Slashdot Mirror
Guilty By Association
dmf writes "News.com is running a little piece about Microsoft's forays into researching aspects of social computing. With AOL Buddy Lists, Yahoo Messenger, Friendster, and other mappable relationship environments, is it possible the information will soon be used against you? Scenarios such as governments tracking private citizens, investigating terrorist links, political groups finding potential donor lists, marketing departments finding affinity groups, and other easily imagined data mining opportunities could open the doors for information abuse and misinterpretation of individual ties. What implications can it bring in the future of the personal life?"
You mean like this? Won't be long before /. is mined for this data, regardless of what the robots.txt file says about it.
#include
:-) **
#include
void main()
{
if
contacts more then 75 = female;
anything else = male;
}
**any code monkey wish to do this properly it would be more humours
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
All I can say is that if you transmit private information over an insecure channel, you should not be surprised at the results.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
What makes you think it wouldn't be used against you?
Now I don't have to worry about browsing slashdot, and nobody can associate me with all the terrorists and mexican drug lords among the slashdot community.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/my_doom.html
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
It's bad enough getting friends of friends contacting me on orkut. For some reason the religious right people think it's fair game to email me with all kinds of links to support their causes.
A swift "fuck off" does the job there, but you can't do that with an auto bot that then goes and pumps your details into Yet Another Mass Marketing Tool
That is why you don't put REAL personal info in your $CHAT_PROGRAM profile. As long as it thinks that I was born on 1/1/1900 and live on 123 main st. Beverly Hills 90210, I'm not worried about data mining. :)
SCO.com uses Linux
My AIM (err iChat) buddy list has a decent sized section of casual aquaintences. They're people who I game with, used to work with or met at conventions. If one of them does something nasty are the Feds going to come knocking on my door asking questions?
I know my chats are fully logged already and never discuss anything even semi-private over IM. But the concept of guilt by association on an electronic level is simply frightening.
-Rusty the paranoid
The Master (Angelo Rossitto) in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, "Not shit, energy!"
have everyone add 'Link' to their buddy list... now everyone is everyone's 'second cousin' through link.
if you can beat em, flood them with false data.
Runnin' On Empty
Unless we were talking about an open-source version of the exact same thing, in which case it would be all good.
Motion Picture Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
Feel free to contribute...
OSAMA BIN LADEN wants to MURDER the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a certain chap named GEORGE W BUSH by hitting him repeatedly over the head with a ROCKET PROPELLED GRENADE LAUNCHER shaped sausage while dreaming of using TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS and drive his fave Type-R sport ZSU-23 SHILKA with BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL and NUCLEAR AAA rounds.
There, Eris knows wether US intelligence is tracking this or not but if they are, this is sure to mess up someone's day, hehehe... Ooo, look at that pretty black helicopter!
Hate me!
I post on Slashdot
Trolls post on slashdot
Trolls watch TV
George W. Bush watches TV
In Soviet Russian, TV watches YOU!
You breath air
Terrorists breath air
Terrorists see the stars at night
Posting on Slashdot can be associated to Astronomy. Cool!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I can't wait until 10 (or 2) years from now these companies start buying each other and consolidating the network information, along with everything available publicly from, say, livejournal.
that in the future, more and more people will rely on anonymous handles for their online identities. This is already happening to some extent, for my own purposes, I used bogus information for the yahoo registration when creating my anti-war page... not because I seriously fear repercussions today, but 20, 30 years from now, who knows, we may be living in a very different world, and an anonymous identity (as far as it goes) is the best way to protect yourself.
of course, for true anonymity you need the right tools.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
It seems to me, that with the way things are going, it will be a short matter of time until it is publicly recognized that "everyone really is a criminal".
I toggled a toggle and buttoned a button, but when I got done, I was done doin' nothin'.
"...governments tracking private citizens, investigating terrorist links..."
So, you're saying that I should take Osama off of my buddy list if I don't want trouble from the feds?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Services like AOL? I don't know how MSN or anouther online service works, but AOL stores your 'Buddy List' on their servers.
They can also keep track of what sites you're visiting when you browse the WWW. How long do you think it'll be till spam is custom fitted to groups?
Spammer A: This kid here goes to these freaky anime sites, and so do half of the people on his Buddy List. Let's send them all SPAM on learning Japanese and Freaky Bukake Sites!
Think about it.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
That code will not compile!
Ok, seriously, is this not a complete waste of time? Imagine someone getting paid money to research shit like this. What are you proving?
one of the idiots who bother to fill in your phone number, birth date, street address and SSN in your AIM profile you get what you deserve.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I would not be so worried about the government collecting such information if it were not for the knowledge that they have tried to collect it in the past and used it in less than ethical ways.
Is it any wonder people are paranoid about them doing it again in the future or the people who defend some of the governments actions?
.. when credit cards and clubcards are already so heavily used. A credit card shows where you've been and where you've spent money - for example, someone only need look for a pub that you use your card at regularly to track you down. And the FBI has already shown its willingness to get information from ISPs regards even the vaguest suspicion of a crime - is there any real anonymity left? I doubt it.
Kevin Bacon is surely going to be in a lot of trouble.
Free XBox, PS2
I used to have a room mate who worked for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force here in New York City. The horror stories he'd tell me were gut wrenching. The truth is... privacy isn't real. Everything you do is tracked.
All of the data mining companies end up selling their information to the government...
He told me that the government had dummy corporations who purchased the data and it was all centralized.
