An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It's part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using 'open source intelligence' — information that's publicly available... Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn't touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what's being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords. 'That's kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,' says company senior vice president Blake Cahill. Then Visible 'scores' each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. ('Trying to determine who really matters,' as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface."Apropos: Another anonymous reader points out an article making the point that users don't even realize how much private information they're sharing over these services.
Why a US government agency needs an "investment arm?"
Just copying the Brits. They've been referring to many kinds of government spending as "investment" for years now - even chunks of the welfare system. The debasement of the English language proceeds apace, on both sides of the Atlantic...
Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.
Well, hello there!
(their "Visible Technologies" highlights must be flashing with this slashdot story)
What troubles me about this is not the security applications, although there is risk there, too, but the political, persuasive abuse. Innocent sites like Slashdot will be 'turfed' to move public opinion and public perception.
This has been going on for a while; social networking websites, news websites (with comments), aggregators like/., and blogs are routinely astroturfed.
Many bloggers are starting to notice some new referrals from a company called “NetVocates” (mine showed up as coming from arrca.netvocates.com to be specific).
I recently invited a guest blogger (who writes under the pseudonym D. Sirmize) to share his political opinions on my blog. I began to get hits (55 to date) from NetVocates a couple days after his first political post. It woul
Yes, I know that organizations are 'astroturfing'. That is why I used the term 'turf'. That's been going on for quite some time.
What's new and different is governmental use of automated tools. Would it not be fair to assume that secret government agencies, already enjoying unconstitutional immunity, would use these tools to effectively destroy groups who, for example, seek to put limits on the powers of secret government agencies?
And would it not be smart to assume that these tools will be used by pol
To promote technologies that will add to the CIA's arsenal.
To buy into companies that allow them to circumnavigate Constitutional provisions against spying on American citizens.
For example, the second one, the CIA loves companies like this one [choicepoint.com] and the credit bureaus because they can legally collect information on private citizens. Then the CIA "buys" the information from them and they can go to Congress and say, "Nope! We are NOT spying on Americans." - at least that's the answer to the Congressmen that aren't afraid to appear to be "weak on terrorism" or afraid to be lambasted by ignorant talk show hosts.
So my follow-on question is, Why does everyone think it's OK for private companies answerable to no one (or the highest bidder) to be collecting this information in the first place? Well, yes, I suppose most people in this thread don't think so, but all of the normal people out there seem to be perfectly happy with the idea.
So my follow-on question is, Why does everyone think it's OK for private companies answerable to no one (or the highest bidder) to be collecting this information in the first place? Well, yes, I suppose most people in this thread don't think so, but all of the normal people out there seem to be perfectly happy with the idea.
Because they don't view the Bill of Rights as sound and enlightened principles to be honored wherever possible that happened to be enshrined in the Constitution. They view them as rules like any other. Then they note that either the rules don't apply to those private companies or they would be difficult to enforce, and for them, that's that. It's a mentality that is all about what is allowed or what can be gotten away with, rather than what is right or wrong.
I do have a more immediate question. If an average citizen hires a person to do something illegal, both the person and the one he hired can be charged with a crime. If it's illegal for the CIA to gather data on American citizens, why is it suddenly legal when they do the same thing by proxy? Why wouldn't both they and the company they hired be prosecuted for this?
I think Zack De La Rocha, The Last Emperor & KRS-ONE said it best in their track "CIA" "Need I say the C.I.A. be criminals in action"
But given that the same song said that "President Clinton should delete them", I guess it wasn't as popular as it could have been:) and sadly, since 9/11 they are actually percieved to have a job again. A front job is always a very good thing for a criminal. Nothing like an air of legitimacy to hide criminal minds.
What you don't understand is that part of the CIA has ALWAYS had an investment arm, even before the CIA and OSS existed. The CIA was born out of the private intelligence networks already well established by Wall Street, hence why so many of the early CIA was filled and run by Ivy League schools and Yale's Skull and Bones crowd.
The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise are in "data mining technologies".
