FBI Seeks To Monitor Facebook, Oversee Mass Social Media Data Collection (zdnet.com) 105
The FBI is planning to aggressively harvest information from Facebook and Twitter. Citing the The Wall Street Journal, ZDNet reports that the FBI "has recently sought proposals from third-party vendors for technological solutions able to harvest publicly-available information in bulk from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets." From the report: The law enforcement agency says the data collected will be used "to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests." Law enforcement has requested the means to "obtain the full social media profile of persons-of-interest and their affiliation to any organization or groups," to keep track of users based on their neighborhood, and keyword searches, among other tool functions. Vendors have until August 27 to submit their proposals. While the FBI believes that such tools can work in harmony with privacy safeguards and civil liberties, the mass collection of names, photos, and IDs -- when combined with information from other sources -- may do just the opposite.
To social network users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To social network users (Score:4, Interesting)
Combine this with Alexa and Hive data for complete monitoring of what we think, watch and do. George Orwell eat your heart out.
Re:To social network users - missing. (Score:2)
you have to add elon musk Brain to computer interface currently in development to get the 'think' part, but no reason they will stop until they get it.
Re:To social network users - missing. (Score:4, Insightful)
To all you Slashdotters who claim you don't care because you're not on Facebook, and why should you care?
This is why, because if they have data on everyone around you, they have you too. You too will be surveilled, through others.
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To all you Slashdotters who claim you don't care because you're not on Facebook, and why should you care?
This is why, because if they have data on everyone around you, they have you too. You too will be surveilled, through others.
Only a complete fool would post something like that.
Everyone has known about ghost profiles for years now, don't act like that is news...
What is your point, that everyone should bow down to the will of Zuck?
If there weren't enough reasons to not use FB:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/s... [pbs.org]
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There isn't a big enought WHOOOSH to describe how far that point flew over your head...
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Interesting that they are only intending to scrape publicly available information though. British police have been arguing that they should have unlimited access to private data and will self-regulate.
This is probably a waste of time anyway. The problem is how Facebook, Youtube and other sites help radicalize people through their recommendations and messaging systems. None of that is publicly visible, e.g. you can't see what videos other people are watching or what posts they are seeing on their timeline. A
Re:To social network users (Score:4, Interesting)
They say publicly that "they are only intending to scrape publicly available information". Just the tip of the iceberg, it's the stuff they aren't telling you about that should be scarier.
Everyone who doesn;t already have a social media account should open and few and flood them with info, true and false, and drown them in a sea of mis-information....
Re:To social network users (Score:4, Informative)
_This program_ may be aimed only at public social media. Do remember Carnivore, the email monitoring program later renamed as DCS1000. The FBI has been monitoring personal communications en masse, including private communications with no warrant and no cause, since email was invented. And since the panicked creation of information sharing overview programs like the Department of Homeland Security, the bureaucratic and legal boundaries between these departments have been violated.
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Great comment and informative, but it's incomplete.
Not that I doubt you, but I doubt it's working.
Where are the mass roundup stories?
Where are the prevention and intervention stories?
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Great comment and informative, but it's incomplete.
Not that I doubt you, but I doubt it's working.
Where are the mass roundup stories?
Where are the prevention and intervention stories?
It's not about rounding people up, it's about control of your political views to be part of the established corporate narrative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: To social network users (Score:2)
"Where are the mass roundup stories?"
Do you suppose Pravda ran front page stories on Stalin's massacres?
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Re: To social network users (Score:2)
Their *stated* goal is to scrape user info that hasnâ(TM)t been hidden behind privacy controls to limit access. To use Facebook as the example, whatever of your profile is âoepublicâ (as opposed to viewable by âoefriendsâ or âoefriends of friendsâ or even specific groups of friends youâ(TM)ve defined, which you have control over through your privacy settings. I would surmise that the FBI intends to exploit the fact that many users are lax on their privacy settings.
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None of that is publicly visible, e.g. you can't see what videos other people are watching or what posts they are seeing on their timeline
I am not at all sure how true that is. I mean it only takes you friend one bot account, or one bot account joining a group etc that scrapes and republishes the info someone without auth controls to pretty well undo facebooks entire privacy model. We are not talking about the sharpest knives in the drawer here either, we are talking about the sort of person that takes anything they see on facebook seriously enough to kill over (which I would define as having turning stupid up to 11).