Everything from your NYC Metrocards, to the discount cards you get at the local grocery store. Everything from your Email accounts, to your cell phone habits. I didn't believe it until he proved it.
He was able to take someones first and last name, approximate age, and in return give me their home address, childrens names, home mortgage amount, bank used, cell number, parents address, university, major, where he went on vacation, how long he was gone, spending habits, etc. etc. It was scary stuff. Scary.
1984 in 2004.
If Microsoft outlook address books are a primary source of spam forwarding and viruses think of the oppertunities when the next version of outlook tracks anyone you ever work/commujnicate with. It would probably take less than one week before a single e-mail could beforwared to the entire internet community.
That's why there should be privacy laws saying that information is non-usable unless explicitly permitted. Right now, it's bass-ackwards.
Did I register with insta-trace!
Never mind that it has nothing to do with my comment, they think I'm somehow trolling even when I'm not. That's guilt by association.
Blacklists are already hapenning here based on foes/freaks modifiers.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
I still haven't gotten an invite. :(
:( :~( /me slinks off into corner
*shiff*
Even my fellow Geeks want to avoid me.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
This is just saying that they're going to show just the names of people that you contact most often in your address book. They did the same thing with the 'favorites' for webpages in IE(I can't see ALL my bookmarked pages...scary. No. Wait. It isn't.) It's not as if the article even hints that they're caching this information anywhere off your computer.
Seriously, how did you manage to associate this article with 'government tracking private citizens'?
Without Social Security numbers, how do you know if my friend Theodore Kaczynski is the exact same guy as the unibomer? Since this data can be easily misrepresented (and has no legal guarantees of accuracy), online association would never hold up in court if you have a good lawyer. I know some people are worried about more than this- such as employees using the data to hire people- but in those cases it would be better to just not get the job and avoid association with such underhanded tactics. Only a court can imprison me and take my freedom, so that's my only worry.
Open Source Sushi
1. Post on Slashdot?
2. ?
3. You're a terrorist!
Hasn't Microsoft learned from the lessons of Outlook, why should contact information be tied to the File System? It is not enough that personal information can be harvested in a variety of ways now, lets create a new one! So the next generation of worms will not only look at your contact list in your favorite e-mail client, but the file system for anything that could be missed!
And what kind of security controls are going to be placed on this "feature", hopefully it is Mandatory Access Control (yeah, I'm dreaming but what the Hell, it's Friday)!!I think you need to have some faith that the Judicial branch will see through a charge built on "Guilt by Assocation". There is excellent case law that shows how unsuccessful a prosecutor will be in building a case in this manner.
The bigger question is, should the government be allowed to mine this data to look for individuals to put under surveillance. What are the criteria here?
The only historical model we have of this type of thing is landline phone taps. Again, the Judicial system had to get involved -- in the form of a judge or grand jury. Today, the scope of opportunity is so much greater than just telephone lines.
I personally think we need more policymaking and caselaw in the area of government-commercial database relationships. It will come, but only after the government oversteps its bounds a few times and gets its foot chopped off by a successful lawsuit.
Simple! Just jack Kevin Bacon into the Matrix and you'll have a link to everyone!
First off, no i haven't read the article yet, just felt the need to say something on the whole privacy on the net thing.
There will always be a balance between safety and freedom. In this case that freedom being our privacy. With absolute privacy any number of bad things can arise that we didn't intend. For example truly anonymous file servers could distribute kiddy porn or credit card and social security numbers at will, after all with perfect privacy there would be no way to trace them.
And also having no privacy is also a very bad idea for reasons to obvious to state. So the balance is somewhere in the middle and, as I understand it from the article summary, it is simplu shifting in the direction of less privacy. what we really have to ask is if we want this greater safty at the cost of some of our privacy? Which is most definately not a cut and dry problem in and of itself. So sorry about not having a factoid about some part of the article but I just wanted a balanced counterpoint to the inevitable bashing of the loss of privacy on the net.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Mexican drug lords here on /.? I always thought I was the only one. Welcome, my friends. So, quick survey: Do you prefer the terrorizing or the lording?
c'mon get a funny bone you mods!
Get a life. Or Prozzak.
Just what John Ashcroft ordered (heard he's sick - hope he makes a full recovery AFTER resigning for health reasons). Hmm. Maybe this is M$'s offering the the gods to keep the Department of Justice at bay. Nah, they would never do something like that, would they?
And we were worried that the Department of Homeland Security was going to check our video rentals and library books? Next will come currency scanners that track serial numbers and are used by vendors to track where the money has been.
Paranoia is a way of life.
Not to troll, but if somone like the NSA wants to find out who you're talking to, they will. Get over it or don't use digital communications. Once one has made the decision to use digital communications then having the computer notice who someone prefers to talk to most and then prioritizing based on that seems like a good thing to me. One of my major bones with major chat clients is that there's no way to assign a priority to people -- maybe I don't give a damn if my gaming partner wants to talk to me right now but I do care if someone wants to contact me about a homework assignment. It's too gross of a generalization to say that I'm either willing to talk to everybody or to nobody. Generating ways of automatically handling this is good.
If starting tomorrow, every ad I ever saw was actually something I might be interested in, rather than all the b.s. I usually see, I think would be a great thing. They can mine my data all they want, then they will know they can count on solicited donations for the topless, video game
playing beer waitress linux user group every time.
When the day comes that this information is misused, like arresting me because I once instant messaged a terrorist and had done a search for the anarchists cookbook on the internet, then that is the time to start working to put policy in place as to how this information get's used.
