Privacy Working Group

Let me just say that I am not a big fan of MySpace or Bebo. Facebook on the other hand is one of my favorite sites to visit. In fact, if my boss knew how many times I check Facebook, well we don’t need to go there. It now appears that the British government may start to monitor these social networking sites. A recent article in the Times Online highlights the UK government’s plan to track personal communications sent via sites such as Bebo, MySpace, and Facebook. According to a March 25, 2009 article, “The private correspondence of millions of people who use social networking sites could be tracked and saved on a “big brother” database, under new plans being drawn up by the UK government. Ministers revealed yesterday that they were considering policing messages sent via sites such as MySpace and Facebook, alongside plans to store information about every phone call, e-mail and Internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom. ”

It comes as no big surprise that the UK government is trying to create another “big brother databse;” we’ve seen repeated instances of the UK government’s invasion of privacy under the banner of “anti-terrorism” for years. We have even seen attempts here at home to create a “big brother” database with the REAL ID Act of 2005 when the federal government tried to implement a new system to verify, track, and store driver information, costing more than $20 billion. Luckily individual states stood up to Washington DC and refused to comply.

We all want to be safe from terrorism but monitoring social networking sites is just another overreaching attempt to collect as much information about people as possible. Plus, I already have a big brother and his name is Jack. He keeps me in line just fine.

Ok, back to Facebook to update my status.