“MI6 is using the social networking site Facebook to recruit the next generation of spies.”
How did they do that? By sending offers to the highest scorers on Mafia Wars?
“The Secret Intelligence Service, which has traditionally scoured the country's elite universities for recruits, launched a series of online adverts this month as part of its attempts to attract people from a variety of backgrounds.”
Oh, so somewhere in between the ads asking if I’m sick of being overweight, and if I’d like to make $3,000 a week by simply eating ice cream, the Facebook page margin was soliciting me to be the next 007?…nice.
“’There has been a very good response so far,’ said a spokeswoman.”
But it seems that the social networking site has other plans for the world’s military.Fast forward to July 2009…
“The perils of putting personal data on Facebook were made painfully obvious when the wife of John Sawers - the next head of MI6 - put details, photos, and information about him and his family on the social networking site.
“There were…photographs of the future spy chief on the site, forcing the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to do a tour of TV studios, saying: ‘You know he wears a Speedo swimsuit. That's not a state secret.’
“Lady Sawers revealed the location of the London flat used by the couple, the whereabouts of their three grown-up children, and the address of Sir John's parents. Up-to-date information on Sir John's address as well as photos of numerous family members were readily available.”
In Mission: Impossible, Ethan Hunt didn’t need the NOC list, just a Facebook account!
“[t]he posting of personal data on the internet puts the new head at risk as well as posing a potential threat to national security.”
And really, what isn’t a threat to national security these days?
However, the Foreign Secretary said there was no security risk posed by knowing John Sawers wears speedos.
Are you sure this isn’t a security risk?At least this pic wasn’t of ‘M’.
::shudders::
When solicited for comment, former intelligence officer and creative name haver, Mr. Black, said, "Cock-ups happen.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
What does this mean? Facebook is tearing down our world’s most capable spy networks, and having the spies’ loved ones do it voluntarily!
And MI6 can’t fight back…this isn’t even an enemy that James Bond could face! Maybe Pierce Brosnan would have stooped to doing a Bond flick about 007 fighting in cyberspace, but we’ve got Daniel Craig now. What’s he gonna do, bludgeon MacBooks to death for 120 minutes? That movie would suck!
Maybe this isn’t just the Matrix manifest, but rather some amalgamation of all the horrific Hollywood prophecies. This seems very reminiscent of Terminator’s SkyNet: another man-made network that became self-aware and then destroyed humanity so machines could rule us all.
Isaac Asimov, an author whose visionary criticism of mankind’s robot reliance-spawned doom will never be read by new generations thanks to Will Smith, also predicted such an occurrence at the end of his novel, I, Robot. In his predictions, the first worldwide supercomputer takes over, controlling our world, and we are helpless due to our reliance on it.
In his vision, robots are designed with three laws in mind:
“1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
Even with those laws, Asimov’s fictional robots found a way to lord over us.
Our doom is inevitable, for Facebook has no laws…
See you in the bomb shelter. Don’t forget the Spam.
SOURCES:
MI6 Seeks Recruits on Facebook
Security Risks of Social Networks
The Three Laws
Even more chilling is that once this scheme is found out by our more prudent cyber-populace, the only safe haven is likely to be MySpace. How perverse.
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