If there have been a string of murders in my community, and they are all young, red heads. And by looking at my records, you can see that the only porn I look at online is pictures of young, red heads. Should they bring me in for questioning? No. Should the next web ad I hit be for a young, red head calendar? Yes.
The Slashdot editors use the Friends/Foes feature to find out who is a troll and who isn't. If they think you're a troll (i.e. your friends or fans list contains more than a certain number of accounts considered "troll" accounts), your account will be $rtbl'ed, which means you are permanently banned from moderation and meta-moderation.
That's why a lot of us are using SSH tunnels or VPNs with our own IM protocols, DNS and mail servers. There's a whole phantom internet out there and a lot of people don't even realize it.
.ssh/config file and point them to a Jabber client. It's worked well, and no one else has access to the Jabber server other than the people who I've allowed in. Same with e-mail. Sure, I still have to interact with the outside world, but most of my friends and family are pointed to my mail server and use SSH tunnels to communicate with me. They don't see it as an inconvenience because to them, they just double click the "Connect to the T4D Network" icon on their desktop and then use their mail/IM/web clients like they would any other time. When they're done, they just click the "X" in the upper right corner of the CMD window that has a nice friendly message in it that says, "Close this window to disconnect from the T4D network".
Personally, I've been using ssh and Jabber to IM with all my friends. The only thing that's required is that I give them a custom configured ssh client,
I can only imagine that this will become more commonplace as these technologies get easier to use. Tunnels and VPN are sure to be the next "big thing" once they are really simple enough to install. So far my installation experiences with people who want to access the T4D network have just been to email them a zip file and tell them where to put the extracted files. But a double click wizard would be nicer... Can't code in Windows though because I don't have the money to waste on a compiler.
Un-news
A co-worker of mine has an MSN messenger account that he keeps getting IM's in Arabic. Aparently someone else had the account and it expired and just by chance he picked the same name. He also is on some kind of Islam mailing list getting Koran verses in his mail every day. I hope that they do some research on this idea before they start handcuffing people.
It wouldn't be too hard to profile me.
The question remains: How can the cat be put back in the bag? Answer: It can't.
The only reasonable solution I see is to not let *anyone* slip through the net of info (yes, I'm talking about you high ranking government officials, and corporate bigwigs...is that redundant?) and making it freely available to all.
Then, at least, the illusion of privacy is lifted, and everyone can get on with their lives, knowing that everything is open.
Apparently, the only ones with privacy are terrorists. Hell, we can't find a guy on a kidney machine in a desert? (I'm thinking of starting a pool for how close to the election good ol' Osama will pop up. Place your bets!)
Just goes to prove that technology in the hands of people will always be misused. We can't handle the responsibillity.
Isn't this what war against terrorism is all about? Keeping an eye on everyone?
dmf writes ".... With AOL Buddy Lists, Yahoo Messenger, Friendster, and other mappable relationship environments, is it possible the information will soon be used against you? Scenarios such as governments tracking private citizens, investigating terrorist links,
Wasn't there a front page post about bloggers plaigarizing other bloggers today?
This sounds so familiar.
It reminds me of this post:
And this post
And this one too:
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Only Slashdot could take an innocuous article on MS trying to improve their software and turn it into another discussion on big brother. These may be legitimate issues to discuss but hooking this discussion to the MS donkey cart is editorial irresponsibility and the height of tedium around here.
DO IT!
Here's what I think, YOUR HELPING THE PEOPLE (GOVNT) YOU ACCUSE OF INVADING YOUR PRIVACY! Your doing the hard work for them which is thinking up of ways that you can spy on people. I'm sure some government researcher is sitting back in his cubicle reading slashdot thinking to himself.. Damn thats a good idea, we'll have to do it!
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Actually this is more insightful if you have some flexibility in your definition of "insecure channel". So the answer to the original question is "yes it can". But for a more well rounded picture, ask yourself. What are all the things one gains from putting "private information" on an "insecure channel"? Not quite so black and white is it?
Child pornography rings.
They busted a guy here at work who was doing it. By they, I mean the FBI and Customs officers. By doing it, I mean trading child pornography.
Investigators have said Jeffs and two mid-Michigan men were members of an Internet club that produced child pornographic photographs, videos and live broadcasts and shared the images with other group members on their buddy lists.
Some of the "buddies" face charges that they performed sex acts with minors. Many of the victims are the suspects' own children.
What happens is, they bust one guy by meeting up with him in real life, posing as a young child. Once they've got him, they can go on his computer and see who he's got on his buddy lists, address books, they just get everyone else.
If isridiculous(rant-against-microsoft)
Return("Slashdot")
Else
Return("legitimate site")
The article doesn't seem to match the summary very well.
- If you wish to truly be anonymous, only use cash, post only from libraries, or use open wireless connections with spoofed MACs.
- If you want to live in the real world and be anonymous, use credit cards for normal stuff, use your home PC/broadband for normal stuff, use #1 for anything you don't want tracked.
- Or, have so much sporadic activity by allowing free access from your own wireless AP, have large groups of friends share logins, etc, and obfuscate the entire tracking system via multiple simultaneous logins. Note - AIM already allows multiple logins (I've had 3 simultaneous logins at once, the only downside is that only your received messages get sent to all 3
So, that's a real brief primer on anonymity, and the fact that you have little or no anonymity. If you don't like the way the country's going, get out and vote in the next election.The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I'd be interested in seeing how you've implemented this stuff in an easy-for-lusers sort of way?
Any chance you can produce a writeup/HOWTO?