Since 1947 the CIA and other intelligence activities have been more and more privatized. They have always used front companies. Search for the Northwoods Documents, which were authored in the late 1950's.
Many have argued that E.O 12333 privatized a lot of intelligence work. Read Confessions of an Economic Hitman if you want to know one reason why they do this.
This is really only news to people who don't pay attention.
that statement is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false - corporations and the government are bureaucracies. Sometimes one is better, sometimes the other is.
For example the National Weather Service kicks the living crap out of every private company trying to do the same thing. They pay well, the recruit the best and brightest, they are managed by professionals with experience doing what their underlings do [something you often only can DREAM of in the corporate world or the government world].
Medicare is another example - it's operating overhead is 4%. The operating overhead of private "insurance" (sorry, it's fraud, not insurance anymore) is a whopping 30% MINIMUM.
On the other hand there are some things private industry IS better at doing, and the government quite often contracts out to these people - construction comes to mind, software development, etc.
The government, when run by skilled people, tends to be much better at private industry than doing things that are "natural monopolies" (police, fire, roads, water, etc) or things the profit-motive would harm [like insurance].
Medicare is another example - it's operating overhead is 4%. The operating overhead of private "insurance" (sorry, it's fraud, not insurance anymore) is a whopping 30% MINIMUM.
Probably not a good example to use in illustrating your point. Dealing with Medicare billing is such a gigantic heartache that doctors' offices who do so, and they are a small minority, will have to hire at least one specialized clerk just for that purpose. In this sense, Medicare is shifting its overhead onto its customers. Wherea
Then Visible 'scores' each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. ('Trying to determine who really matters,' as Cahill puts it.)
Seems like a redundant effort. Why not just check the author's karma on slashdot?
Surely my high slashdot karma means I'm one of the most influential people on the internet... right? Right?
Considering he's created this site to foster tech-specific talk over 10 years ago instead of releasing press releases or blog with anecdotal chatter...
Well, it would, but your user number has too many digits.
Eh, you can't really blame him - some of us held out for a long time, thinking the Internet would always be anonymous. But then they made it so you didn't have to preview if you were logged in...
So by implication you are saying that I am unimportant?! I think that if you look at Slashdot history you will find that I, the Anonymous Coward, have had many more posts than you have.
If I ever see you, Anonymous Coward, in the street, I'm gonna hit you in the face for all the crap quality posts on Slashdot. You better change your name now, because you are EXPOSED!
Yes, AC, but classifying you as 'positive', 'negative', or 'neutral' has baffled even our most proficient data mining experts here in Langley. That's why we had to contract out. One of my direct reports came to me the other day near tears:
"Sir, we just can't figure him out! One day he's writing insightful commentary with informative links correcting somebody who had made a simple mistake. The next day he was making harmless snarky jokes. And this morning he posted a long list of instructions on... On.
This is data that people freely post to be read by all anyway. All this seems to do is aggregate it. If you post it in a public forum, you shouldn't care who uses it or how. Unless the sites being scraped have policies against said scraping, who cares? I see it as a very valuable tool for sales departments.
Besides, I am sure the signal to noise ratio for this system is incredibly low, so one has to wonder how much usable information is retrieved.
The only problem I have with this is that my tax dollars are going to fund it.
"This is data that people freely post to be read by all anyway. All this seems to do is aggregate it. If you post it in a public forum, you shouldn't care who uses it or how."
Because individualized personality profiles can be built of off seemingly innocuous data.
Reading publicly-posted comments is not a problem. At least, not to me. (I do know some thickies that are shocked, SHOCKED, that someone besides their BFFs can read their social networking crap.) Anyways, sure, public posting is public. Even lolcat knows that.
But agencies of state power reading, aggregating, correlating, and scoring... drawing secret conclusions based on hidden agendas and closed criteria... that's disturbing. Shades of J. Edgar Hoover's secret file cabinet and COINTELPRO and the basement o
This is data that people freely post to be read by all anyway. All this seems to do is aggregate it. If you post it in a public forum, you shouldn't care who uses it or how. Unless the sites being scraped have policies against said scraping, who cares? I see it as a very valuable tool for sales departments.
Besides, I am sure the signal to noise ratio for this system is incredibly low, so one has to wonder how much usable information is retrieved.
The only problem I have with this is that my tax dollars are going to fund it.
I'll explain that with a hypothetical analogy. There's nothing wrong with a person who can see your house from the public street. You knew it was a public road before you built a house near it, after all. However, you might find it a bit unsettling if the same van is always parked on that road and its occupant is always watching your house day and night. You might find it downright alarming if you noticed that he was videotaping your premises and taking notes about your daily activities. You might wond
The only problem I see with that analogy is that you are saying it is someone watching everything I do, and only me. While monitoring the blogs can lead to that, I would see this as a van that drives through my neighborhood everyday, taken pictures of the houses. While still a little unsettling, all they are really going to see is what I put out for them to see.
So surveillence is only bad when it's personal? I can't get behind that. There is no principle in it, there is only the consideration of whether
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday October 20, @10:30AM (#29808789)
There are a TON of companies that are trying to datamine social media for a variety of reasons- I'm posting anonymously because I work for a company that makes one of these products.
What is interesting is companies that make consumer products all want these tools to be able to track the companies interaction with the consumer- these companies are specifically replying back to specific posters in order to stop the spread of what they call "misinformation", but in actuality is just anything where the company is painted in a bad light. Let me be clear: Corporate America wants to control everything that is said online, and the tools to do it are starting to show up. Companies are starting to employ people whose soul job is to look at social media and respond to negative comments.
I predict not far in the future there is going to be a push for owners of social media sites to have some control over who can index their content.
I disagree. Those whom we would label terrorist are the least likely to label what they are doing terrorism. They likely consider it duty or calling. If you want to use generalizations, clichés and stereotypes they may view it as a jihad.
I imagine a post would go something like:
<Deity/> himself will lead them, for they will be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of <Deity/>. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. <Deity/> wills it!
[Deity/] himself will lead them, for they will be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of [Deity/]. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. [Deity/] wills it!
And for 100 extra points, which Catholic pope of the 1100s said that to whip up support for a Crusade? Fanaticism isn't restricted to Islam, you know...
How would they rate something like this: "The last president sucked big time - and he's a stooge for oil barons!"
They wouldn't rate it at all. As soon as their filters hit "The last president sucked...", the signal to noise ratio will fall to zero and they'll abandon the Tweet.
Exactly right. If you're posting for the world to see, even if you're using an alias, you'd better be flying the straight and narrow and be cautious enough to avoid posting anything that would allow identity theft.
Still, this kind of intrusion infuriates me to the point that I'm going to log in to my Amazon account (cleverly disguised user name surfergrrrl123), buy a bunch of peroxide and acetone, build myself a heckuva bomb in the garage of 1313 Mockingbird Ln (an abandoned house - not my address - Ha - C
How much are they really going to get from Web 2.0?
You'd be shocked. There's still this attitude by lots of people that what happens on the internet stays on the internet. Our local probation department routinely violates people based on facebook photos of them:
-In places they've been tresspassed from
-Consuming alcohol (if it's a condition of probation)
-Pointing guns at each other
-Being around children (sex offenders)
-Driving (Habitual Traffic Offenders)
Of course, the photos could be old, or (theoretically) doctored. However, like any other evid
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.
I thought the CIA wasn't allowed to do domestic intelligence?
They're not, but do you think that's going to be a serious impediment to them doing so anyway? First off, they're going to be trying really hard to keep their intelligence gathering a secret, so you probably won't know that they're doing it in the first place. Secondly, even if you did find out about it, what are you going to do? Sue? They'll claim state-secrets privilege within a couple minutes of you filing your complaint. Now you can't do discovery, and there goes your case.
Point being, "allowed to" is a complete non-issue here. They're going to do what they want, when they want, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Can somebody tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:5, Informative)
Why a US government agency needs an "investment arm?"
