Some years ago a friend, whose advice I generally take, suggested that I join Facebook because it could be used as a good source of news. And so I have found it to be. I have a relatively small group of “friends” and the general rule I use is whether that “friend” can tell me something I don’t know. So I have kept the list to about 100 – some family and a couple of people for amusement (one of whom I have always considered to be deeply shallow). In my little corner of FB the subject is Russia and all that. The “Russia subject” gets bigger as the Western world stumbles and fails and now covers quite a large territory of discussion. Generally speaking, I didn’t regret following my friend’s advice and found my corner of FB to be very valuable to me as a communications and information system.

I knew that my activity was being mined for advertising and the like but that didn’t bother me too much. My circle was small, I never filled out the lists of favourite movies or other rubbish and my interests are too eclectic to fit (I notice that Amazon has given up predicting what I might like). So I figured that was a price I could be comfortable with. I noticed that some people were banned but I wasn’t. Although I, as the anti-Russia panic grew and spread, realised that sooner or later I would be. So I began to see that the day would come when I left FB. Because my little corner is doubleplusungood. I make no apology for using Orwell’s Newspeak for it is becoming the language of the West.

For a year or so I considered leaving but didn’t get around to initiating the process. What made me think the time had come was this report “U.S. visa applicants to be asked for social media history: State Department“. Now you just know that’s going to happen. And you just know that the vast NSA structure will sooner or later be hooked into visas to detect thoughtcrime. As a Canadian I don’t need a visa to get into the US but who knows what will happen. And the last thing I want is the system noticing that I don’t duckspeak. And then we see this: “Department Of Homeland Security Compiling Database Of Journalists And ‘Media Influencers’“. Well, I’m a “media influencer” in a small way and not in the direction of goodthink either. We are, by the way, about to receive a demonstration of just how much information FB has.

So time to get out. But where to go? Because I did come to rely on my circle on FB for news (real news I should say, not the fake news spewed by the MSM) and want to preserve the opportunity. I have decided to give the Russian Facebook, V Kontakte (“In Contact”) a try. Over the next few weeks I will moving over to it. One reason is that I have never heard of anyone being banned from VK for thoughtcrime as many of my FB contacts have been. But that’s only one reason.

Now I am not so simple-minded as to think that the Russian security services don’t mine VK and other social media sources for information. Of course they do – no security service on earth could resist the temptation no matter what the law might say. But I am less concerned about the Russians doing this than the Americans. There are two reasons.

The first is that I pass through the USA much more often than through Russia. I like cruising and many cruises involve coming under US jurisdiction. And, of course, it is only to the USA and its tools, lost in their Russomania, that I am guilty of thoughtcrimes: the Russians would regard me as a paragon of goodthink!

But there is another, more profound, reason. Witness the 2015 San Bernardino attack. The killers were active on social media. Witness the Boston Marathon bombing; again much activity on social media. In neither case were they apprehended before the attack. In fact, can anyone think of a terrorist attack in the USA in which the attackers were caught before they did it? Other than entrapments, of course. And yet the NSA regularly vacuums up all communications – social media and otherwise. Why is it doing this? Not, apparently, to catch terrorists. I do not believe that the Russians use bulk collection; I believe they are much more targetted in their collection. I say this because the Russians do catch terrorists before they strike. But I say it also because Moscow actually is fighting jihadists; it is not, as Washington is, alternately bombing them and arming them. Therefore I have much greater trust in the Russian security organs’ powers to mine social media.

So, altogether, I find myself in the interesting position – unimaginable 40 years ago when I started working for the Department of National Defence (How I got here) – of opting for a Russian social media network on the grounds that it is freer and more trustworthy than an American. But such are the times in which we live.

So I invite you to move over too.

(Those who question my conclusions might read this “Bill Binney, the ‘original’ NSA whistleblower, on Snowden, 9/11 and illegal surveillance” and follow up the issues raised in the piece.)