Social Technologies are changing every organization and allow them to more open and transparent. Well not every organization can afford to be transparent. The new head of MI6 (The British equivalent of CIA) Sir John Sawers has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife decided to publish some photos on Facebook.
The funny thing about it is that his wife's did not put any privacy protection on her account, making all photos visible to anone who chose to be in the open-access 'London' network. I am sure they are smarter than this; this must be a strategy to extend their intelligence network. I searched Facebook and see if I could find any 008 or 009 tagged.Try the tag 'spy'.
The new intelligence chief (who will be codenamed 'C)' will soon issue a memo to all spies to give them directives of what to put in Facebook and when to blurr a face and under what circumstances you should include a friend's photo.
His wife revealed on Facebook the location of their London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their children and his parents. She also posted 19 pictures of the couple on holiday with their friends in the West Country earlier that month. And the next day, she added another 26 pics, including one of Sir John playing on the beach in his swimming trucks chatting with friends (not sure it is work or business).This is all new to MI6.
MI6 has been using social networking site Facebook to recruit employees in its most recent attempt to diversify its base of applicants. For some years the UK secret service has been attempting to recruit more women and people from ethnic backgrounds with a series of high-profile advertising campaigns, which eschew its Oxbridge 'tap on the shoulder' image. The latest pop-up ads on Facebook state: "A career in world events? Help influence world events (and) protect the country. Operational officer roles are collecting and analyzing global intelligence."
Earlier in April this year the UK government announced that it planned to use social networking sites such as Facebook to interact with the public as part of a new communication plan. And for the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the not-so-secret world of spying. The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 US intelligence agencies. "It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more," According to Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis. There must be a widget in Facebook for spies to encrypt their photos.
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