Meet Prism's little brother: Socmint

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/26/socmint

by djm_ • 13 years ago

52 20 13 years ago

wired.co.uk

tudorw• 13 years ago

I believe underpinning this is a need for new tools to give citizens the ability to ensure good governance. We can watch the watchmen, and we should.

kimlelly• 13 years ago

Correct. But you can start with the low-hanging fruit, i.e. use http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ as your new social network & secure communication.

gregparadee• 13 years ago

Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a staff of 17 officers in the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) has been scanning the public's tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, and anything else UK citizens post in the public online sphere.

The HUGE difference here is the last three words of that paragraph, "public online sphere." They are doing no more then analyzing publicly accessible data just like any other company, specifically advertising and marketing companies, do on a daily basis.

rob_mccann• 13 years ago

TLDR: This is nothing like Prism. Prism (illegally) accesses private data, NDEU legally accesses data made public.

_djo_• 13 years ago

Not quite, PRISM provides access to data legally acquired through mechanisms (like FISA requests) that should ideally not be legal.

danielsamuels• 13 years ago

I would have been more surprised if they WEREN'T doing this.

simonbarker872• 13 years ago

I don't see anything wrong with this - they are scanning public activity - that's fair game as far as I am concerned, it's fishing through and storing the private stuff that bothers me.

Infact, the more I think about this topic the more I realise it's not the monitoring that bothers me - it's the storage element and the fact they could go back through in years to come and paint whatever picture they can about a person.

Disclosure: I'm British

ape4• 13 years ago

Its still a bit creepy. What if a video surveillance van was parked in front of your house/apartment? Sure it would just be watching what anyone else could see. But most people would be bothered by it.

Are they friending people under false pretenses to get access to more info.

simonbarker872• 13 years ago

Creepy yes, but that's a decision you make using a social network that "things could get creepy".

I think a van parked outside my house would be weird but anyone that lives in a UK city center apartment block essentially lives like that anyway - it's just that the cameras are bolted to lobby ceilings and lamp posts.

The friending thing is an interesting one - could it be argued that that is warrantless searching or, by accepting their friend request, are you allowing the police to monitor you... essentially inviting them in?

null_ptr2• 13 years ago

You don't see anything wrong with

""" "Sentiment analysis" that can determine your mood; "horizon scanning" that tries to pre-empt disorder and crime; facial recognition software that can track down individuals; geo-location that is able to pinpoint your whereabouts, and profiling that can map who you are and what circles you move in. """

saraid2162• 13 years ago

You're advocating against anyone doing these things, I hope, and not just cherry-picking this particular program because it happens to be associated with PRISM?

sailfast• 13 years ago

All of that information is provided by the social media user, voluntarily to the public internet. If you don't want your mood analyzed then it is best not to post "I'm grumpy this morning" on Twitter. Companies do the same thing for marketing campaigns - I'm not seeing a problem here or how this relates as a "little brother" to other programs.

r00fus• 13 years ago

So it's just scanning public info, right? What about the creation of fake personas [1]? What if these fake personas posted, commented and attempted to gain more information, or attempted to sway/entrap people?

It seems the line to be crossed from (a bit more than public) surveillance to manipulation is a very very thin line.

[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/23/1218189/-HBGary-Pal...

virtu• 13 years ago

Topic is connected to PRISM sooo much. I don't understand how so many people here can't see that technology and it's implementation bypassed the legislation and conversations for a majority of population except for cypherpunks and a few others?

gasull• 13 years ago

Related talk at the last HOPE conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az7txN0599M

aznjons• 13 years ago

A number of initial responses to this article seem to acquiesce to the program because it scans technically "public" information. Speaking from the context of the United States, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution is what may be violated by PRISM, which protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. It has been interpreted by the courts that this protects citizens when they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

At what point with the powerful sensor technologies and analytics techniques that government agencies can employ and are mentioned in the article (semantic analysis, horizon scanning, predictive analytics, facial recognition, geolocation) do we draw a line that a reasonable expectation of privacy has been violated? I am not sure that the users of social networks who are not tech industry workers necessarily expect the extent to which extrapolations can be made and conclusions can be drawn about behavior that is technically "public" and mundane at face value.

Another separate question to consider is whether agencies will distinguish between content that is "public" or "private" in the cloud. It may be reasonable that content put in the cloud publicly is searchable, but will agencies respect cloud providers/users administrative privacy options? If I put physical property in storage I expect a warrant will be required to search it, but if I put intellectual property in the cloud, will the government respect that as protected by the 4th amendment when it is much easier to obtain, especially with the cooperation of tech companies?

Meet Prism's little brother: Socmint

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