Did You Know Failing to Join Facebook Means You are a Psychopath?

Not only are you a potential mass-murdering psychopath, good luck getting a job, because employers are wary of individuals without Facebook profiles. They want to read all of your comments and look at all of your pictures. "Peeping Tom", anyone?  This is nothing but an effort by Big Brother to increase the social acceptability of what would've been - just years ago - considered very creepy behavior. It's a total violation of privacy. In fact, the lack of a Facebook account, more than likely, translates to a mature person, who chooses to use his or her time wisely, someone who is beyond petty schoolyard drama.

"I asked Kluemper about the “personality red flags” that their reviewers looked for. He was a little vague but said that a person with obvious mood swings, who is overly emotional in their postings would not be an attractive candidate. Meanwhile, a person with a lot of Facebook friends who takes a lot of crazy photos would be rated as extroverted and friendly — which are attractive qualities in a candidate.

Key takeaway for hiring employers: The Facebook page is the first interview; if you don’t like a person there, you probably won’t like working with them. The bad news for employers, though, who are hoping to take the Facebook shortcut: “So many more profiles are restricted in what the public can access,” says Kluemper.

Oh, and according to the German magazine Der Taggspiegel "James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles".

Here is an interesting comment article:

"At my company we do not hire people who do not have Facebook accounts or who make their Facebook accounts inaccessible to H.R. and security personnel. It's very simple, we are looking for a certain type of employee, one who lives a lifestyle that is compatible with our values and corporate mission. If you have anything you need to hide, then seek employment elsewhere. Job seekers, remember that your Facebook is a marketing tool, and the product you are marketing is yourself. Every single post you make, every picture you upload, everything you 'Like,' it's all subject to employer scrutiny. What employers are looking for are physically fit, morally upright, non-political individuals who have enough discretion to avoid posting comments about controversial topics, and who do not feel it necessary to post pictures that might bring discredit to themselves or the organizations they are affiliated with.

- Jim Thompson, Seattle, WA , 08/8/2012

The real message here is, conform, conform, conform...or else!

Links:

Facebook can tell you if a person is worth hiring.

Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.'

Read more...

FBI Pushing Plan to Force Surveillance Backdoors on Social Networks, Web Email Providers and VOIP

The FBI wants Internet companies to support a proposal that would require firms like Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. If passed, these ompanies would have to provide the bureau with decryption tools to make sense of the information that it captures.

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) already provides assistance to law enforcement by requiring that they cooperate with police in order to conduct lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance.  The FCC extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband providers, but web companies are not covered under this law.  

Of course, once again, it's all in the name of national security and public safety.

Read more...

Pedophilia on Facebook Increasing?

It's interesting how Facebook has no problem censoring certain types of comments, articles, pictures and messages.  It's interesting how easily Facebook bans people for adding too many friends or chatting too much,  yet somehow, stopping thousands of child predators to interact and trade photos is beyond their capability. In fact, the social networking giant, ordered a mother to take down pictures of her 7-year old son, competing at a local Special Olympics event just because he has Down Syndrome .  

"When she next logged on, she received messages from Facebook's monitoring team, saying that pictures violated its user agreement.

To keep your account active, please remove any photos that contain hate speech, support for violent organizations, or threats to harm others,' the message read.

Ms Cornwell's account was disabled for three days until she took down the photos.

'Every photo was of my son at the Special Olympics Event,' she said.

Nevertheless, pedophiles on Facebook, if anything, are on the increase.  In August of 2010, a Vancouver B.C. high school teacher was amongst eleven people arrested on child pornography charges linked to an alleged international child porn ring that was operating on popular social networking site Facebook.

Currently, Chelsea Schilling is doing a four part series on the dark side of Facebook. Part one deals with pedophilia.

"During the investigation, entire Facebook predator communities were easily spotted. Child pornographers use groups as meet-up points to find others with similar interests. Many of the offenders would list similar interests on their profile pages, including terms such as “Thirteen,” “Lolita,” “Justin Bieber,” “incest” and “PTHC (preteen hard-core pornography).” Their activities might include “Receiving nude pics,” and they subscribe to explicit Facebook fan pages posted in plain sight.

