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"Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites"

06:09 / 11.06.06

I didn´t find this article here yet...

New Scientist, 09.06.2006

So. Another step towards the "Total Control World"..? Wonder if this is going to lead to self-censorhip around the net...

(Darn it. I don´t get the link to work.)

18:20 / 11.06.06

I don't know what is more ludicrous, the government reaching McCarthyist levels of terrorist hysteria by having to search MySpace for potential suicide bombers (honestly, the real Jihadists would be a bit more secretive, you'd just catch some wannabes who spout Jihad between cans of beer) or the fact that people think that what they post on MySpace is confidential.

*

19:11 / 11.06.06

You don't seriously mean the NSA has learned to use the internet?

Well, I'll be.

02:10 / 13.06.06

(Someone fixed the link? Thank you

.) This was probably coming for a long time, but it is still a quite disturbing thought. Wakes up my paranoid half...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

05:18 / 20.06.06

They'll find out that teenage girls apparantly like to kiss each other and teenage boys like to see them do that if my experience looking at Myspace is any indication.

Which means that they won't allow most of the girls in the military.

23:49 / 22.06.06

I don't find this at all surprising. It depresses and disgusts me, but it doesn't shock me. If people are going to put large amounts of personal information in easy-to-find places (MySpace, et al), other people are going to find it, some of them with less-than-sterling intentions. Given the US gov't's penchant for information hoarding, the social networking phenomenon must be like finding a steak dinner sitting in the middle of the street for them. Beyond privacy concerns (which are arguably moot, given that participation in such sites is entirely voluntary) how worthwhile is it, to spend untold resources on something like this?

Of course, it will be dressed up in the threadbare rent-a-tux of stopping terrorism (and you don't want the terrorists to win, do you, citizen?) but honestly, how fruitful could that be, trawling MySpace for potential terrorists? Are we to believe that what's been holding us back from capturing Osama bin Laden is our erstwhile inability to integrate his Friendster profile into our search? I fail to see the benefit of something like this to anyone other than a government that has already demonstrated dubious-at-best practices in this area. This does nothing to help catch terrorists, and everything to help catalogue information on average citizens who've done nothing to warrant such inspection of their lives. And at what cost does this all come? What wasn't greenlit in favor of this program?

Finally, by way of personal anecdote, this is already happening, albeit on a much smaller scale. Last fall at my university, police used facebook profiles to track down some of the hudrends of students that rushed the field after a particularly crucial footbal victory.

01:58 / 23.06.06

Facebook was also used not too long ago to catch a church arsonist.

That said, it was a case of investigating a specific crime, rather than paranoid trawling for suspicious bits of information and so not really analagous to this NSA plan.

Mostly though, I'm amazed that anyone imagines these sorts of sites to be in any way private.

12:12 / 23.06.06

I'm not sure I get how any reliable information could be gained from this. I may be paranoid, but I don't use my real name anywhere on the internet. Who would?

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:40 / 23.06.06

Anyone who makes enough noise on the Interweb is pretty easy to trace back to a real person. For example, if you were Microsoft, and you were asked by the Pentagon to put in your OS something that, when activated through, say, the Genuine Advantage programme, could tell that the PC used to update Barbelith in the name of Lekvar was also used to buy books from Amazon in the name of (x), and would not be identified as spyware by any of your security programs or the securtity programs of partners who depended on access to your code to work, what would you do?

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16:50 / 23.06.06

I use my real name lots of places on the internet. I'm not crying about them finding me on Myspace (or, rather, tribe.net). They already know who I am. I'm much more irritated by them picking up my phone conversations, sifting through my email, and watching me through satellites. %But hey, it creates jobs and keeps the economy strong, and that's what we really need in this time of war.%

00:42 / 25.06.06

Hmm. The NSA has millions, if not billions, of dollars in funding, and they are using it to harvest MySpace profiles, under the pretense of 'trying to stop a terrorist attack'. Terrorists need to be stopped, but they aren't exactly going to be discussing their plans on social networking sites. Perhaps we should be using that money to hire a competent contractor to build a functional database system for the FBI.

23:54 / 30.06.06

The words, "Time, perhaps, to hit the delete button" caught my eye. From what I had read, even instant messages are recorded. Deleting them by the sender or receiver doesn't delete them from whatever other servers were used and archived. I'm not sure about this, so maybe someone here can verify it or shoot it down.

I personally don't care what the NSA or CIA knows about me. But this story reminds me of my pre-Internet days, when I was on an intranet service. There was one lady in one forum who collected little details about people that came out in coversation. She eventually knew how tall people were, what color eyes they had, where they were born, what their birthdays were -- all kinds of things.

I think it would be a snap for a smart program like that to do the same thing. Hopefully, it will catch some bad guys by "connecting the dots."

01:29 / 02.07.06

Another thought crossed my mind. It seems to me that many people are not aware of the shear quantity of messages sent around the world. Even with super-computers and smart analytical software, it seems to me "They" would be forced to prioritize their efforts.