Maybe its about time we spied on the fuckwit politicians who think its ok to be in the pocket of some corporation? Why is it the only profession where you are litterally given a license to do anything and yet have no checks or people to answer to, dont believe me? look at history, enron etc etc. Politicians are the ones with the most privacy and who should really have the least - if you want to run the country you do it infront of the people, not behind.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
When making your tinfoil hat remember its shiny side out.
... Sure there are both extremes in ways of thinking with this.
But am I wrong to think that
1)anything i do online *may* be subject to monitoring, storing or somehow intercepted by one or more individuals or agencies that i don't intend?
2) therefore make sure that i don't discuss my cc numbers or that multiple homicide i pulled off last summer freely amongst people
3) consider exactly what it would take in forms of hardware, computing and people resources to collect, organize, interpret and investigate the amount of raw data that would be generated in server-side logs, on a service that is (for all intensive purposes) provided for little to no cost.
4) consider that in the logs above (or email archives, or...) that about 99.9% is going to be completely useless and/or boring drivel about tons of other people you don't know or care about.
???
I dunno.. shoot. I see the whole "invasion of privacy" and "do this today, and here's what it will lead to" argument, and it makes sense, but then i consider the points above and it all seems blown out of proportion.
What do slashbots think?
do() || do_not();
DO IT!
This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...
Idiots on keyboards...all of them...
With AOL Buddy Lists, Yahoo Messenger, Friendster, and other mappable relationship environments, is it possible the information will soon be used against you?
Of course not! There's absolutely nothing to worry about. That's why I'm happy to participate on the interweb using my real name instead of an anonymous nom de clavier.
--
Sal
Writings: saltation.blogspot.com
Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com
"Not to troll, but if somone like the NSA wants to find out who you're talking to, they will. Get over it or don't use digital communications. "
The problem with "get over it" advice is that there's an implied "accept the status quo".
However the proper "get over it" in this case is for the citizentry to recognize their true place in the order of things (and no, that's not at the bottom) and behave accordingly.
Now who's suppose to be the bedrock upon which a society is built? Hint: It's not the government.
...Al Qaeda is registered on terrorister.com somewhere. To be honest, I'm not so paranoid about my information being gathered. I expect it, and in a wired society, where money is falling out of use, and being replaced by electronic transactions the only difference between an 'honest' corporation and an 'dishonest' one is who admits they're selling your information and one who lies about it. When you pay for that porn DVD with your ATM card, it's inevitable, despite any legal safeguard, privacy policy, or semantic assurance this information will be leaked, stolen, or sold.
What do I do mind, however, is that this information would be used against me in a legal or civil manner. In the world we live, we have to accept that we're going to have collotoral damage on our privacy, but we DO NOT have to accept it's use against us.
Should "accidentally" gathered information should not be admissible in a court of law. Companies that violate stated privacy policies on their own websites should be financially liable for these transgressions.
Our Constitution provides us with some of these protections, but not all. Take this matter seriously, and ask the person you vote for, before you vote, what they think.
Less Talk, More Beer.
When I first moved up to Ohio I still had a Florida Driver License. Got two speeding tickets in Ohio and never paid them. Never heard anything more about them. Perhaps the super-duper meta-database was hit by the Slammer worm, eh? What is the database platform anyway? I bet there would be a huge government contract for whichever vendor was chosen. Especially if it was for the super-duper meta-database of humanity. Perhaps that was that Oracle California deal from awhile back, huh?
I know some of the folks who post like sci-fi and high-tech. Hell all of us I guess otherwise why would we be participants? But let's dial the big brother paranoia down a tad okay?
This is scarier
Apparently, there is only one person needed to make the link between Kevin Bacon and Miguel de Icaza. Surely Miguel is linked to a bunch of people here (I know people who know him, as I'm sure others do). Ergo, Kevin Bacon must use Linux.
Only a message as this could be vomited by
The World's Most Dangerous Leader
Patriotically yours,
Kilgore Trout
> ...other easily imagined data mining opportunities
> could open the doors for information abuse and
> misinterpretation of individual ties.
Surely that's the whole point of Friendster and its competitors?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I swear sometimes that everyone on Slashot saw someone on the grassy knoll...
Railing about guilt by association in a posting that references Microsoft for no apparent reason.
from the "join orkut" link on the front page:
orkut is unique, because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. That way we won't grow too large, too quickly and everyone will have at least one person to vouch for them.
If you know someone who is a member of orkut, that person can invite you to join as well. If you don't know an orkut member, wait a bit and most likely you soon will.
See? As long as nobody send invitations to the feds, we're fine!
RFID impregnated tinfoil for tracking tinfoil hat wearers!
PLEASE NOTE: Putting said tinfoil hat in the microwave to fry the RFIDs is not recommended.
NAMBLA.
What you suggest would make it impossible for law enforcement to conduct reasonable investigations. We need our existing laws to be enforced more accurately and consistently, not yet more laws that unnecessarily tie the hands of investigators. Two wrongs don't make a right.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I AM the Prince of all Saiyajin
It's the fact taht trials are slow, expensive, and predictable, if there was some question about the chances of a convition the prosecuter offers a deal. Wrong deals are offered because DA's don;t like going to trials period. Most of the times, yes people are sleaze, but if you know you're going against an 800lb gorilla with deeper pockets than you can imagine, and you're being told take 30 days at home with a bracelet as I was offered versus losing and doing ten years, most people take the deal. As for your "trials are slow" statement. That's utter bullshit. Trials that go slow are typically trials where the DA is lost in the sauce and desperately trying to dig out as much dirt as he can for reinforcements before he goes to trial.
