CIA's "Facebook" tanking before IPO

Facebook Traffic Drops For a Second Month In a Row - Is The Funfair Over?
iLo Ivy (Technocrati, June 13, 2011)
Inside Facebook reported, for the first time, a consecutive monthly drop in traffic figures, making this a slower growth than usual. The U.S. fell to 149.4 million users in May, while Canada lost 1.52 million. The U.K., Norway, and Russia also reported losses of over 100,000 users, according to today’s morning tech wrap on Forbes. The question is, what could be behind this dramatic fall? Invariably, short-term factors will always influence Facebook’s traffic from country to country. Yet, could this perhaps have something to do with the recent cyber security breaches on the networks of other major sites and big corporations like IMF's? More

• Privacy groups push for US Facebook probe‎
• Privacy Advocates Ask Feds to Stop Facebook Facial Recognition‎
• Facebook IPO: Could Facebook be worth more than $100 billion?‎
• Facebook planning IPO on $100 billion valuation?‎
• Goldman Sachs, Facebook, and the IPO - 2012 It Is
• Facebook and the IPO frenzy‎
• Is Facebook losing users? Report says U.S., Canada growth slowing‎
• Is Facebook growth stalling in North America?‎
• Facebook loses 6M US users in May‎ (Computerworld)

Facebook's facial recognition: CIA jackpot!

Lauren Effron (Nightline, ABCNews.com, June 10, 2011)

User browses the social networking site Facebook that now identifies "friends" in photos automatically without their permission (Chris Jackson/Getty Images).

Oh, Facebook, here we go again. The social media giant is facing a new wave of concerns over privacy protection after launching its latest feature:

It "allows" [forces unless one opts out] users to identify their friends automatically in photos without their permission.

The photo tagging tool, called Tag Suggestions, was put into place in December. But it was listed as unavailable until recently. Here's how it works:

When a user uploads new photos to his or her Facebook profile, the new feature then scans them with [police-approved] facial recognition software to match the people in the photos with other photos in which they might have been previously tagged.

• Nightline's Facial Recognition Challenge (CIA thanks you)

The feature also offers "group tagging," which allows [pressures] users to type in a person's name and "apply it to multiple photos of the same person," according to Facebook's blog post on the subject. The problem is that users can do this without their friend's permission. More

Ex-Agent: CIA Seed Money Helped Launch Google
An ex-CIA agent has gone further than ever before in detailing Google's relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency.

He claims sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground and has for the first time named Google's CIA point man.

Robert David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer and former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, is the CEO of OSS.net.

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on his previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception.

"I think Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn't fund what I call the open source world," said Steele, citing "trusted individuals" as his sources for the claim.

"They've been together for quite a while," added Steele....