I'm an Australian citizen running a small business living in Adelaide, Australia.

In Nov/Dec 2014 after running several paid advertising campaigns on Facebook my account was suspended and I was asked to provide government-issued photo identification in order to reinstate it. I contacted Facebook and told them I would not provide any corporation subject to US laws with any identification due to their involvement with the US government's mass surveillance program targeting foreigners, and if that meant taking my money elsewhere, so be it. I also explained that I used a VPN service to protect my commercial-in-confidence business information from mass surveillance and as such my connection would appear to be coming from Romania or Switzerland, two countries I used because of their relaxed Internet laws and in the case of Romania, availability of bandwidth due to fiber connections.

On 03/12/2014 I received an email from a Facebook employee, "Guy" from Facebook's "Risk Operations" division and e-mail address [email protected]. Guy said that he had reactivated my account and I was able to login and resume using Facebook as normal. Over the last year I have continued to use Facebook paid advertising campaigns, spending money with Facebook to boost my business following while continuing to for the vast majority of my connections to Facebook, use a VPN service to access it.

Today (10/01/2016) my account was again suspended and I was asked to provide government id. I've contacted Facebook with all the information including the original e-mails when I first had my account suspended and reinstated but so far have only received a non-human reply that I must provide them with identification before they can help me.

I find it unreasonable that Facebook would reinstate my account with no identification in Dec 2014 and allow me to spend more money with them over the next year, only to again suspend my account in Jan 2016 and ask me for the same identification, which I had already told them I was not going to provide. Essentially Facebook tricked me into spending a bunch more money with them then pulled the rug from under my feet, as if my account is suspended all that invested money becomes worthless.

I'm just a small business owner from Australia who wants to run his business without putting any private or personal information concerning myself into the hands of US-based Internet Services such as Facebook, who from the host of revelations over the last few years are complicit in the US government's mass surveillance program targeting "foreigners" or non-US citizens. I don't use Facebook for anything personal, my personal account has 1 or 2 friends, no picture and no information but the minimum required. Facebook and all Internet media are for me, strictly for business use.

Specifically for Facebook, my moral and ethical code will not allow me to provide any identification to Facebook due to Facebook's participation in the PRISM program to harvest data on "foreigners" from the large US internet service providers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29 ) - "Shortly after publication of the reports by The Guardian and The Washington Post, the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on June 7, 2013 released a statement confirming that for nearly six years the government of the United States had been using large internet services companies such as Google and Facebook to collect information on foreigners outside the United States".

Although I am a legitimate business owner, not a criminal nor a terrorist, because I am a "foreigner" the USA whose laws Facebook operates under considers me and all other "foreigners" valid intelligence targets with no right to privacy. This conflicts with my moral and ethical beliefs that privacy is a Universal Human Right which can only be taken away through a targeted warrant issued by a judicial authority such as a judge based on probable cause of illegal activity, and that un-targeted or mass surveillance is a violation of all our basic Human Rights.

Thankful for any help or advice you can provide.

I can be reached at [email protected] a disposable gmail account created for this purpose.