It's a lot like Law & Order, I really hope you never become a juror. It's this same line of thinking that has jurors falling for the same arguments of "Well he has been known to associate with..."
the guy might be a sleaze, but if they don't think they can prove he's a sleaze to the jury they offer him a plea. It has nothing to do with proving he's anything more than the person who committed a crime. In my case I was a systems/security engineer. I used security tools on a daily basis. Know what the DA said? "Defendant previously portscanned FOO_NETWORK and has used numerous hacking tools" ... Thats because it was part of my job description. Now when you run around using 4-5 days shouting "hacker hacker hacker, evil evil evil" then get to the part that these tools are used in the job description, the juror already thinks "Hacker hacker hacker evil tools."
They guy considers the terms, and decides that it's not worth the risk that he will be convicted so he takes it (boosting conviction rates (guy pleading guilty to 2nd degree manslaughter still counts as a conviction). You've got it distorted. A heck of a lot.
The only trials that take place are the few that are questionable enough or have defendant's who firmly believe they are innocent, and have lots of money. Defendant's who believe they are innocent? So what you're saying is defendants who did something and believe they are innocent? S'what I'm gathering. Lots of money counts I can tell you that because it is not cheap going to trial. Aside from the monetary values of it all, the psychological value is a lot higher. What are you going to do when all of your friends are being unfairly visited at 2-3am by feds who just want to ask you a few questions? Believe me you will not be popular with your friends, family. There is a lot that is not seen that goes on which in my eyes makes the DA's no better than those charged. If you think they don't wrongfully prosecute ever your mistaken. Again it all boils down to money. Perception management... Better learn what it is.
As a more recent example, Martha should have just settled with the SEC paid a few hundred grand and gotten on with her life. For whatever reason, she decided that the expense and risk of a trial was worth the attempt to clear her name. We'll probably find out next week if her gamble paid off. Martha is being charged with declaring her innocence nothing more. She went on live television and said she is innocent. What did the DA do, according to them, by declaring her innocence, she maliciously sought to raise her stock price in Omnimedia. Know what you're talking about. She's not charged with insider trading. She's charged with obstruction of justice, and the route they took even boggled the judge in case you didn't know. Martha's case if you also didn't know is the first of its kind being it's high profile though, most people don't even have a real clue about it, and look to the media to hold their hands and have it explained to them.
MoFscker
Sorry -- had to be said.
I think his point is good, but then he has to throw this stuff in:
Some New York programmers fell into the lawful but socially destructive practice of proprietary software: they offered other people attractive software packages without source code, and exacted a promise not to share them with anyone else.
Despite these prevalent evils,.....
Because we all know that proprietary software has not helped society at all, and is in fact comparable to the evils of murder, and false testimony from police officers. Also, you're really likely to attract more proprietary developers to the OSS side by calling them evil and socially destructive.
on my list of friends on Friendster. And, I've got Saddam on my AOL Buddylist. Maybe, I should send a Friendster invite too. But since reading this article. Maybe its not a good idea. ....
Serioulsy man, who seriously think they can use Friendster and such for terrorism? One important part of terrorism is to be elusive.
What irritates me is that this will be yet another instance of a large company collecting data about me, with no restraint on what happens to it downstream. This is happening more and more.
Also scary is that there isn't, apart perhaps from national security, any master plan for collecting all this data. Thousands of corporations, agencies, clubs and whatnot are collecting data about their customers, members, suppliers, etc. in an effort to provide better/more efficient service. While it's all being done in a good cause, the side affect is that when all these separate databases get combined, all sorts of inferences can be made about your behavior, health, habits, etc.
In most cases this isn't a problem. But occasionally your digital signature is incorrect or matches that of some problem child. And this could cause you to be mistaken for a criminal, denied insurance or end up on some black list. Unfortunately once this occurs, the chance of getting your data corrected and yourself off the blacklist is often very difficult. Just ask people who mistakenly end up on the federal no-fly list.
I'm pessemistic as to whether we can stop this. Human nature and busness being what it is (E.g. the percieved value of collecting the data currently exceeds the percieved risk), means it won't be stopped. I guess we'd better get used to it.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Name - phone book - address
- 911 registry defines a need for the address to phone number link
Credit bureau - mortgage bank and stuff.
- Money laundering, the gov watches for suspicous transactions
Education stuff of course the school knows
Children, birth certificate and dependants in tax records.
- Gov knows tax records, shocking
Vacations? I doubt it.
What is really scary is that this person in a position of trust, with a valid reason to know this information on a person feels they can blindly hand it out to someone who is NOT authorized just because they felt like it.
Dummy corporations aren't needed, most of the information is already there.
I like Slashdot. I like it when it covers tech stuff and informs me of interesting phenomena. I really start to dislike it when it gets political. I am a bit tired of the whole "government is evil" and going to tun everyone into free-spending consumers of DRM-laced kool-aid chanting along to the Pledge of Allegiance. If I wanted to conspiracy theories, propaganda, and politically biased and charged articles...I would read Moveon.org or Bushcountry.com. I am seriously thinking of not visiting /. anymore. It has become a real chore to get through some of this stuff. My $0.02, your mileage may vary.
It's more than just a joke. A group of online friends and I who led quite innocent lives at the time decided that one solution to the developing surveillance of email (this was about '95-8) was to munge our sig files with noise; thus, benign conversations were finished off by keywords that would be sure to catch any filters. [Things like AK-47, bomb, cocaine, etc. as in the parent, only more thorough.] Our hope was to be mildly irritating, a gentle kind of monkeywrenching, in order to discourage any hidden observers.