Also, I remebered a few things from my ealier days. I don't want to confuse you...this paragraph has nothing to do with the first paragraph aside from objections to the Patriot Act. For example, some people were concerned there could be a slippery slope if the NSA could see what books we checked out. I thought of the old days when we everybody signed the card that came with the book, so anyone could see who read what. Also, the thing about telephone taps reminded me of when we had party lines. Anyone could pick up the phone and listen in to other people who may be talking. People become overly concerned in my opinion about things like the the Patriot Act while at the same time, remember fondly the good-ole days.

19:39 / 03.07.06

I dont think that people can ever be 'over concerned' about the patriot act, the loss of privacy, and the chains of fear that are put on a free society.

Any kind of steps to eliminate privacy are steps in the wrong direction.

I dont care about the NSA digging through myspace profiles, I agree with everything that was said above on the matter.

What I am concerned about is the next step. What happens when the government has amassed enough power to itself that the next step is sifting through the records of sites like this one. We say some pretty crazy shit in this forum, and yes fuck them, who cares if they read it and know who I am, but the idea sends little shivers up my back. And then that ever looming question, what next?

Its times like these that I wish I had never read 1984.

23:55 / 03.07.06

It's only been recently that the idea of privacy was considered a right. Now, many people believe it must be in the Constitution, and therefore should be protected at all costs. Otherwise, "we could be doomed as a nation." I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I hope the answer we arrive at is the best one.

13:00 / 04.07.06

kilmeade calls for the office of censorship to be reborn.

does it sound feasible that the office would reopen, assuming perhaps a republican governement next time round?
would an office of censorship be charged with looking at myspace, blogger, livejournal, etc. do you think?
how much of a hop and a skip is it from reading it all to restricting it all?

how long does a frog take to boil?

15:10 / 04.07.06

does it sound feasible that the office would reopen, assuming perhaps a republican governement next time round?

I don't think so. I do think newspapers should think twice before leaking secrets.

Would it sound feasible to do some selective leaking, most of it BS? That way, our enemy wouldn't know which way was up.

would an office of censorship be charged with looking at myspace, blogger, livejournal, etc. do you think?
how much of a hop and a skip is it from reading it all to restricting it all?

I don't think this would ever happen, nor do I think the 'frogs' will slowly be brought to a boil.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:54 / 04.07.06

Could you actually tell us who "our enemy" is, Dragon? Only, Kilmeade says:

Winning is everything. Freedom is -- you don't have any freedom if the Nazis are the victors. You have no one to trade with if Western Europe falls. That's the reality. You're in love with the law, but I'm in love with survival.

He appears to believe that we are at war with Nazi Germany. Do you agree? If so, I must agree that strong measures need to be taken. If not, then who is in danger of conquering Western Europe? Only, it's where I keep most of my stuff.

On the specific instance of the New York Times story - I remain confused by why this is causing such a fuss. It's the first sensible and apparently useful thing the US intelligence services have been reported as doing pretty much since 9/11. If I were Bush, I'd be leaking like I'd just walked in front of Dick Cheney.

21:22 / 04.07.06

nazi party members are al queada's secret weapon.
nobody expects the... oh, wait. i've fucked that up.
see?
nazis'll fuck you up!

i'm unconvinced it's a good idea to have a government agency controlling what is revealed about the government of which they are a part.

i'm also not entirely convinced blogger et al would be off limits to an agency with an information control agenda.

for one thing, what makes an influential blog any less likely to be percieved as a leak risk?
it seems representative of either a misplaced belief in the united states government's desire to ensure the civil iberties of US citizens or a lack of awareness of how much blogging has come on in the last few years to suggest it would be.

it is not such a leap from listening to private phone calls to cataloguing myspace or livejournal members. it's not such a leap from attacking journalistic fredom as treasonous to suggesting the control of media through government agency.

i dont think we are so far from controlled media, public, private and personal, and i think online communities and independent journalism sources are going to be a part of that.

the killing off of several adult sites by forcing age registration(near impossible with some types of adult service), notionally to stop child pornography, seems to me to suggest an approach they may well apply to other areas, one characterised by a lack of care about civil liberties.

it just makes sense to me to use the internet and the myspace phenomenon to track the youth of america.
it seems obvious it will happen eventually.
the internet is a big web of trails, places you and i and everyone else has been, leaving our thoughts and identifying information as we go.
the panopticon is built already, all one would need to do is find the will or the resources to use it.

the only thing stopping them spotting you now for the crimes, activsim, or unsavoury browsing and downloading habits you admit to online is the sheer manpower it would require to be tracking everyone.
as the work needed goes down, or the need to know goes up, i am certain you can be sure they will use it to watch us all.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:51 / 04.07.06

Thing is, I can get with the privacy argument...

...but I can't really, as much as I try, get paranoid about "them" knowing about stuff I've WILLINGLY PUT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. And then, if "they"'re as scary as I do actually, all cynicism aside, believe they are, using that to find out more stuff, if they want.

I'm no scary government agency, but I reckon even I could probably do a halfway-decent surveillance job on someone who'd knowingly bunged a lot of information about themselves on the fucking internet.