Send a flood of 1st-class mailed postcards to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, members of Facebook’s board and top-level management and staff telling them you want this criminal activity to stop.

In most cases, child-pornography traders and pedophiles have two kinds of friends: 1) sexual deviants who have similar interests and 2) unsuspecting children they’ve found and “friended” on Facebook. Many predators will establish a virtual relationship with a child, convince him or her to send provocative photos and even persuade the child to meet with them in person.

Now, Facebook does have a place where you can report these pages; however, from what people have told me, and reports I've read, Facebook ignores those reports.

Meanwhile, a very wealthy Mark Zuckerberg kicks off Facebook IPO  road show.

Links:

Sign petition to stop child porn on Facebook

Stop Child Porn on Facebook

“The Berlin Turnpike: A True Story of Human Trafficking in America”

“Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have completely changed the game. Enormously popular – and growing every day – these free sites offer very powerful tools for men who are buying sex, pimps who are selling it, and pedophiles trading child pornography. In a brilliantly devious marketing ploy, pimps have used these sites in such a way that men no longer need to look for girls on the street corner or the Internet. Using social networking, the girls will come to them."

Read more...

New DHS Headquarters: Largest Federal Project Since Construction of the Pentagon.

US Dept of Homeland Security Headquarters, Washington DC, Phase 1

Since the creation of the Office of Homeland Security 11 days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Department Homeland Security (DHS) has more than 230,000 employees. The problem is they do not have an official home.

So, in an effort to consolidate the Department of Homeland Security's workforce, now scattered across 55 campuses, into a central headquarters, a huge construction project is underway, the largest one in the country.  Pictured above is phase 1 of the new DHS headquarters on the campus of  what used to be St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital, the nation's first major federally run psychiatric institution founded in 1852. It is located in southeast section of Washington, DC.  This project is the largest federal project since the Pentagon.

Thankfully, this huge project has been pushed back 5-years:

Originally, the DHS headquarters plan carried a price tag of $3.45 billion and aimed to relocate 14,000 workers from more than 180 offices to the campus of the former St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast Washington by fiscal 2016. But, according to December projections, the project will cost at least $3.96 billion and won't be complete until the end of fiscal 2021, delaying the relocation of more than 10,000 workers by up to five years. Only the Coast Guard headquarters is expected to be completed on schedule in spring 2013.

Thankfully, because this is the same agency that has an $11 million contract with General Dynamics to monitor Web activity, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and  news sites. The only reason we even know about this is that the Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained 300 documents through a Freedom of Information Act request which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.” DHS has been surveying public online posts since as early as 2006.

The monitoring involves looking at “publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards, and disseminate information to "federal, state, local, and foreign government and private sector partners." - EPIC

Can you imagine the power DHS will have consolidated in an area that has the potential to house 60,000 employees?

Read more...

What Google and Facebook are Hiding From the World

Read more...

Google and Facebook: Two Largest Big Brother Entities?

Google's top executives, CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt have dodged requests to testify   at a hearing by the Senate's antitrust subcommittee for over a year; however, it appears that's about to come to an end. The Wall Street Journal claims the FTC is planning to issue subpoenas to both Page and Schmidt, who are getting prepared by turning to none other than a former Microsoft prosecutor.

As Google tries to fend off a U.S. probe of its multibillion-dollar search business, it has been quietly adding to its stable of antitrust advisers, which, Reuters has learned, includes a former Microsoft prosecutor.

At the same time, Google is proving itself extraordinarily useful to the US government, who has filed more than twice as many demands for data about Google users than any other other country in the past six months, and Google has complied 94% of the time. Google's cozy relationship with the government is a little disconcerting, considering there is no doubt that the government wants to censor the Internet as much as possible.

Google Transparency Report

Google CEO Eric Schmidt claimed that Google “will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help the government them plan their lives.”

And, Facebook is the greatest spy vehicle ever created according to Julian Assange.

Read more...