Just copying the Brits. They've been referring to many kinds of government spending as "investment" for years now - even chunks of the welfare system. The debasement of the English language proceeds apace, on both sides of the Atlantic...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Visible Technologies crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon.
Well, hello there!
(their "Visible Technologies" highlights must be flashing with this slashdot story)
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:4, Funny)
Just in case Visible Technologies crawls /. looking for it's own name: Fuck Off
Salutations from a common SLASHDOT.ORG entity,
Do you mind if I ask you a question?
How influential are you among the other entities of SLASHDOT.ORG.
Thank you.
Parent
Troubling technology (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll guess that this is already going on.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is already going on.
Some companies make big money via Astroturfing:
Has Netvocates visited your blog recently [utahadventurevideos.com]
Obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
What's new and different is governmental use of automated tools. Would it not be fair to assume that secret government agencies, already enjoying unconstitutional immunity, would use these tools to effectively destroy groups who, for example, seek to put limits on the powers of secret government agencies?
And would it not be smart to assume that these tools will be used by pol
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:5, Funny)
Psst.. Visible Technologies, please do something about the Anonymous Coward bastard.. he's such a troll in every freaking thread.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Here's why (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the second one, the CIA loves companies like this one [choicepoint.com] and the credit bureaus because they can legally collect information on private citizens. Then the CIA "buys" the information from them and they can go to Congress and say, "Nope! We are NOT spying on Americans." - at least that's the answer to the Congressmen that aren't afraid to appear to be "weak on terrorism" or afraid to be lambasted by ignorant talk show hosts.
Parent
Re:Here's why (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Here's why (Score:4, Insightful)
So my follow-on question is, Why does everyone think it's OK for private companies answerable to no one (or the highest bidder) to be collecting this information in the first place? Well, yes, I suppose most people in this thread don't think so, but all of the normal people out there seem to be perfectly happy with the idea.
Because they don't view the Bill of Rights as sound and enlightened principles to be honored wherever possible that happened to be enshrined in the Constitution. They view them as rules like any other. Then they note that either the rules don't apply to those private companies or they would be difficult to enforce, and for them, that's that. It's a mentality that is all about what is allowed or what can be gotten away with, rather than what is right or wrong.
I do have a more immediate question. If an average citizen hires a person to do something illegal, both the person and the one he hired can be charged with a crime. If it's illegal for the CIA to gather data on American citizens, why is it suddenly legal when they do the same thing by proxy? Why wouldn't both they and the company they hired be prosecuted for this?
Parent
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:5, Interesting)
You may also wonder why they needed to illegally . Or perhaps you might wonder why they would [wikipedia.org]dose "their own" citizens with LSD [wikipedia.org]
I think Zack De La Rocha, The Last Emperor & KRS-ONE said it best in their track "CIA"
"Need I say the C.I.A. be criminals in action"
But given that the same song said that "President Clinton should delete them", I guess it wasn't as popular as it could have been :) and sadly, since 9/11 they are actually percieved to have a job again. A front job is always a very good thing for a criminal. Nothing like an air of legitimacy to hide criminal minds.
-Steve
Parent
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:4, Insightful)
What you don't understand is that part of the CIA has ALWAYS had an investment arm, even before the CIA and OSS existed. The CIA was born out of the private intelligence networks already well established by Wall Street, hence why so many of the early CIA was filled and run by Ivy League schools and Yale's Skull and Bones crowd.
The funny thing is Facebook has long since been implicated as being funded indirectly by In-Q-Tel. [nzherald.co.nz]
The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise are in "data mining technologies".
Since 1947 the CIA and other intelligence activities have been more and more privatized. They have always used front companies. Search for the Northwoods Documents, which were authored in the late 1950's.
Many have argued that E.O 12333 privatized a lot of intelligence work. Read Confessions of an Economic Hitman if you want to know one reason why they do this.
This is really only news to people who don't pay attention.
Parent
Re:Can somebody tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
that statement is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false - corporations and the government are bureaucracies. Sometimes one is better, sometimes the other is.