Of course, no clue as to whether the 30 of us made a whit of difference.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Bumper sticker I saw recently...
"BUSH/ORWELL 2004"
Isn't this why freedom of association is important?
If you can't communicate freely, you have no freedom.
they also say "don't hit enter when you're trying to hit the quotes key when y're stuck on a nonergo kb" but that's offtopic..
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
So what happens if we have enough technology and we really lose all privacy. The implications are staggering.
3 12 871996/qid=1078515436/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/102-462230 9-0737704?v=glance&s=books
Arthur C Clarke examines some of these issues in his book, The Light of Other Days
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Technology has marched on, and the world has changed (again).
All the trends in technology over the last 10 years say that privacy as we have known it, is headed for extinction. Cameras that get smaller and smaller, remote controlled robots, hacking into wireless LANs, PLUS all the electronic interactions (like RFID) that are coming, PLUS computers getting cheaper by the day... This all adds up to privacy basically being impossible.
Proprietary software is doomed, because the Internet made the level of interactivity that open-source software needs possible. For exactly the same reasons that the medieval guilds (with their proprietary methods for things like ironsmithing and glassblowing) were doomed once the movable-type printing press was invented, proprietary software cannot compete. In the near term (5-10 years), it will still have a solid space in niche markets, but I'm not even sure that will last. It certainly isn't going to last in mainstream software arenas like OSes and databases.
But that same increase in processing power and decrease in communication delay means that doing things like examining every electronic transaction that someone performs (and building a detailed profile of their life from it), is not only beginning to be possible, it's very nearly inevitable. Even the most paranoid of you out there (and on Slashdot, the percentage of paranoids is a good bit higher than average) would not want the sort of draconian methods that would be required to prevent it. (No computers and no networks, for instance.)
The proper solution, I think, is to change our culture, so that it doesn't matter that someone knows the kinks in my soul.
I am mostly connected to reality, so I'm not holding my breath on this cultural shift, but I really only see three possibilities:
We turn Luddite and roll back the clock technologically. (Not likely to happen voluntarily by most of this audience, but some of the non-technical types turning Luddite IS all too possible.)
Privacy gets moved to the same status as apprenticeship - it's something that existed historically, and it's occasionally useful for analogies, but it's not part of anybody's life anymore. This could either go the Japanese route (I believe the usual phrase is something like "Nakedness is frequently seen and never noticed." In other words, commenting on someone's quirks is far more shameful than having said quirks to begin with.), or simply an open acceptance that other people do things differently than you.
The third possibility is the one that worries me. That's a totalitarian society (probably theocratic) that uses this information to control people to a degree that has heretofore been unbelievable. I don't think such a state would last very long at all, but the creation and destruction of it would get really, really ugly.
The US is the only culture I have extensive first-hand experience with. I would strongly prefer to see us go to option 2B (taking the attitude that you can live your life any way you want as long as you don't hurt me).
That fits wonderfully with our stated national beliefs. It's an absolutely lousy fit with what our behavior says we believe. The behavior (IMO) says we urgently want #3.
That's the big reason the 3rd option worries me. I can very easily see a theocratic state as an intermediate step to the live-and-let-live one. If anyone has any practical, pragmatic suggestions for how to create such a cultural shift (one suitable for a total absence of privacy), speak up now, because the situation could get critical within 10 years, and is almost guaranteed to get critcal in 20.
// You never allocated any space for gender #include char* gender; char* main(){ gender = malloc(5); *gender = "male"; return gender; }
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
At any rate, I'm not convinced the US military hierarchy is all that secretive. I know from serving in the Air Force that Base commanders and people of similar importance have their names and likeness plastered all over the place. Figuring out who's in charge of what is an unusually simple process (with the exception of special forces, but still not impossible).
I'm more concerned about how accessible personal information is on pretty much everyone, particularly important people in the afore mentioned hierarchy. Since 9/11 there's been amplified security, but suicide bombing a general's house is no less dificult(hence our fear of terrorism).
This is a helluva good point. I'll take it a step further: DMV records, Local law enforcement files, IRS databases, Social Security information, Credit History. All these are fairly independant systems with little pieces of data about an individual. Consilidate them into one huge data warehouse and its a Business Intelligence persons dream. Every queryable piece of info about a person instantly accessible. Thankfully, all these systems are so tied to their respective beurocracies that they will never integrate. If they did, its hello 1984 with random retinal scanners a la Minority Report.
This occurs despite explicit promises to the electorate when the tax file number was introduced, that it would NEVER be used for this sort of purpose.
Add to this the ability to track online activity by merging on:
"Privacy" guarantees are torn down at the merest suggestion of higher purposes, and data is then freely shared. This can have excellent results: attacking paedophile rings. But it can also have wider, less salubrious results, when blind application of some new hysteria and a couple of incidental "hits" on the database scan sucks innocents into a nightmare.
Disk is cheap too. A startling amount of on-line activity is routinely recorded. The very first internet sourced "crack" can still be viewed, keystroke for keystroke...
In a world where paediatricians have been attacked by mobs and hospitalised following newspaper campaigns against paedophiles, where 20 year olds are exposed in "underage drinking scandals", where unfair or incorrect criminal convictions occur, where a data-entry glitch can destroy an innocent person's credit record with no timely hope of appeal against suddenly foreclosed mortgage, where a country parson on holiday is interred as a terrorist suspect based on rigorous computer screening, where political correctness is a moving feast and the witch hunt du jour dominates reasoned thought: it's perhaps a good idea to keep as much off the computer as possible, let alone the wider internet.