Also don't know if this
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It probably leaks ...
It probably (on the order of 100% probability) sells ...
Re: To social network users (Score:2)
"even if they can't quite read your DMs."
They can, and have been for a long time. Everyone here knows it.
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"And merely seeing it wouldn't do much anyway since you can't arrest people for just looking at that stuff."
Don't be so assinine. Anyone can be arrested at any time for any reason (or no reason at all). I believe that what you mean to say is that a person is not likely to be "convicted of a crime" just for looking at stuff. Except at a drumhead. And who or what says that anyone gets more than a mere drumhead trial, especially in the United States.
So in fact not only can persons be arrested for merely "l
Re:To social network users (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. I've avoided FB and other social media, with the exception of Slashdot, for years, due to privacy and control over data.
That's why, after http://runyourown.social/ [runyourown.social] was posted, my friends and I started our own small Mastodon instance. Best of both worlds.
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"That's why, after http://runyourown.social/ [runyourown.social] was posted, my friends and I started our own small Mastodon instance."
$30/mo., a little complicated, labour intensive and this:
As an example, Friend Camp is anti-free-speech, at least in the sense that freedom of speech is commonly understood as a value. This is repulsive to some people on both the left and the right, and it's important that people with that core value find somewhere other than Friend Camp to set up their online home.
Doesn't serve the batshit crazy crowd who lost 8chan.
Still, it's a good option for those who don't want to harm people and do want to avoid the social media noise.
I'd never heard of it, so thanks.
Re: To social network users (Score:3)
The batshit crazy crowd is using plain Mastodon, centered around Gab. We're using vanilla Mastodon, and don't bother relaying their toots. That's the nice bit about a federated network--to block someone, you just need to not be relaying their crap. Don't like it? Don't spend the time or money on it.
Plus, that cost is pretty negligible spread over my friends and I, and the benefits of not having to fight with some other corporation are enormous.
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> Doesn't serve the batshit crazy crowd who lost 8chan.
Freedom of Speech is batshit crazy???
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Freedom of Speech is batshit crazy???
Well, yeah... if it's hate speech!
It's sad you can't tell if I said that in jest or not.
No I didn't actually mean that.
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Speech doesn't have emotions.
Stop hijacking definitions and buying into some bullshit censorship narrative.
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Not sure why this is currently modded "Funny", other than the there's no option to mod "+1 Right The Fuck On".
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The FBI is trying to wipe egg off their face. You and I see the handwriting on the Facebook wall, why can't they?
As a collateral effect, I hope this stops the braggadocio twerps who contaminate the tubz everywhere, including that annoying Nazi spammer here.
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This is just like raising the minimum wage driving automation... only a matter of time. Data collection has been increasing anyway. If people didn't willingly contribute this data, they'd just find another way to get it. Everyone is carrying around a telescreen in their pocket, it's not conceptually complicated to spy on everyone.
Re: To social network users (Score:2)
Just so we don't forget: at least since CALEA, it has been illegal to sell a cellphone in the United States that is not factory p0wned at the hardware level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You could have thought from the beginning that yielding every single detail of your private lives to a bunch of amoral companies was a bad idea. Now the obvious is happening and you have no control over it. Enjoy being a part of Stalin's dream.
The truly terrifying part of this is how easy it was to get Americans to go along with it.
All in the name of convenience.
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You could have thought from the beginning that yielding every single detail of your private lives to a bunch of amoral companies was a bad idea. Now the obvious is happening and you have no control over it. Enjoy being a part of Stalin's dream.
Uhh the war was over long before the internet hit the masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
When Snowden released the documents concerning PRISM and the rest, was there really a flood of outrage to congress? Not really. So let's not mince words here.
Anyone who has bought any piece of software, is using steam, windows, playing overwatch or world of warcraft, is giving all their data to companies and all those companies you can be sure are sharing it with authorities. If in doubt see it in their own word
Re: To social network users (Score:2)
"The world has no choice as long as it's mandated by badlaws."
FTFY
5 eyes duplicate (Score:1)
"Is planning to" (Score:2)
The FBI is planning to aggressively harvest information from Facebook and Twitter.
Wait, aren't already doing that already? Gee guys, you disappoint me.
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Yes they already get this data. Now they are trying to legitimize their permanent access that was originally only NSA.
Don't they already? (Score:3)
What I fail to understand is:
- As Snowden showed, The NSA does this already, and more. Doesn't the FBI work with the NSA?
