energy draining purposeless pursuits. and while there are many people who are not directly tied to political, intellectual or other exalted circles but who are on fb, it is possible to use fb as an effective communication tool to mobilize beyond our immediate circles and usual participants.

Indeed, and that is precisely what CIA/In-Q-Tel wants you to do. Generate intel and cash for them. To paraphrase indigenous activists: One minute spend on FB is one minute not spend in your flesh-and-blood community/neighbours (that is, there where political action traditionally begins). mp ------------------ http://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture-capital-firm-pre... The publicly available record on the Facebook/In-Q-Tel connection is tenuous. Facebook received $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel, whose manager, James Breyer, now sits on their board. He was formerly the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, whose board included Gilman Louie, then the CEO of In-Q-Tel. The connection is indirect, but the suggestion of CIA involvement with Facebook, however tangential, is disturbing in the light of Facebookbs history of violating the privacy of its users. Googlebs connection to In-Q-Tel is more straightforward, if officially denied. In 2006, ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele told Homeland Security Today that Google b has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Armybs Intelligence and Security Command.b Later that year, a blogger claimed that an official Google spokesman had denied the claims, but no official press statement was released. Steelebs accusation is not the only suggestion of American intelligence involvement with Google, however. In 2005, In-Q-Tel sold over 5,000 shares of Google stock. The shares are widely presumed to have come from In-Q-Telbs investment in Keyhole Inc., which was subsequently bought out by Google, but this is uncertain. In 2010, it was announced that Google was working directly with the National Security Agency to secure its electronic assets. Also in 2010, Wired reported that In-Q-Tel and Google had jointly provided venture capital funding to Recorded Future Inc., a temporal analytics search engine company that analyzes tens of thousands of web sources to predict trends and events. But as potentially alarming as In-Q-Telbs connections to internet giants like Facebook and Google are, and as disturbing as its interest in data mining technologies may be, the CIAbs venture capital arm is interested in more than just web traffic monitoring. The In-Q-Tel website currently lists two b practice areas,b b Information and Communication Technologiesb and b Physical and Biological Technologies.b The latter field consists of b capabilities of interestb such as b The on-site determination of individual human traits for IC purposesb and b Tracking and/or authentication of both individuals and objects.b In-Q-Tel also lists two areas that are b on its radarb when it comes to biotech: Nano-bio Convergence and Physiological Intelligence. Detailed breakdowns of each area explain that the intelligence community is interested in, amongst other things, self-assembling batteries, single molecule detectors, targeted drug delivery platforms, and sensors that can tell where a person has been and what substances he has been handling from b biomarkersb like trace compounds in the breath or samples of skin. In the years since its formation, many have been led to speculate about In-Q-Tel and its investments, but what requires no speculation is an understanding that a privately owned venture capital firm, created by and for the CIA, in which well-connected board members drawn from the private sector can then profit from the investments made with CIA funds that itself come from the taxpayer represent an erosion of the barrier between the public and private spheres that should give even the most credulous pause for thought. What does it mean that emerging technology companies are becoming wedded to the CIA as soon as their technology shows promise? What can be the public benefit in fostering and encouraging technologies which can be deployed for spying on all internet users, including American citizens, in direct contravention of the CIAbs own prohibitions against operating domestically? If new software and technology is being brought to market by companies with In-Q-Tel advisors on their boards, what faith can anyone purchasing American technologies have that their software and hardware is not designed with CIA backdoors to help the American intelligence community achieve its vision of b Total Information Awarenessb? Rather than scrutinizing each individual investment that In-Q-Tel makes, perhaps an institutional approach is required. At this point, the American people have to ask themselves whether they want the CIA, an agency that has participated in the overthrow of foreign, democratically-elected governments, an agency that has implanted fake stories in the news media to justify American war interests, an agency that at this very moment is engaged in offensive drone strikes, killing suspected b insurgentsb and civilians alike in numerous theaters around the world, should be entrusted with developing such close relationships with the IT sector, or whether In-Q-Tel should be scrapped for good. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE