Anthony Wile at the Daily Bell points out more alarming evidence linking Mark Zuckerberg’s sinister venture to the intelligence agencies:

“In Facebook’s case, there is clear monetary evidence linking Facebook to the CIA and other Intel outfits.

Here, from the New Zealand Herald, circa 2007:

There is a dark side to the success story that’s been spreading across the blogosphere. A complex but riveting Big Brother-type conspiracy theory which links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.

The CIA is …using a Facebook group to recruit staff for its very sexy sounding National Clandestine Service.

Checking out the job ads does require a Facebook login, so if you haven’t joined the site – or are worried that CIA spooks will start following you home from work -check them out on the agency’s own site.

The story starts once Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had launched … Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.

Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.

Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel’s board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.

She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.

… Wikipedia’s IAO page says: “the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralised location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.”.

Not surprisingly, the backlash from civil libertarians led to a Congressional investigation into DARPA’s activity, the Information Awareness Office lost its funding.

Now the internet conspiracy theorists are citing Facebook as the IAO’s new mask.

Facebook’s own Terms of use state: “by posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorise sublicenses of the foregoing.

Nothing has really changed with Facebook. It’s still the same odd business, pilfering information from its users to resell or trade with others. When company officials were making public statements about 800 million users, SEC filings revealed 400 million users, and even that number was probably exaggerated.

And recently we read this about Facebook, posted at Wired and entitled “Facebook Is Trying to Buy Its Way Into the Developing World” …

Facebook just plunked down a reported $100 million to $200 million to buy a company that trims smartphone bills. And there’s a good reason for that: The social network needs new users, and those users are increasingly cash strapped.

At a time when new U.S. users are drying up and saturation in other developed markets is on the horizon, Facebook is increasingly prioritizing emerging markets to fuel growth. It’s a tricky gambit, given the paucity of online and commercial infrastructure in such markets, and one that could take years to pay off. But Facebook could reap the spoils of being a pioneer, among the first to tackle a challenge that other large internet companies, Twitter foremost among them, will soon be grappling with themselves.

Israel-based Onavo said it is being acquired by Facebook, giving Facebook a suite of apps for reducing mobile data usage via com. Trimming smartphone bills is particularly important for users in developing countries, and Onavo is Facebook’s second big play for such users in as many months, the other being its Internet.org initiative to wire the developing world.

“We … hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals — using data more efficiently so that more people around the world can connect and share,” Onavo CEO Guy Rosen says in a blog post.

Such a goal may sound generous, but Facebook’s motives are hardly altruistic: The company needs the developing world in order to grow.

Revenue grew 88 percent in emerging markets versus just 43 percent in the U.S. Monthly users in the second quarter grew 32 percent in Asia and 29 percent in Africa, South America, and other emerging markets — compared to just 6 percent in the U.S.”