- Commercial parties like Palantir and other data brokers already do this. Doesn't law enforcement already have wide access to all this data?
- Agencies in other countries already do this (GCHQ for example). Don't they work with them?
So for my understanding, is this about an escalation from national security agencies/commercial parties to the more 'mundane' branches of government?
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Yes, this will be used to "improve" upon your constitutional rights in the name of protecting the country from lunatics that go around shooting or stabbing people.
Will it help, probably not, it hasn't so far and mass killings are an anomaly in all of the data it is hard to measure both causes and improvements. But if you monitor everyone 24/7 maybe you'll find one or two, I'm sure the SS and Gestapo prevented some crimes as well.
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I think you're missing some information that can be stitched together to reveal the larger plan.
- Facial recognition
- Harvesting faces/real names and digitizing
- Associating real names with screen names in social media (I'm all forum) like 8chan and others
- Federal red flag laws
Posting threats, manifestos, talking violence, showing guns and rant videos would feed right in to the red flag narrative.
Censorship by consensus.
Re:Don't they already? (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT...who gets to draw the lines?
I mean, there are plenty of people out there that enjoy guns, as a hobby.
They like to post pics of their guns, especially customized ones and are of no threat to anyone, BUT...will the Feds now flag them ?
What about people that are now 'flagged' as being associated with guns, voice opinions that they are not happy with the local state or federal government, not threatening them, but may raise serious issues and as you know, political discussion can get heated at times, BUT.....the US is supposed to be free for exactly this type of speech.
But does this count as strike two against an otherwise normal, law abiding citizen?
The red flag laws do not allow for due process in the US it seems. I mean this is serious that false positives are easy to come by, and when it hits, a citizen is deprived of their property and deprived of one of their constitutional rights, TILL they can prove themselves innocent......these laws so loosely written make you guilty until proven innocent.
And then, what if you don't have sufficient $$$ to go to court, hire a lawyer and try to get your firearms back (that you were not compensated for) and have your record wiped clean (would it ever really be cleaned)....and have your rights back again?
I mean, its bad enough that the states that have these red flag laws already make it too easy for a disgruntled neighbor, pissed off girlfriend or relative to go complain about you, and WOOSH....the goon squad comes to your house, and disarms you, and you remains so, until you can prove you are innocent.... Yet...nothing happens to false accusers.
And...if you think that's bad, I'm guessing you'll never know why you were flagged by the Feds, and have little way to get your name cleared, if you ever can.
I DO believe there are good intentions behind this, I really do.
But the road to hell , as they say.....
What happens when they start trying to use this against other constitutionally protected rights?
Speech? Hmm...you use inflammatory words, and culturally insensitive speech, well....maybe we flag YOU and you are no longer allowed access to social media...or maybe no internet for you at all.
When wil people complain? When it's too late?
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This is now the FBI and they can use it legally in local federal courts
Re: Don't they already? (Score:2)
"This is now the FBI and they can use it badlawfully in local federal kangaroo courts :)"
FTFY
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"They" already do this.
They buy off-the-shelf data from the big box stores already listed.
This thin coat of paint, coloured, "patriotic," and "national security," legitimizes the heretofore illegal.
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My thinking is that the secretly obtained data you refer to (exposed by Snowden) cannot be used as evidence in court. The information is fruit of a poiosoned tree. If they can openly scrape publicly available data, it can be used as evidence, and leads developed from it can be used in investigations which ultimately culminate in charges. They probably also want to try to use automated detection of mass shooters. Personally, I am much less worried about public information being scraped than I am about NSA in
Quite frankly (Score:3)
If you post anything about yourself on FB that is actually true, you deserve it.
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The actually true part might end up being the problem for public social media platform data scraping. The "reality" within social media posts is so full of outright lies and misinformation on a personal level that any conclusions you draw about it are about as accurate as judging the real life of a sitcom cast based on what you saw on their sitcom.
Maybe at best they might get leads on total batshit lunatics who literally post that they're heading out to commit mass murder, but there are ton of near-lunatic
What are the interests? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Oh, they do it for citizen interests: The only citizens that matter-- Corporate Citizens.
All hail citizens united, since money is totally politically protected speech.
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It does not seem the US government is doing anything in the interest of its population anymore, so whose interests, and what, are they?
