KOCHI: Facebook is not your friend. It is time you ‘unfriend’ it, said Richard Stallman, who pioneered the revolutionary free software movement.“Facebook is a surveillance system. It collects data and abuses it. Every time you ‘Like’ a page, Facebook can detect that a person with this IP number, and find out who sits at this place, and who has gone to this particular page,” he said while participating in an interactive session at the Internet Club’s office in Broadway, here on Sunday.He said Facebook’s claim that the information published on it can be viewed only by certain selected friends is false. “The information which you post on a Facebook wall can be shown by one of your friends to anybody. This is not the fault of Facebook. But an honest software must be open about this,” he said. At the meet, the celebrated American activist was greeted with questions ranging from mobile phones to his struggle to come up with the movement and the political climate on Internet censorship. Speaking about India, Stallman said there was a chance that the the country was facing a huge threat of censorship. “The Indian government was trying to get rid of everything that could offend. But, freedom of speech includes the right to offend. Any idea that says you cannot offend is tyrannical,” he pointed out. Voicing similar views about the copyrights laws and ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ of the United States, he labelled the bill, ‘The Internet Blacklist Bill.’ “This bill, if passed, would mean that anyone can shut down any site with a false accusation. The site may be able to get back once the accusation is proved wrong, but the it could happen again. Basically it would mean that the powerful can shut out any content that is against them,” he added. Responding to a query on mobile phones, Stallman said, “Mobile phones are those malicious computers, which can easily be converted into listening devices, simply by using a remote.” He added that today, most mobile phones are loaded with software which is not free.
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