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Questionable Data Mining Concerns IRC Community
jessekeys writes "Two days ago an article on TechCrunch about IRSeeK revealed to the community that a service logs conversations of public IRC channels and put them into a public searchable database.
What is especially shocking for the community is that the logging bots are very hard to identify. They have human-like nicks, connect via anonymous Tor nodes and authenticate as mIRC clients. IRSeeK never asked for permission and violates the privacy terms of networks and users. A lot of chatters were deeply disturbed finding themselves on the search engine in logs which could date back to 2005.
As a result, Freenode, the largest FOSS IRC network in existence, immediately banned all tor connections while the community gathered and set up a public wiki page to share knowledge and news about IRSeeK. The demands are clear: remove all existing logs and stop covert operations in our channels and networks.
Right now, the IRSeeK search is unavailable as there are talks talking place with Freenode Staff."
...that says the Bush administration is behind this somewhere. No stone unturned when it comes to spying on people. Follow the money and it'll lead to a no-bid DoD contract or a marriage of convenience with some gov agency.
Whether it's illegal or not is debatable. If you believe IRC is a commons, then there's no expectation of privacy in the first place. I put IRC, unencrypted email and web postings in the same category as billboards.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Great, no drones or bots. What about all the people openly trading kiddy porn?