01:54 / 05.07.06

"I think it would be a snap for a smart program like that to do the same thing. Hopefully, it will catch some bad guys by "connecting the dots."

The problem is that "the bad guys" and their traits are a moveable feast. The powers that be are concerned with identifying deterministic indicators that might provide them with information that highlights trends showing who might be a bad guy, or who might become a bad guy. Trouble arises when we try to correlate data points. Are you a bad guy if you oppose the policies of the powers that be? Principles and ideologies like, say, capitalism? Rampant data-mining and profiling? If you call yourself an anarchist or a radical?

These issues are not unlike those that arise when police in major US population centers target pull-overs and searches based on demographic signifiers like race and economic status. If you extrapolate that sort of activity, you've got a lot of people getting picked up because they own a well loved copy of Catcher in the Rye. The PTB would argue that it's worth it if a statistically unusual number of those people turn out to be one-off assassins. I don't agree, but the argument can be quite potent with the right rhetorical delivery. If you step out onto the slippery slope that is abandoning the "innocent until proven guilty" presumption of many modern societies, the question becomes one of number pushing. When does a statistical indicator become a reason to pick people up? When there's a 10% probability that those exhibiting the indicator have or will commit a crime? 50%?

I suppose what I'm trying to say is: a.) No, it's not reasonable to expect material that you've posted in the public domain to be private, but b.) It's also frightening to consider that everything you've ever done in public might be meticulously documented and cross-referenced with the end goal of running it through some sort of threat matrix.

06:32 / 05.07.06

When there's a 10% probability that those exhibiting the indicator have or will commit a crime? 50%?

If the crime is terrorism and Ron Suskind is to be beleived, it's one percent. Which is presumably the reason Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead.

14:09 / 05.07.06

I can't really, as much as I try, get paranoid about "them" knowing about stuff I've WILLINGLY PUT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

it's not really the ability to know.
it's the resources spent on knowing that makes the difference.

right now you are pretty safe smoking a joint in the park, despite it being illegal to do so. if the police had an officer for every tw citizens, however, it would be a different matter.

give them enough manpower or an excuse to devote what they have, and then you have problems.

why did the cops know your name again?

17:06 / 05.07.06

A police force should only police a people as much as they want to be policed.

An alarming amount of people in this world are becoming lackadaisical, believing any little piece of bullshit rhetoric that falls in front of them.
The news agencies should spend more time calling out propaganda instead of promoting it and spewing out over the air waves.

Sitting in coffee shops is a revealing window into the psyche of the nation. Everyone regurgitating the latest headline news and echoing Bill O'rilly as if his words were their own.

Ben Franklin said that if a nation ever gives up civil liberties in the name of freedom that people ceases being free.

The right to privacy was never guaranteed in the constitution of the United States, but it was most certainly implied (all the to-do about checks and balances, right to firearms, freedom of the press, all of it is to keep government in its place, out of our homes and armed soldiers off of our streets). If the founding fathers had any inkling of the future of technology or could glimpse the NSA then they sure as fuck would have put a few thousand words about privacy rights in the constitution.

Do you think that it is beyond the current people in power to have plans to bring their world view to life. The American Century? They have think tanks full of the nations smartest people developing strategy (I wonder for what: international positioning and population control?).
They are smart mother fuckers, and they are playing chess, not checkers.

18:17 / 05.07.06

Actually, Ben Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I agree in either case.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:06 / 05.07.06

why did the cops know your name again?

Ooh, a low blow!

Don't get me wrong- I don't for one minute think this is a good thing. In fact, I think it's a terrible thing. But given that the ability to find this stuff out is there, I'm not too surprised it looks like they may use, and devote considerable resources to doing so. So... disgusted? Yes. Shocked? No.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:12 / 05.07.06

Actually, and apologies for the double post, my reaction to this is an example of something I've noticed a lot (in myself and others). A few weeks ago, TangoMango was telling me some of the horrible new powers afforded to bailiffs (entering premises while the occupier's absent, etc)- all of which I assumed they already had.

I think I watch too many trashy movies, read too many trashy books and have taken too many trashy amphetamines in my time not to always assume the worst- any surprise on my account comes more from having thought "they" were doing this shit already, than from learning they're planning to do it.

22:36 / 05.07.06

i'd agree it isnt at all shocking.
i reckon it is slightly surprising they have taken so long to get on the case, but that they are into the idea?
no, not in the least.

Tom Paine's Bones

01:54 / 06.07.06

Yeah, well to be honest I'm not convinced that this is them starting to do this, as opposed to just being open about the fact they're doing so.

My main worry is if they dig deep enough they'll realise that beneath the radical leftist facade I like to project, is a deeply sad man who spends all his time talking about MMPORGs and old Spectrum games with his friends.

10:53 / 07.07.06

...any surprise on my account comes more from having thought "they" were doing this shit already, than from learning they're planning to do it.

My thoughts exactly. Maybe it's just the way I learned about computers, the internet, etc., but the internet has always been a dangerous place to leave personal information just floating about. Whether the threat is some acronymous government agency, or a teenager phishing for credit card numbers, one has to be careful out here.