Facebook’s Surveillance Empire

People have always been worried about government surveillance both internally and abroad, but not many realize that companies like Facebook have surveillance empires of their own.

Facebook is actively expanding its reach into the personal lives of its users and has recently deployed features to their apps to help suit their own surveillance desires in an ever-expanding mission to know everything there is to know about you.

Already today Facebook scans posts after they are uploaded, but as the company moves towards the encrypted and instant communication platforms like WhatsApp, it is aggressively moving towards content filtering directly from user’s phones.

Just this year the company stated that once a user downloads their app they will track the location of their users at all times, all photos on their phone, and what they say using the microphone and what pictures they take with their camera.

Right now, if someone wanted to install malware to scan the photos on your phone, check if you have ever taken screen captures of Facebook properties, or check your calls and voice commands when you mention they would be violating wiretapping laws.

However, because you have agreed to Facebook’s terms of service and installed its app Facebook’s on-phone image recognition algorithms will be able to scan your private photo gallery and monitor every image there, including the ones you have never shared. This also includes facial recognition on images you never uploaded to Facebook.

Voice recognition algorithms can also track every mention of Facebook on phone calls and the context it is mentioned in. The microphone could even be on and recording the surroundings 24/7, creating a global surveillance network beyond the most creative conspiracy movies.

Mark Zuckerberg’s empire also demonstrated their intention to harvest unencrypted messages from user’s devices without their knowledge through WhatsApp. Even though messages in Whatsapp are said to be encrypted, the platform will be able to scan and read your messages. They do this by scanning the messages before it is encrypted from the sender’s device or after it has been decrypted on the recipient’s phone.

As a result, Facebook is creating all the necessary back doors and finding all the legal loopholes they can to satisfy their surveillance desires. Why do they even bother encrypting Whatsapp?

Be very aware of the intent of Facebook's offerings, their services are free and they make money off knowing everything they can about YOU.

This article is intended to show us the truth and to open our eyes to the events that are already happening in the platforms we used to trust and the fact that we need to take better care of our privacy.

So join us in our journey of Optimizing The World!

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