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Meet PRISM's English Little Brother: Socmint

Posted by timothy on from the do-you-know-winston-smith-in-real-life dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a story at Ars Technica, according to which "For the past two years, a secretive unit in the Metropolitan Police has been developing the tools for blanket surveillance of the public's social media conversations. 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. ... Surveillance operations often require a ministerial sign-off or permission from a superior, but it is unclear whether targeting of public social media data requires the same level of oversight, as head of research at Privacy International Eric King points out."

20 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. So it's not really the same then... by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because all it does is just scrape public data, whilst Prism targets private data, which is kind of a fundamental difference.

    1. Re:So it's not really the same then... by ledow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah.

      Basically anything they are doing there, I could do and not get into trouble (so long as you stick to the DPA, etc., and there's no evidence to suggest they don't). Hell, Google already do it too, and just about any number of web crawlers.

      That's a whole different ball game to "monitoring my conversations" when it comes to doing so by looking into the private records of my account, rather than what you can already find on Google.

    2. Re:So it's not really the same then... by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      It's still shitty.

      The only thing on Twitter that I find interesting enough to comment on is the ramblings of my local member of parliament. When he's being juvenile, such as when he says "it wasn't me it was the guy before me lol", I call him juvenile because that's what he is. I tell him I voted for him and I've made a big mistake. I tell him to stop posing for the cameras and to get on with the job he's paid to do. I tell him his government sucks and he should be ashamed of his and their actions.

      I now know I'm on The List and that limits my other activities on the internet too. It's shitty.

      now this is just comparable to the police reading the newspaper and you posting readers letters to the newspaper - and if you're already on the list why bother with anon? besides, if you were on a list it would be as long as the thames.

      headline is misleading. it would be more interesting to know if GB is spying on chinese turbine production capabilities by intercepting communications and passing them on to their domestic manufacturers - that would be more akin to PRISM.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:So it's not really the same then... by QuasiSteve · · Score: 2

      Because all it does is just scrape public data

      Even some of the staunchest "don't post in public that which you don't want to be public" proponents tend to draw lines.

      Remember this thing?
      http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/31/0145218/man-creates-creepy-stalking-app
      http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/04/02/1432257/worlds-creepiest-iphone-app-pulled-after-outcry
      ( tl;dr: App that combined public foursquare and facebook data so you could quickly find out more details about a person in a given location, like, say, how hot they are. )

      Or similarly (not directly public):
      http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/1719247/gps-maker-tomtom-submits-your-speed-data-to-police
      ( tl;dr: Drivers supplied data (opt-in) to TomTom, who in turn sold aggregated data to the public, one business member of which generated reports about congestion, speeds, etc. and sold that on to the police. )

      Turns out that some of those proponents really mean that 'public' means anybody who they deem to be part of that 'public'. Which may exclude creeps, stalkers, and government (entities).

    4. Re:So it's not really the same then... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that it is the long predicted end-game of the mass adoption of social media where everything gets put online. It borders on pre-crime, where the police actively look for people who seem like they might commit and offence.

      You also have to remember that many members of the police force are scum and will abuse this as much as possible. We already know they like to dig for dirt on people they don't like. It's becoming standard practice to throw in a few dubious but terrifying child porn charges based on the contents of a suspect's browser cache if they are not cooperating to the police's satisfaction. Now everything you ever said or posted can and will be used against you, out of context and even after you deleted it.

      It's somewhat like the Stasi. They had a file on everyone, spies everywhere potentially monitoring anything and everything being said or written for deviant behaviour. The effects were chilling.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. The Netherlands. by tsa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder what kind of spying methods the Netherlands use. We were the best of the world in tapping telephone conversations for a very long time. But our government has a good reputation for fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways, so I'm curious how they fare in the "spying on your own people" business.

    --

    -- Cheers!

    1. Re:The Netherlands. by jbeaupre · · Score: 3, Funny

      Outsourcing to GB and USA?

      --
      The world is made by those who show up for the job.
    2. Re:The Netherlands. by Xest · · Score: 2

      Who knows, maybe a cup to their ear against the wall in the room next to you? but I guess unlike us here in the UK you wouldn't name it so that it sounds like a new brand of shoe freshener for people with smelly feet at least.

