The NSA wants to know.

I recognize that the internet can be used for good or ill, but "mass harvesting" of myspace?

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks.

Now, this is a little different from the other NSA intrusions in that people on myspace have voluntarily put that information out there as publicly available. But, maybe we should describe these NSA programs instead as Seven Degrees of Guantanamo.

The idea is to see by how many links or "degrees" separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation. ....