--
Sal
Writings: saltation.blogspot.com
Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com
Just be careful what you write and always assume all on-line content is available for government mining operations. This isn't hard, folks.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
For example here in Argentina, during the militar government in the 70's, the best method for "terrorist cleaning" was "catch a terrorist, view his/her agenda, and kill everyone in it". So it's pretty possible to use the Buddy List for the same purposes in this days.
Now I am sad.
It was a form of Guilty by Association made not by some inhuman agancy... but by PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
HAHAHAHA! seriously. At the first chance, you guys let your so called president (you didn't even elected him) make 2 wars and rape your constitution and you didn't move a finger! Act, then came back here and talk.
Treat communications you make over the public internet as though they were publicly recorded statements. Why, because for all intensive purposes, that's what your communications over IM and friendster like channels really is. The only problem here is people getting the mistaken impression that such communications are completely anonymous and not traceable. Correct people's mistaken images, the technology isn't the problem.
-There are no easy engineering fixes to social problems.
If I was Osama (and yes, I MIGHT be), I would get a phone book of some little town in Ohio and start phoning everybody
And when the arrests start and it hits CNN, then change phones!
There is this web site called buddy zoo which proves that all you have to do to get thousands of people to willingly give up their buddylists is to allow them to make fun pictures with it.
I'm going to buy tin foil for a new hat now.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
My Kevin Bacon number is three
I dated Deborah Theaker in University (Saskatchewan)
(her Kevin Bacon number is two)
Just continously change your refresh rate. That'll cause trouble.
I imagine someone could build an intermediate framebuffer-like device that could take normal VGA input and continuously change the CRT's input signal. Just like playing with the X, Y and Z voltages on a osiloscope.
Also, interleaved modes.
The first method would require an old (or dirt cheap) display, though, because a lot of displays today try to do extra things. Also, you could try triple- and quad-interleaved modes.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Marvelous.
Geesh, I typed in Adolf Hitler and he has a Kevin Bacon number of three!
Not exactly. You can enter information about your class/company/troop-mates, not just yourself. It just takes one bored member of your seventh grade homeroom to enter the fact that you and, say, Timothy McVeigh went to school together. They've amassed information covering a decent percentage of the US population that way. You can opt-out, but it begs the question of who owns the information of where you went to school: You? Your school? Your classmates? All of the above?
should hope our top ranking officials aren't so dim as to put themselves out there like that. The same information is available via public record anyway, it simply isn't collected in one nice easily searchable web portal available to anyone with a computer.
I'm not so concerned about the upper echelons of the organizations that are already easily mappable -- I believe that during the cold war the US figured out other countries' military structures just from wedding photos in newspapers, along with other public information.
I'm more worried about this kind of information being used to fill in the details on a massive scale at the lower levels of social, corporate, and military structures. Knowing that Ms. XYZ used to be the CEO of XYZ Corp. is old hat. Knowing that Mr. ABC used to sleep with the disgruntled coworker of the janitor at some facility that you're interested in...that could be new.
If they did, its hello 1984 with random retinal scanners a la Minority Report.
I'm sure the Parts Order has already been submitted.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/
Add some "noise" to the signal. Add some contacts that you don't even know. Remove a few that you never talk to. The (unfortunate) underlying presumption is that the mere presence of something indicates a level of accuracy in terms of how valid it is. Soon, people will have little option but to launder their day-to-day activities to keep governmental and corporate noses where they really don't belong.
While not disagreeing with this in a truly theoretical sense, the human being is far less tractable in real life. And the human being in a group is truly a throwback to a darker, more primeval time.
Humans have not changed markedly in the last 3,000 years or so of written history. There's nothing to suggest we're about to have a sudden burst of emotional evolution as a species, or even of emotional maturity in individuals.
And so that tends to suggest that adaptations to the new technologies will have to be either built into that new technology, or societies, cultures, groups, and individuals will just have to wear the effectively random consequences of the new pressures on them.
I know why I call it American Nighmare and not The American Dream. There's no justice. Hopefully I don't have any terorrists on my buddylist accidently. Would be bad to plan a trip to USA then. I would end in Guantanamo or anywhere. There must be almost a civil war for citizens rights on American streets but the society does nothing. Of course I have to keep an eye on many things in my own country too but that is no excuse to ignore deficits in foreign countries especially when there are strong relations like EU, G8, NATO or similar.
What implications can it bring in the future of the personal life?
oh, how about a two sided coin where people fear to meet different people (or even take out library books, apparently), and corruption becomes rampant due to that lever. you know: a kafka nightmare.
the thing i don't get in america is you had a real taste of how easily things slide to a bizarre level with your mccarthy witch hunts, which the vast majority of your citizens are quite ignorant of. seriously; i like you guys but i don't get that part. there's a deep "i was just being a good american" reaction to what you did in that era. the lesson wasn't learned in general society at all, and that's very worrying.
Looks like we finally have the global village everyone was raving about twenty years ago. Welcome to our little town, where everyone knows your name....and your age, and your birthdate, and your favorite foods, and your last girlfriend, and why she dumped you, and all your weird little habits, ad nauseum.
It's just like living in East Jesus, North Dakota, pop. 450...except now you have a chance to be famous for fifteen minutes.
What's the big deal? The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Social modelling is one of the first things computers were programmed to do.
