A scoop today from a place we least expected it: New Scientist says that the governments most notoriously-secretive spooks, the National Security Administration, are all over mySpace and the like just leaves us shaking our heads.

“…the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone’s contact network, a process sometimes called “connecting the dots”. Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or “degrees” separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation.”

In other words, think twice before you list “buying lots of fertilizer” or “letting strangers pack my bags before flying” as hobbies on Facebook.