How can they see me picking my nose when I'm by myself in my car?

What is this world coming to? Facebook will now be sharing your information with third parties according to MyFoxDC!  So far its only with the music website, Pandora and the consumer website, Yelp.  But how long will it be before the FBI gets data from Facebook about you to use against you in a court of law?  Well, maybe sooner than you think.  CNNMoney.com reports that,

As the popularity of social networking spreads, law enforcement agencies are tapping into these sites to nab criminals, tax evaders and other wrongdoers, and gather evidence to support their cases.

"People don't think [authorities] are going to go that far, but little do they know, they are going this far," said David Seltzer, a criminal and cyber crime defense lawyer. [No, not our good guy Obama! I thought that only George W. Bush's henchmen invaded the privacy of American citizens?]

In several of Seltzer's cases, law enforcement agents created a false profile on MySpace and "friended" a suspect or a suspect's friends in an attempt to retrieve information they needed for an investigation.

The CNNMoney.com story quoted an internal Department of  Justice presentation as saying that "using social networking in criminal cases can reveal a suspect's communications or whereabouts, establish motives and personal relationships and prove or disprove alibis."  The cooperation of the websites is surprising to the average person.   According to the CNNMoney.com story

A spokeswoman for MySpace said the site has created a law enforcement guide and has developed a 24/7 hotline and e-mail account to assist law enforcement investigations. The company also provides training for cyber crime units on how to investigate and prosecute cyber criminals using MySpace.

Yes, I remember when the Internet was a cool place.  Now it's a collection of phishing sites, porn tubes, and cops!  True, YouTube is cool for watching classic TV commercials and cats playing pianos. And, but for Internet websites like the Drudge Report, Obama the Usurper would have completed his bloodless Marxist coup by now.  Yet, somehow our naïveté prevents us from exercising caution while on the Internet.  People are dumber than owl droppings sometimes. They rarely think ahead about the consequences of their actions.

A lot people of say things in e-mails  that they would never say in person.  Maybe it's the fact that there isn't a hard copy that people put their hands around.   About ten years back there was a County of San Diego Treasurer-Tax Collector that caused the County pay out $100,000 for a sexual harassment claim by his Chief Deputy Tax Collector.  Although Treasurer-Tax Collector claimed that the relationship was mutual, a series of e-mails over the County system gave the impression that he was harassing his Chief Deputy.  To characterize the e-mails as embarrassing would be an understatement.  According to the LA Times story one of the e-mails said,

"When I am in your office, I want to walk over and hug you, kiss you, hold you so, so bad," he wrote in one e-mail, according to a report from the investigation.  His advances continued over her protests and she feared professional retribution, the investigation concluded. "What part of NO do you not UNDERSTAND," she wrote in one e-mail response, according to the report.

See what happens when you think with the wrong head?  So why should anyone be surprised when law enforcement mines data from a source like Facebook or MySpace?  People give up personal information so easily that it is mindboggling.  My blog name is a pseudonym.  I simply don't want to make it easy for some left wing nut job to endanger me.  I try to be as careful as possible.  So should you.  Because once it goes out on the Internet it's open to almost 7 billion people.