For example the National Weather Service kicks the living crap out of every private company trying to do the same thing. They pay well, the recruit the best and brightest, they are managed by professionals with experience doing what their underlings do [something you often only can DREAM of in the corporate world or the government world].
Medicare is another example - it's operating overhead is 4%. The operating overhead of private "insurance" (sorry, it's fraud, not insurance anymore) is a whopping 30% MINIMUM.
On the other hand there are some things private industry IS better at doing, and the government quite often contracts out to these people - construction comes to mind, software development, etc.
The government, when run by skilled people, tends to be much better at private industry than doing things that are "natural monopolies" (police, fire, roads, water, etc) or things the profit-motive would harm [like insurance].
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Probably not a good example to use in illustrating your point. Dealing with Medicare billing is such a gigantic heartache that doctors' offices who do so, and they are a small minority, will have to hire at least one specialized clerk just for that purpose. In this sense, Medicare is shifting its overhead onto its customers. Wherea
!Anonymous. (Score:5, Insightful)
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt...
Anonymous to us, maybe...
Re: (Score:2)
No, no. He's truly anonymous.
Even to himself.
For all he knows, he could be you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
forget privacy, it's a waste of money (Score:5, Funny)
Seems like a redundant effort. Why not just check the author's karma on slashdot?
Surely my high slashdot karma means I'm one of the most influential people on the internet... right? Right?
Re:forget privacy, it's a waste of money (Score:5, Funny)
Surely my high slashdot karma means I'm one of the most influential people on the internet... right?
Well, it would, but your user number has too many digits.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
By that standard, CmdrTaco is more influential than Bruce Perens or Wil Wheaton.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forget privacy, it's a waste of money (Score:4, Funny)
Eh, you can't really blame him - some of us held out for a long time, thinking the Internet would always be anonymous. But then they made it so you didn't have to preview if you were logged in...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
So by implication you are saying that I am unimportant?! I think that if you look at Slashdot history you will find that I, the Anonymous Coward, have had many more posts than you have.
If I ever see you, Anonymous Coward, in the street, I'm gonna hit you in the face for all the crap quality posts on Slashdot. You better change your name now, because you are EXPOSED!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, AC, but classifying you as 'positive', 'negative', or 'neutral' has baffled even our most proficient data mining experts here in Langley. That's why we had to contract out. One of my direct reports came to me the other day near tears:
"Sir, we just can't figure him out! One day he's writing insightful commentary with informative links correcting somebody who had made a simple mistake. The next day he was making harmless snarky jokes. And this morning he posted a long list of instructions on... On.
Why is this considered an YRO issue? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is data that people freely post to be read by all anyway. All this seems to do is aggregate it. If you post it in a public forum, you shouldn't care who uses it or how. Unless the sites being scraped have policies against said scraping, who cares? I see it as a very valuable tool for sales departments.
Besides, I am sure the signal to noise ratio for this system is incredibly low, so one has to wonder how much usable information is retrieved.
The only problem I have with this is that my tax dollars are going to fund it.
Re: (Score:2)
Because individualized personality profiles can be built of off seemingly innocuous data.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reading publicly-posted comments is not a problem. At least, not to me. (I do know some thickies that are shocked, SHOCKED, that someone besides their BFFs can read their social networking crap.) Anyways, sure, public posting is public. Even lolcat knows that.
But agencies of state power reading, aggregating, correlating, and scoring... drawing secret conclusions based on hidden agendas and closed criteria... that's disturbing. Shades of J. Edgar Hoover's secret file cabinet and COINTELPRO and the basement o
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is data that people freely post to be read by all anyway. All this seems to do is aggregate it. If you post it in a public forum, you shouldn't care who uses it or how. Unless the sites being scraped have policies against said scraping, who cares? I see it as a very valuable tool for sales departments.
Besides, I am sure the signal to noise ratio for this system is incredibly low, so one has to wonder how much usable information is retrieved.
The only problem I have with this is that my tax dollars are going to fund it.
