Slashdot Mirror
Helping the FBI Track You
Hasan M. Elahi writes in the NY Times about his run-in with the FBI several months after September 11th, 2001. They'd received an erroneous report that he had explosives and had fled the country, so they were surprised when he showed up at an airport and was flagged by watch-list software. Elahi chose not to fight the investigation, and provided the FBI with enough detail about his life to convince them that he was a lawful citizen. But then, he kept going, providing more and more information about his life, documenting his every move and making it available online. His experience has been that providing too much information affords almost the same privacy blanket as too little. Quoting:
"On my Web site, I compiled various databases that show the airports I’ve been in, food I’ve eaten at home, food I’ve eaten on the road, random hotel beds I’ve slept in, various parking lots off Interstate 80 that I parked in, empty train stations I saw, as well as very specific information like photos of the tacos I ate in Mexico City between July 5 and 7, and the toilets I used. ... A lot of work is required to thread together the thousands of available points of information. By putting everything about me out there, I am simultaneously telling everything and nothing about my life. Despite the barrage of information about me that is publicly available, I live a surprisingly private and anonymous life."
But if a suspect fellow is giving them access to everything he's supposedly doing I'd be trying real hard to find what he was trying to hide?
The problem is if you're a criminal and you want to pin something on a sucker, if you have a dude with his life posted online then you can set the poor guy up. I wouldn't ever recommend posting every move you make to the internet because at some point someone will use it against you. This world is predatory in nature.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
A lot of work is required to thread together the thousands of available points of information.
No, it is not. Data-mining is real and getting better every day. Huge amounts of data are no hindrance. It is certainly not harder to find a specific piece of information about you just because you put much more online.
Interesting thought, but I don't think it's a good idea. Volunteering everything might work as long as there are very few people doing it -- but if everyone starts doing it, it then (i) the feds will focus on improving software that automatically filters out suspicious traits from the online data, and (ii) not sharing everything will be deemed suspicious.
We already have this - it's called Facebook.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
But by posting this story constantly on slashdot it is as if they have never posted it at all. The paradox ensures that it is fresh and newsworthy every time.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
...he's doing exactly the same thing as every Facebook user. and twitter user. and foursquare user. etc.
This space available.
Actually, the top statement is true. The real problem is that what with the ton of idiotic laws we have, almost every person is surely doing *something* illegal, often enough not even knowing about it.
His assumptions about the nature of information sharing and privacy are dangerously wrong.
The problem of information sharing is inequity; if it turns out that he documents his presence at a laundromat on some random dull October day, and later it turns out that some terrorists used to meet up there, his documentation of that random laundromat appearance will put him under scrutiny all over again - without any concrete reason. Meanwhile, some other fellow who rode his bike and paid with cash and didn't document his life on the web will probably never be scrutinized.
There is a fundamental issue with all mass intelligence/data collection: Humans don't understand conditional probabilities.
When we start to use large databases of essentially random data to inform investigations, we greatly increase the likelihood that investigations impact random people.
FTFA:
"I COULD have contested the legality of the investigation and gotten a lawyer. But I thought that would make things messier. It was clear who had the power in this situation."
No, American police, whether FBI or state or local, have no power unless you let them interrogate you without a lawyer. This isn't Europe where police investigations start with a beating: you just have to ask, politely, for a lawyer, and you hold all the cards.
He gave them all the power. Was he justifiably scared? Sure, I can completely understand that. He probably wasn't prepared to be grilled.
But this is all the preparation anyone needs: just remember to say, "I'd be happy to help you, officer, but to answer any questions I'll need a lawyer."
Why would any information on a blog be taken as 100% truth? Since you can edit photo meta-data there is no way to prove when a photo was taken, where it was taken, by whom it was taken, or what camera it was taken with; all of this data can be spoofed. Combine falsified photos with an elaborate story about your whereabouts and make a post on your blog through a vpn from your phone so it looks like you were at home when you posted it. If you're doing this on a regular basis then it wouldn't be hard to create a semi-automatic system to do most of this work for you.
Are we to believe that an investigative authority such as the FBI is going to simply take someones electronic word for it?
Any trivial fact about you that sounds the slightest bit suspicious can be used against you to get an indictment or just a search warrant.
Thats why the only fact you give them is that you want a lawyer.
Anything that you say to the police during an investigation can be used against you, but nothing that you say to the police during an investigation can be used to help you.
"His name was James Damore."