True, and Barr's idea is not actually far off; Facebook and other social networking sites are intelligence goldmines, linking people to aliases, groups, networks, and a lot of other things. Think of how hard it may be for a fugitive to retreat to a trusted safehouse when he's published a list of everyone he's ever met on Facebook via the Friends list, and/or named the handful of people he hasn't friended in a status or note.
The CIA has shown interest in Facebook's database for a long time, because, besides the normal detective work a normal detective can do if he reads through a Facebook page, if you get a handful of real mathematicians working with that dataset, they can certainly rig something up that would at least return really interesting results.
The CIA has shown interest in Facebook's database for a long time, because, besides the normal detective work a normal detective can do if he reads through a Facebook page, if you get a handful of real mathematicians working with that dataset, they can certainly rig something up that would at least return really interesting results.