What can we learn from Social Networking Sites and FBI Employee Guidance

bifilarcoil (58)in #deepdives • 6 years ago

I wrote this article as part of the deepdives contest, as my mind became a bit irritated by the double standards my focus got stuck on those. And I'm not sure if this still fits the #deepdives goals.
But to me this is my way of diving deep and touch on the things that make my neurons fire.

Now, lets dive!

Source: Duckduckgo image search

The FBI likes to use social networking sites to collect information about certain people, but lets see how the guide their own people when it comes to social networking, and how the average man on the street could use that information to at least have a clue how bad the situation is.

The “Social Networking Sites and FBI Employee Guidance” is a 2012 document created by the FBI’s Security Division to increase employee awareness of the threats and risks that social networking sites pose and to explain general security issues and specific FBI regulations concerning the use of such sites.

This 30 page PDF document shows how the FBI guides their people on the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS)

The Logo's on the frontpage cover the ones that where most popular in the USA in 2012

Delicious
Digg
Flickr
Foursquare
LinkedIn
MySpace
Please Rob Me
Technorati
Twitter
Wikipedia
YouTube

As most of you may be aware of is that Privacy is anything that can be used to identify a person. And the constitutions of most western countries have a privacy law that specifically mentions Privacy as a fundamental right.

And here it goes:

Facebook and other popular SNS have developed applications that can identify a users personal information. Home addresses, for example, can be found and mapped within a matter of seconds. Location services have become extremely popular as more people take advantage of smart phones with GPS and other mapping capabilities.

In this sentence the FBI makes clear that it is aware that data can be found that can be used to identify a person. So they are fully aware that an American company is overstepping the privacy boundary, but they do not take action to stop this abuse.

However they have concerns about government personnel to experience certain risks when accessing SNS on personal non-government systems. Adversaries include hackers, foreign intelligence agents, terrorists and criminals who may target you or your family, friends, neighbors, and/or coworkers.

If they worry about foreign intelligence agents, then people in foreign countries sure must start to worry about the most heavy funded intelligence machine on the planet that was build in the USA.

FBI personnel should not provide details regarding their work associates, official positions, or duties.

But they do not help citizens to be more secure. In fact all the people on the planet are tricked into giving away all of their details, and make it all available to the entire world. So that the spy machine can gobble up all data and know everything about everyone who is not 'on the inside' yet everything about everyone who is on the inside should not be available.

Think about it. This is the opposite of what government should be.

We the taxpayers should have full insight in every aspect of the government as the government is spending our money, but they create full privacy and secrecy for them while undermining the privacy of everyone else. This is the very creation of a corrupt system, where the people in government can not be verified if they are doing their job. Nobody can see the clockwork of the corruption. Yet the corrupt people can look up everything on everyone they want to pressurize for their personal gain.

They also loosely mention not to post pictures on dating websites.

Also think twice before you post a Curriculum Vitae anywhere online as this completely exposes your professional history. If a foreign agency wants to manipulate you then they will exactly know how to approach you, and even have a good guess about the people around you that may come in handy.

Use strong passwords with upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols and/or special characters

If they require this the why aren't you using them?

FBI personnel should verify the privacy policies on SNS. Some may share information such as email addresses or user preferences, with other companies.

AHA! So that is a problem then? Yet the agencies collect this data on every single one of us.

Any information provided on an individual's location, hobbies, interests and/or friends can be used by a malicious person to impersonate a trusted friend and convince that individual to disclose other personal or financial data.

Looks like they know what they are talking about, as this is for them the information they collect about all of us.

Children are especially susceptible to the threats that SNS present.

Hold on, because as soon as those children become adults then they are somewhat forced to sign up at SNS if they want to take part in society.
So right at the moment they are most vulnerable and are yet fully unaware of the risks, they are lured into the system of SNS.
As most SNS are in the hands of US based companies, the privacy of all these people is siphoned off into the US-based agencies.
THIS IS THE BIGGEST SECURITY RISK FOR ALL COUNTRIES ALL OVER THE PLANET AS THE USA GOVERNMENT IS THE BIGGEST AGGRESSOR ON THE PLANET!

Did anyone wake up yet?

The FBI has a program or app called "Safe Online Surfing" available to help protect kids from online predators.

And more alarm bells go off. As you may expect that such a program is actively spying on your children!
This is not a solution, this is probably even worse then the problem they try to prevent. If you want your children to be safe then you should guide them, and not leave someone secretly in charge who you don't have a clue about who it is when he or she is watching, poking the nose, or planning a predatory plot on the very people they suppose to protect. How many known predators have a background in government, and what kind of threat is that to your child?

FBI personnel should be cautious about the information they reveal (e.g. on Facebook, MySpace, YAHOO, MSN Messenger, etc) especially in person.

OK, so they will use chat services to fish for details when they want to know something more specific about you. These days we all have friends in foreign countries. So with chat services of any kind specially ones that are closed source and in the hands of big companies can not be trusted.

Any chat program, messenger, chat website is a potential backdoor into your communication.
And yes it is about ANY program. On Wikileaks there is a lot of information available about more modern chat applications that supposed to be secure that are all compromised one way or another.

Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, you name it they all have their flaws.

And with most it is due to a fall back mode. By default they use a secure protocol, but in the software there is a fall back mode.
IF SECURE PROTOCOL FAILS
THEN FALLBACK TO INSECURE PROTOCOL

An agency like the NSA can block or close a port by flooding the traffic to that port. (like a DoS attack) Then the application automatically falls back to the insecure port, and the NSA can see all data in clear text.

In case of WhatsApp it is even worse, that one is only encrypted when both sides are using the correct version of Android. When one phone is OSX or a lower version of Android then it only works in fallback mode. And since a large number of the population uses Apple devices or older versions of android, it is very likely that all traffic is send in fallback mode.

The FBI's conclusion that you should read yourself and draw your own conclusions.

You can read it at page 17 of this document.

Source: Social networking sites and FBI employee guidance)

DISCLAIMER:

As Intellectual Property is a red nose on a clown I will not (be able to) claim 'Intellectual Property'.
And as copyright can not function across borders, and even less on the internet itself, as every download is in fact data that is copied from host to host until it is displayed on someones screen. I do not see how existing copyright rules that forbid to make copies are helping me to share my thoughts across the internet.

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Feel free to elaborate and remix my thoughts, and if you do then please place a link back to this article. And please also drop a comment to your article in the comments below, so that I can learn from you.

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