Facebook is security agencies' dream - by Nicky Phillips

Stored inside a series of ordinary brick buildings beside a sprawling wasteland on the edge of San Francisco Bay are intimate details of your life, relationships and opinions. This information repository is not the headquarters of the FBI or CIA, but Facebook Inc, Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar social networking behemoth with access to more than 840 million people, and their data. While full-body scanners and CCTV cameras often evoke Big Brother fears, the growing trend in surveillance is much closer to home.

Social media has become the latest way governments, police and corporations spy on their citizens, most of whom have no idea they are being watched. 'To people who think there are only innocent uses of social media, think again,'' says David Lyon, a Canadian sociology professor who has studied surveillance for 30 years.

But it is not just governments and security agencies spying on cyber space. The very nature of social media turns users into complicit, albeit low level, spies (yes, that's you, Facebook stalkers). State surveillance networks have also found rich pickings online.

Oppressive regimes, such as those in Syria and Egypt, have used social media sites to oust disenfranchised citizens. And the intelligence agencies of democratic nations, including the United States Defense Department and Britain's SIS, also analyze social graphs, compiled by phone and web connections, to understand terrorist movements, Pesce, an honorary associate at the University of Sydney says.

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