Its too late to raise any alarm bells about this. Its not too late to band together with your friends, form community, and keep the data entirely to yourselves, however
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I have a friend named Osama (pronounced differently than the terrorist...) and his name is included in his buddylist...I always kinda worried about that one...
Karma: Terrible
MinGW
How long will it be before I am hunted down by Al Franken and body slammed to the ground?
In one case, the fellow (a doctor, born in Syria) co-signed a lease for a brother of a friend from Syria. Not unusual, friendship counts for a lot more in countries where you trust your friends more than the bank. Based on information passed by Canada (allegedly, yeah right) the US Customs deported the guy while passing through Canada to Syria (country of birth) instead of Canada (country of citizenship, his passport...). It took a year to get him out. Lawsuits against Ashcroft et al pending. Apparently the brother was associated with al Quaida.
In the other case, the Canadian decided to go back to Iraq (country of birth) with a bunch of cars to sell, and visit family. He also agreed to carry $20,000 for friends to give to their families (In countries like Sadam's, would you trust a bank?). This money he did declare before he left. On the way back through Syria (them again) he was picked up and interrogated, using many of the same questions the Canadian police used just before he got on the plane in Canada. His crime, of course, was to be principal of a mosque school in Toronto after several known activists had held that position.
Syrian interrogation consisted of such delightful procedures as whipping the bottom of the feet with cables and then making the person stand, not to mention the usual beatings and electroshock therapy. Another example of North American outsourcing, by our intelligence agencies.
No other proof has been presented against these two. No smoking gun, just guilt by association. When presented with an opportunity to get their questions more forcefully put to these unfortunates, the CSIS and FBI took the opportunity.
You don't need electronic buddy lists and such, these examples show that normal weak links work fine. But it WILL make it easier to draw tenuous connections where no real connections exist. You wanna be presumed guilty based on who your chat buddies talked to? I guess we'll have to limit the degree of association to 4 or less, since everyone's only 5 connections away from anyone else.
You can get an idea of who someone has correspondence by tracking their postal mailings, phone calls placed, or even being as direct as raiding the old fashioned address book found in most homes.
The only major difference with the digital stuff is that you're openly advertising who you associate with, and you're more likely to include larger lists of 'associates' simply because it's easier to do so.
IE: how many ppl do you know that have buddy lists or email addresses for hundreds of people when they don't really know who they are ?
Just use your head and don't post to us.bomb.here newsgroups or add strange fellowes to any 'address book' of sorts. If you happen to find your way on to THEIR address book, you just become a name in a very long list and have every ability to clear your name, assuming you haven't shot yourself in the foot.
Like putting some information that is not true about yourself. How would that affect the details? Do I assume this will make tracking even more difficult?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I think that's the point.
Its for everybody, not just the world elite to join.
Only Google and the CIA will have access to the broader picture and its associated cool interfaces.
All the users build it for the CIA, instead of the CIA having to build it for themselvs.
Talk about turning yourself in for questioning!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
Lets face it we'll all be media slaves in the next 10 years. Imagine the impact on the human race! Its not just us, the people planning and creating this it "will" effect them also, but of course there not thinking about that!
We are heading toward a disaster, with privacy, paranoia of terrorists, all the large corporations controlling everything you do, eat watch, hear, feal, Just be glad where not burning books yet!
huh if Thats what it'll mean to be "Free" in the "Free world" forget it!
One of the major topics at SIGKDD this year will be privacy preserving data mining (it has been a hot topic for a couple of years now). The current research is quit promising for anything in which all we need is a statistical aggregate. So preference mining, such as what Amazon does, can certainly be done while preserving a high degree of privacy.
No one knows how to do link-mining (find a terrorist cell in a group of people), while preserving privacy, however. Personally, I am not convinced that that type of stuff is possible.
I'm starting to worry that reading /. is going to be somthing that might cause my personal Big Brothers to worry about me. I, for one, would feel better is /. was made avaialble over https.
seriously,although Republicans are about equally responsible for increasing government, laws, programs,spending etc. At least ideologically they oppose it.For Democrats more laws,regulations,rules etc. is what they openly proclaim to be "all about".
Voting for change is horribly overrated.
Neither major party in the USA is going to change the institutional buearocracy.
With legitimate looking subjects and attachment names, ...
I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.
Only Stallman could associate those five things together in a single sentence without a blush.
What's next, suggesting moral equivalence between the genocide in Rwanda and MS's "embrace and extend" tactics?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So the extended families in the overcrowded public housing projects are now all guilty. Probably 50% or more of the residents there at any one time are "in the system", with either convictions or uncharged arrests. It's almost time to convert Manhattan into a prison island.
--
make install -not war
...a member of the communist party?
Speak up Mr. Smith, you're in Washington now.
I'd suggest that they apply this social network analysis starting from the top down. I mean doesn't that make sense? Follow the money.
Hell, you can find foot soldiers (you know, the guys who crash the planes into the buildings) on any street corner. Just look at the US Marines. For under $16k a year (the bulk of the E1 to E4 section of the rank pyramid) and 3 to 4 months of training, you can build yourself a natural born killer, 10% of whom will go on to be lifers.
If you're going to try to put all the foot soliders in jail, you might as well imprision the entire middle east (including these of who immigrated to the US).
- Phlogiston T. Muzzlethwick III, Esq.
except for a few unknown subjects, it's already been done.
I'd highly doubt military specific info was in there, since it's mostly used by lawyers and some researchers.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
This comment is a direct copy of this comment.
scumbucket has a history of doing this.
(+1 Funny) or (-1 Troll)? You decide.