    3. Re:The Netherlands. by MRe_nl · · Score: 3, Informative

      Symbolon http://defensieweblog.blogspot.nl/2013/04/aivdmivd-project-symbolon.html

      Argo II http://webwereld.nl/beveiliging/78311-regering-bevestigt-tapprojecten-aivd-en-mivd

      --
      "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
    4. Re:The Netherlands. by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You laugh, but the director of the Dutch secret service recently admitted to gathering intel on a large scale "so they'll have something valuable to trade with their counterparts abroad". Apparently you need to give up the goods on your own citizens in order to play the spy game on an international level.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  3. Don't you mean IngSocmint? by SomePoorSchmuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As I said of Western governments many years ago, "WE read 1984 and took it as a warning. THEY read 1984 and took it as a blueprint."

    --

    Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
  4. I'm a WhistleBlower by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm blowing the whistle on Facebook. I work for Facebook and support systems that also scour posts and collects personal information and trends. It is my understanding that this data, which is in the 1000's of TB's, is sold to governments and capitalist entities. I complained once, but they told me I was doing my country and the community great favors by what I was doing. Then my cat disappeared that night. Like I sai

    1. Re:I'm a WhistleBlower by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's worse than that. I have come into ownership of secret information about a classified NSA program known by the code name Magellan. The system is said to scour the whole Internet and present a simple user interface for searching this gigantic database, allowing the NSA to instantly conduct searches for information that used to be private and known only through word of mouth. This is only the first generation of this technology. The corporation Digital Research, heavily connected to the military-industrial complex, is working on a next-generation version called Alta Vista that will include a translation component called Babel Fish that will allow non-English content to be retrieved through English search queries, and the CIA has a classified program called Dog Pile that can tie the different systems together.

      It's really scary. You don't want to step into this world. Just getting a whiff of Dog Pile disgusts me. If anyone reading this has a position in Dog Pile, please tell us everything you can about what it's like.

      Captcha: "seminal". THE NSA IS IN MY BALLS!

  5. Re:Who are the "Metropolitan Police"? by Xest · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's okay, you can be forgiven for not having heard of them, it's not like they're the oldest police force in the world or anything:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Police_Service

  6. Re:you put it out there by liamevo · · Score: 2

    We have "tempora" for the none public data.

  7. Re:Who are the "Metropolitan Police"? by Inda · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oldest and most corrupt?

    They have been so many scandals since my birth, that naming them all would take too long, so I'll name the ones that are current in my mind.

    Currently they are investigating themselves for a victim smear campain. Last year 50 were suspended for corruption. They've been labled as "institutionalised racists" in the past. They've murdered people like Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes in recent years. They've sold out to the national press, more than once.

    'ello, 'ello, 'ello, what a 'orrible lot we are.

    --
    This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
  8. Re: Who are the "Metropolitan Police"? by stiggle · · Score: 2

    The title says they're "English" and there is only one English Metropolitan Police - aka "The Met"

  9. Re:Who are the "Metropolitan Police"? by RaceProUK · · Score: 2

    Not really - they're normally referred to as 'The Met'. Scotland Yard, or simply 'The Yard', is their HQ.

    --
    No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
  10. Re:you put it out there by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

    By avoiding Facebook, you are, at the very least, not putting your information on a fucking silver platter for them. Only imbeciles use Facebook.

    Imbeciles.... and subversive dissenters looking to poison the well with disinformation.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  11. That's good news :) by jopsen · · Score: 2

    But our government has a good reputation for fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways

    I feel the same way... I live in Denmark where the public sector also has a good reputation for "fucking up IT projects in catastrophic ways".

    So when it comes to the government spying on me, I feel fairly safe, knowing that at least my government doesn't have the competence to do so :)
    Seriously, we have law specifying that ISPs must log every 20th TCP/IP session, just IP addresses and timestamp.
    Everything is stored at the ISPs and they may only release it on court order. Cost 200 million USD to establish, 20 million USD to maintain every year.

    Yet, when asked a couple of years after the law as enacted, the police says they haven't used the logs yet, nor do they have any IT system capable of reading the logs. Because all ISPs writes logs in their own format :)
    So fear not, your governments ability to fuckup large IT project most likely also extents to the intelligence services.