I'll explain that with a hypothetical analogy. There's nothing wrong with a person who can see your house from the public street. You knew it was a public road before you built a house near it, after all. However, you might find it a bit unsettling if the same van is always parked on that road and its occupant is always watching your house day and night. You might find it downright alarming if you noticed that he was videotaping your premises and taking notes about your daily activities. You might wond
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So surveillence is only bad when it's personal? I can't get behind that. There is no principle in it, there is only the consideration of whether
Information... (Score:2)
I feel sorry for the crawler (Score:4, Funny)
Datamining Social Media (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a TON of companies that are trying to datamine social media for a variety of reasons- I'm posting anonymously because I work for a company that makes one of these products.
What is interesting is companies that make consumer products all want these tools to be able to track the companies interaction with the consumer- these companies are specifically replying back to specific posters in order to stop the spread of what they call "misinformation", but in actuality is just anything where the company is painted in a bad light. Let me be clear: Corporate America wants to control everything that is said online, and the tools to do it are starting to show up. Companies are starting to employ people whose soul job is to look at social media and respond to negative comments.
I predict not far in the future there is going to be a push for owners of social media sites to have some control over who can index their content.
YouTube (Score:2)
Damn, I feel sorry for whoever gets stuck analyzing the YouTube data. One massive 40-hour-a-week rickroll.
It doesn't touch closed social networks . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
(It doesn't touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.)
More like, they're not admitting touching them . . . at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't you worry about the labeling - as soon as you post something that has keywords like "terrorism" you will be^H^H^H^H^HCARRIER LOST
Re: (Score:2)
Terrorism is bad.
Hmm.
TERRORISM is bad.
Nope, must've been your connection. Doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with terrorism afteCARRIER LOST
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine a post would go something like:
<Deity/> himself will lead them, for they will be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of <Deity/>. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. <Deity/> wills it!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And for 100 extra points, which Catholic pope of the 1100s said that to whip up support for a Crusade? Fanaticism isn't restricted to Islam, you know...
Halfasec, there'
Re: (Score:2)
How would they rate something like this: "The last president sucked big time - and he's a stooge for oil barons!"
They wouldn't rate it at all. As soon as their filters hit "The last president sucked...", the signal to noise ratio will fall to zero and they'll abandon the Tweet.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly right. If you're posting for the world to see, even if you're using an alias, you'd better be flying the straight and narrow and be cautious enough to avoid posting anything that would allow identity theft.
Still, this kind of intrusion infuriates me to the point that I'm going to log in to my Amazon account (cleverly disguised user name surfergrrrl123), buy a bunch of peroxide and acetone, build myself a heckuva bomb in the garage of 1313 Mockingbird Ln (an abandoned house - not my address - Ha - C
Re: (Score:2)
There are three kinds of people who would use social networking sites to "do very bad things".
1: idiots, there are a lot of them.
2: those seeking to hide in the crowd.
3: those seeking to take advantage of 1.
Re: (Score:2)
How much are they really going to get from Web 2.0?
You'd be shocked. There's still this attitude by lots of people that what happens on the internet stays on the internet. Our local probation department routinely violates people based on facebook photos of them:
-In places they've been tresspassed from
-Consuming alcohol (if it's a condition of probation)
-Pointing guns at each other
-Being around children (sex offenders)
-Driving (Habitual Traffic Offenders)
Of course, the photos could be old, or (theoretically) doctored. However, like any other evid
Re: (Score:2)
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.
Robin Cook [guardian.co.uk] in the Guardian.
Re:Domestic spying? (Score:5, Informative)
They're not, but do you think that's going to be a serious impediment to them doing so anyway? First off, they're going to be trying really hard to keep their intelligence gathering a secret, so you probably won't know that they're doing it in the first place. Secondly, even if you did find out about it, what are you going to do? Sue? They'll claim state-secrets privilege within a couple minutes of you filing your complaint. Now you can't do discovery, and there goes your case.
Point being, "allowed to" is a complete non-issue here. They're going to do what they want, when they want, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> I'm sure they can datamine beyond any privacy settings.
Probably. But I wonder how.