Assange recently said that social networking services are used as intelligence gathering mechanisms by most spy and police agencies. I agree, and I use them to gather information about people, too.

Julian Assange came out and said what everyone knows: Facebook and other social networking schemes are used as intelligence gathering mechanisms by most spy and police agencies around the world. The joke of it is nobody cares that this is happening.

Well, you should care, a little.

Assange asserts, according to NextWeb, that the big spy agencies have special interfaces to make it even easier. I suppose that is true. Ever heard of Nimble.com?

But do the people who are using these systems really not realize that the social networks are great research tools that anyone can use?

I tend to do due diligence on people that I'm about to meet or have lunch with. While I do not have some easy, special interface like the NSA may use, I get as much info as I need by plowing through various systems. I like to know in advance who I'm dealing with, so I can avoid making assumptions on the fly. It's also good to know someone's politics and hobbies in advance.

Am I a bad person for doing this? No. And you should know that every good journalist and writer probably does this.

To get the details you want, you can look over people's Facebook pages and LinkedIn pages to get a reasonable amount of background info. You can then check if they have a Twitter account. If so, what do they harp on? Do they use a goofy name? If they have a blog, they'll probably link it on one of these services. If they do, what is it about?

And then there is the big one: photo sharing accounts like Flickr. I'm not sure if any of intelligence agencies deal with these. In fact, I doubt they do.

You can really tell if someone is a creep or dingbat by finding pictures of them taken by others on Flickr. You can see who their friends are. You can determine their politic beliefs and sexual orientation. You can see if they are inclined to drink too much or party too much. It can be quite revealing, dangerously so. Flickr does more intelligence gathering than Facebook in many instances.

To me, the most revealing thing about this sort of research is that you can tell at a glance whether the person is circumspect or naïve.

It is easy to effortlessly get a bead on someone. When I was at TechTV, they hired some new guy who seemed normal and personable. Within 24 hours, one of the staffers found his LiveJournal blog where he was railing about working at TechTV and about how everyone was stupid (except him, apparently). That was the end of him. I mean, how dumb can you be?

The good news and bad news about these self-written dossiers, insofar as the intelligence agencies are concerned, is that at least the user has control over his or her own files. While people often reveal too much about themselves, like their minute-by-minute whereabouts and personal schedule, I do not think it is as bad as Assange believes for most reasonable people.

But people should at least be aware that they might be scrutinized based on their online information, even when it is supposedly "private." While I cannot view people's private postings, you can be sure the government can.

So I have some advice: don't be stupid. That simple thought should serve you well.