I can see the strong draw toward using social media to identify potential killers before they act, this would absolutely be in the interest of the population. I am however skeptical about how well such a system would work to filter out the real threats from the noise...
https://www.digitaltrends.com/... [digitaltrends.com]
Re:What are the interests? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, and with the red flag laws in place and others being proposed, false positives have SERIOUS repercussions, in that by force you can be deprived of your constitutional rights.....you are guilty until you can prove yourself innocent in a reversal of due process with these type laws.
So, what if by these programs get falsely "red flagged " (not even taking into account pissed off girlfriends, neighbors or family filing false claims)....they the govt comes in, confiscates your property (all your guns), and now...YOU have to figure how to make your way through the legal system to prove you are not a threat, and have to spend God knows how much money, etc.
Hmm...what other rights are in this much potential jeopardy?
It sure would suck if next, when you said "the wrong things" according to the government, and you were banned from internet access....you really didn't need all that 1st amendment stuff anyway, did you?
Hmm....scrapped facebook, maybe we need to proactively search your home and possessions ....
This could get nasty really fast.
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Good thoughts, and I wonder about another world of social media.
Almost all multiplayer games have chat channels. In some cases, the game itself takes a back seat to the social commentary. Players can control who is in a particular chat group. Those obscure gathering places (it's not just games) are off the radar for LEO.
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Good thoughts, and I wonder about another world of social media.
Almost all multiplayer games have chat channels. In some cases, the game itself takes a back seat to the social commentary. Players can control who is in a particular chat group. Those obscure gathering places (it's not just games) are off the radar for LEO.
It isn't that hard to setup a private chat program. Pass IP addresses to people on paper, or possibly encrypted e-mail, and communicate directly between IPs. Yeah, ISPs could monitor traffic but I don't think that is all that practical on a large scale. Plus the message traffic could be burred in a VPN to make things harder. However I don't think most people intent on killing as many people as possible in a suicide attack are focused on careful planning of this level, hard core terrorists on the other h
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I'm envisioning P2P transfer of zipped and encrypted binaries with names that are innocuous and perhaps appear to be computer-related transferred over non-VPN in plain site to avoid tell.
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I'm envisioning P2P transfer of zipped and encrypted binaries with names that are innocuous and perhaps appear to be computer-related transferred over non-VPN in plain site to avoid tell.
Security by obscurity is something I think actually works pretty well when the subjects are pretty obscure (ie, not major corporations) to begin with.
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Mostly child-molesters and politicians. Their interests are, apparently, molesting children on private islands and keeping it all a secret. Evidently it's very expensive, and can still end in suicide.
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He's either, not dead, was murdered by Bill and/or Hillary Clinton, or both.
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Are you kidding?
The social media giants have been trying to score huge government contracts, and the employees, shareholders, and Marching Mothers of America have balked.
This is the same thing wrapped up as a swell parting gift.
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It does not seem the US government is doing anything in the interest of its population anymore, so whose interests, and what, are they?
Oh, you mean the corporate controlled US government?
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It does not seem the US government is doing anything in the interest of its population anymore, so whose interests, and what, are they?
Your assertion that the public has an interest in privacy on Facebook and Twitter is categorically wrong.
Their own (Score:2)
Government puts its own self preservation first. Notice how they never get any smaller either.
Surprise (Score:1)
Throw another log on the fire! (Score:2)
Yet another reason to never have a Facebook or Twitter account.
Glad I never signed up to either of them.
Not mine (Score:5, Funny)
I marked my profile "Private" so they won't be able to access it! I call it lifehacking.
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I call it ineffective.
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I call it ineffective.
Whoosh!
Government oversight (Score:1)
Meanwhile, a legitimate problem (Score:3)
Why aren't they doing anything to actively go after ransomware? All the FBI does is advise victims to pay them off.
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Why aren't they doing anything to actively go after ransomware? All the FBI does is advise victims to pay them off.
You could ask the same question about the effectiveness of the War on Drugs(not the band).
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Perhaps ransomware, like the drug trade, is a major source of "clandestine revenue" for these people. You don't actually think that they pay $5,000.00 for a toilet seat or $1,500.00 for a hammer do you?
What do they need a vendor for? (Score:2)
Re:What do they need a vendor for? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because you can't get in trouble for what a vendor does. Shifting blame.
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They already have a vendor(s). That's why bidding ends a few days from now.
