This is interesting: MI6, the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service is advertising for recruits via Facebook.

Gone are the days where you are secretly tapped on the shoulder while studying at Oxford or Cambridge universities. Now anyone posting their most personal details on social networking sites can work for MI6.

(Just kidding, I can’t work for MI6 because I’m not a British citizen but isn’t that the ultimate cover anyway.)

I used to live ten minutes away from MI6 headquarters. I walked past it whenever I walked home from work. The building is bristling with CCTV cameras. I am sure MI6 have lots of grainy black and white photos of me on file.

MI6 headquarters in South London — isn’t it an ugly building? I think of it as a wedding cake.

I used to also republish this blog and my photos on Facebook. I really liked being able to bring my writing and photos to all my more passive and non-RSS-cluey friends through Facebook. Reluctantly, though, I have now deleted almost all my original work due to this statement in Facebook’s terms of use:

‘By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicence) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorise sublicences of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time.’

I’ve thought about removing my work from Facebook for a long time. It was a difficult decision — I feel the risk of Facebook using my work in a way I didn’t like was low and the benefits of Facebook delivering my work to friends were high.

But… I found out I cared about these things more than I originally thought when a non-profit website used one of my photos without giving me credit. I was very upset, even in this case, where it is for a good cause. (They denied that it is my photo but I have proof.)

Sigh. Oh well.