Facebook CIA Project

Video Transcript:

I'm Brick Alvarez. Let's get right to our top story tonight. Congress today reauthorized funding for Facebook, the massive online surveillance program run by the CIA. According to Department of Homeland Security reports, Facebook has replaced almost every other CIA information gathering program since it was launched in 2004. After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded. So many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal email addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment. It is truly a dream come true for the CIA. Much of the credit belongs to CIA agent Mark Zuckerberg, who runs the day-to-day Facebook operation for the agency. The decorated agent, co-named The Overlord, was recently awarded the prestigious Medal of Intelligence Commandation for his work with the Facebook program, which he has called, quote, the single most powerful tool for population control ever created. Among the biggest successes of the Facebook program is Operation Farmville, which the CIA credits with pacifying as many as 85 million people after unemployment rates rose dramatically. Other features, such as the Suggested Friends window, have been instrumental in allowing government agents to infiltrate deeper into the friend networks of suspected dissidents. For some expert analysis now on this story, let's check in with the facts on first responders. Jason, you have written extensively about the Facebook program. Why is it so effective? Well, one of the key reasons is that the CIA has been so thorough in convincing the nation that constantly sharing information about everything that you're doing is somehow desirable instead of deeply unsettling. The critics are saying that with the national debt being so high, is this really the time to spend even more money on spy programs? Well, actually, the Facebook program saves the CIA money. It's like the maps application where you list every place that you've been, whether it's at the state or a country. So, right, with the little pins, they show where you visited. Yes, that kind of information would have taken the CIA months of going through hotel receipts and plane tickets to figure it all out. The manpower that Facebook saves is huge. Absolutely, absolutely. And the calendar feature even lets the CIA know where you're going to be in advance. Right, so now if they want to pick you up for questioning, all they have to do is see which events you RSVP'd yes to and then send their agents to be waiting for you. That's how they got my brother. That's right. So effective. But guys, with all the focus on the Facebook program, is it taking away from some of the other CIA programs like the Twitter initiative? Well, yeah, the funding for that should be cut entirely. Right, 400 billion tweets and not one useful bit of data was ever transmitted. Oh, that's true. Now, is this trend of social network information gathering dangerous? I mean, just last week, the New York Times revealed that Al Qaeda has designed four square to identify popular locations for buying. Actually, that's been discredited as any kind of real threat. The people that use that site or people that no one would mind seeing bombed anyway. So really, the only thing the CIA has to be concerned about is people losing interest in Facebook and moving on to a new social network site, like the Chinese site WANB. I love WANB. Oh my God, it's so much more fun than Facebook. It is great. I love that one. I love that you can earn friend points, the more state secrets that you post. I've got a lot of contacts in the State Department. I think I could really rack them up. You should post them up. I'm good. All right, First Responders. Thank you so much as always. I'm, of course, a big fan of any social networking site. It allows me to interact with my fans about having to see, hear, or smell them.