There's no need to build in-house. Outsource to those who do this already for a living. The pressure is on for Big Social to keep our PII in a vault, but that value is just too high.
Now, we as patriotic law-supporting individuals will FINALLY allow Facebook and Google to acquire government contracts.
clarification to title (Score:2)
There, see how much simpler that is? And that's basically what they consider their new mission in life. Remember when they used to focus on protecting the president and hunting counterfeiters? Ahh the good old days! Now it seems they're much more into watching us than protecting us.
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The CIA didn't exist until post-WW2. The FBI has only existed since 1935.
Blame Roosevelt, if you want to blame anyone, since he created the FBI and the predecessor(s) to the CIA....
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It's not new. It's just been illegal.
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Ok, I'll bite.
Why in the world would the FBI be interested in what is bought and sold on ebay?
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Because of these [ytimg.com].
Nobody tell them OSINT is a thing (Score:2)
Vendors have until August 27 ... (Score:2)
... because a vendor has already been selected.
This will work to teach the nutzoid about best practices regarding shooting their mouths off in what is essentially the public square.
Wherever a crowd of them surface on the innertoobz, the long arm of the law will be a chatbot among them.
Internet as public square?... (Score:2)
That is really the most interesting part. It seem to me someone needs to come up with some kind of decentralized blockchain based social media where people can expect to have PRIVATE conversations with only those whom they Authorize.
I guess it still won't help you much if you are an 'influencer' with a million 'friends' but at least at that point you should realize the difference.
My favorite quote (Score:5, Informative)
So you mean legally? (Score:2)
other then those anonymous tips occasionally called in by members of the NSA who already monitor all of it.
So it's the age of dumb criminals? (Score:2)
If this is really being done for law enforcement purposes, think of what that means the FBI thinks of their criminals. They are the stupidest in history. Just imagine being a cop, and thinking "if only I knew what all the criminals are saying in public about their crimes, I could catch them!" It's just amazing that this has value. But we all really have seen anecdotes where imbeciles post evidence of their crimes, or their intent to commit a crime in the future.
The FBI's explanation is plausible. Amazing,
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The purpose is to make it easier to cull the incompetent, thus increasing the competence of the surviving professionals since the cultivation of "professional criminals" has a distinct societal advantage. It is nothing more than a highly cost effective and efficient means to separate the wheat from the chaff, and dispose of the chaff while keeping the wheat intact.
I want a Sopranos reboot! (Score:3)
I want a reboot series of The Sopranos. It would be one season long. Throughout the season, the FBI watches as Tony manages his Facebook group, recruits members and kicks out others. Half the people he kicks out disappear soon after. He has something very incriminating to say to a capo, so he communicates it through Facebook but marks it private. Silvio uses Facebook Messenger, happy that it "encrypts." Christopher sees ads for guns and carpets all the time, and has his phone with him every time a truck gets held up. Pauli posts on Facebook at the same time that he's supposedly working some menial job for the paycheck and insurance eligibility. They all take photos of near-death victims, or newly-bought bling they shouldn't be able to afford, and post them to their private group and comment on them.
Near the end of the first episode, an FBI guy says to another "do we need a warrant for this?" and the other answers with "no, we're not wiretapping, we're just buying the info from Facebook like many other companies do." And then in the last 5 minutes of the final episode, an FBI guy says to another "ok, this is enough," and the gang all gets arrested. The end.
Blind leading the blind... (Score:2)
With the degree of bias shown by the FBI in recent years, I'm not sure this would be any sort of actual improvement...
Clearly: Time to leave Social Media entirely (Score:2)
GOOD/ If you're stupid enough... (Score:1)
two classes of citizen (Score:3)
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Okay, we appreciate the well-intentioned gesture of return to plausibly intelligent flamebait, but for the love of FSM, could you troll a little harder next time?
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Otherwise, safe haven(s) for all kinds of illegal activities/content would be created/allowed, which is absolutely against common good of general public!!!
Let me know when they start putting microphones in board rooms.
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Actually it is very well known by the Government (and almost anyone with that expends any thought on the matter) that the exact opposite is true.
All societies need a certain amount of "underground" activity in order to remain prepared for eventualities for which they cannot acknowledge they need to be prepared. There is a societal advantage to permitting money launderers, weapons dealers, drug dealers, smugglers, and other assorted "criminal enterprises" and traffickers of all kinds to operate. The purpos