Saturday, June 29, 2013

NSA Use of Facebook User Data

A recent CNET.com article hit the tape explaining how NSA analyst leverage an outdated web encruption to ascertain various user data from social sites such as Facebook. With relative ease, the NSA is able to tap into fiber optic cables in a "vacuum" like manner thanks to a hole in web data encryption. This provides further light to the ongoing tragedy the Administration is inflicting on the Fourth Amendment to the constitution.

A discovery in a 2007 dissertaion by a professor at Tel Aviv University, Eran Tromer, showed that with under the cost of $1 million, one can build a dedicated hardware system that can break 1024-bit RSA keys. Those same encruption keys is what facebook uses to this day to supposedly protect user communication integrity.

Despite this of course, Facebook remaeins very popular with over a billion users. However, one looks at the recent negative news on facebook of:
  • Stock price underperformance
  • Trend of teens moving away from facebook and to Twitter
  • Recent reports showing average user hours per day are decreasing
One cannot help but think there is a trend emerging among user preference to "just say no" to unfettered infringement on privacy; people are ok with targeted ads for Bic Mac, but do they really want Uncle Sam tracking their every move? Time will teell.

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