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Researchers See a Post-Snowden Chilling Effect In Our Search Data
Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "How risky is it to use the words "bomb," "plague," or "gun" online? That was a question we posed, tongue in cheek, with a web toy we built last year called Hello NSA. It offers users suggested tweets that use words that drawn from a list of watchwords that analysts at the Dept. of Homeland Security are instructed to search for on social media. "Stop holding my love hostage," one of the tweets read. "My emotions are like a tornado of fundamentalist wildfire." It was silly, but it was also imagined as an absurdist response to the absurdist ways that dragnet surveillance of the public and non-public Internet jars with our ideas of freedom of speech and privacy. And yet, after reading the mounting pile of NSA PowerPoints, are all of us as comfortable as we used to be Googling for a word like "anthrax," even if we were simply looking up our favorite thrash metal band? Maybe not. According to a new study of Google search trends, searches for terms deemed to be sensitive to government or privacy concerns have dropped "significantly" in the months since Edward Snowden's revelations in July."
select *
from collected_data
where HasWarrant = true
Show the incumbent protection machine (98% incumbent reelection rate) how much you despise them. Vote independent, and if that isn't a choice, vote for the challenger, regardless of party.
Let's not blow this out of proportion. Sure, it would be the bomb if the NSA stopped spying on everyone, as all this spying is a plague on our freedoms. But let's not burn any bridges here.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
What if Google is just conveniently forgetting to log more of those terms so that they don't have to do as much work snooping on people? I mean, if you don't have as many terrorist suspects showing up on your search engine you surely wont have as many illegal search warrants to process.
Brilliant! The desired effect is achieved!
Remind me again, wasn't the Internet hailed as a game-changer that would bring people together, make us better human beings, or at least different.
Where is this profound change? It did not happen. Perhaps the optimists have underestimated people's distrust for the different? So, even though James and Ivan could chat while being 10000 miles away, and learn how for instance the media that feeds them is biased diametrically opposite, most of the time they didn't.
But just to make sure, you know just in case the impossible happened, all governments in the world made sure we won't talk with each other. Let me not recount the endless torrent of censorship all over the place across the whole world - this is /. after all. But in line with the topic, let me just remark - if I want to speak with someone from, say, an Arab country, to discuss the situation and gain the others side view - how many words we would use in the discussion that would be in those lists? Tens at least, I am sure. Now I have to be afraid of being flagged, and it is not paranoia - do you want to bet your ass in Gitmo that Buttle/Tuttle thing won't happen? @#$% that!
Because if someone thought you liked the band, that would be horrible.
Oh the embarrassment! On your permanent record, no less.
Unfortunately, so has Congress.
Yeah, there seems to be an inordinate amount of off-topic or intentionally offensive comments. This problem seems to be getting worse.
Only on new threads. Give it a little time and they are down to -1 and benieth your threshold.
searches for terms deemed to be sensitive to government or privacy concerns have dropped "significantly" in the months since Edward Snowden's revelations in July.
It is hard for me to find this shift to be acceptable. The government's oppressive surveillance must not lead to people changing the information they consume. That is the very epitome of cultural programming, the cost of which is far to great for our society to suffer.
I think we have a solution; decentralized distribution of the very kinds of information that is being chilled. Copies of Wikipedia, Eroid.org, The Anarchists Cookbook (OK, I'm dating myself, and showing my ignorance of modern anarchist material online, but whatever the modern equivalent of that book is), and similar materials, written to 16 Gig USB sticks, and available for purchase at your local hackerspace for $20. Pop it into your computer, and read whatever you want without the goverment spying on you. Maybe even make it a bootable distro, with networking disabled, so you can be truly locked down (except for airgap-jumping attacks, of course, but those are still pretty esoteric). Maybe call it "Thoughtcrime On A Stick". Hmm, actually, I like that name so much I'm grabbing the domain names.
Don't get me wrong, I don't relish the idea of making that sort of information more readily available; what peaceful minded person would? But if the alternative is chilling human knowledge, and the empirical evidence shows that it is already happening, what choice do I have?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Post Snowden? Can we stop blaming the one guy that did the right thing for uncovering the mountain of shit our government had piled up for itself? He didn't even release it all, a lot of the revelations have come from FOIA requests!
It'd would be like calling "Post Woodward, Nixon was impeached" That Woodward jerk! How could he do such a thing!
I'm fairly certain this "Post Snowden" line was written wholesale by the NSA. Way to perpetuate propaganda Slashdot.
I for one have only increased my search phrases to include "fundamentalist terror victim shoves anthrax-laden biochemical warheads into buttocks to appeal to president obama porn"
Guys, if you don't want the NSA scanning your websites, just set up a robots.txt. Duh.
This is why I keep my full 1992 set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia handy. Just incase I need to look up Anthrax, or Bomb or Detonator.
I can do it safely, without anyone knowing.
Or, one could go to the public library and look at the stuff in the Reference section, one cannot even check those books out! ..Or, just go to the regular stacks and read the books on-site, bring tracing paper for the diagrams.. oh man, there is a whole world of information outside of the internet! and the NSA subpenas
I recently considered getting back into model rocketry, but using more high-end rockets rather than little Estes kits. Since I've read plenty about rocket chemistry (read "Ignition!" if you like chemistry at all - it's worth it), I quickly figured out that a relatively easy* one to build would be a hydrogen peroxide monoprop - H2O2 decomposes into H2O + O2 in an exothermic manner, which can be used for thrust. It an also be used as an oxidizer with most fuels. For both you'll need high-strength peroxide - the CVS stuff is just a solution of like 1% H2O2 in H2O, but you'll want 80% or higher for rocketry. I decided to see how readily available it was, and how expensive it would be. It wasn't too expensive, and could be found fairly easily, but I wonder if I'm now on a watch list just for looking at a chemical that honestly wouldn't make a good terrorist weapon at all.
* This would be easy in comparison to, say, one using nitric acid or liquid oxygen. It would still be a very difficult thing to build, which is why I'm probably not going to actually build one.
Actually, the results here are important legally. One important persuasive argument in free speech cases is the chilling effect on speech. Empirical data showing that people do *not* engage in certain speech because of a government practice is useful for lawyers arguing against the illegality of those practices.
So, let me get this straight.
The same search engine we are actively not using, out of fear that someone is watching what we're searching, is used to run a search to generate a report to reveal what we are not searching for.
Uh, you know that chilling effect we're all talking about here? Yeah, that would be Mr. Don't-be-Evil over there...
I recall seeing many Usenet posts ending with "NSA Line Eater Food" followed by lists of naughty keywords back in 1986 when I started college. The only differences are that now we have confirmation of what we took for granted back then (and probably before), and the scope is beyond what even the tinfoil hat guys believed.
...who are ruining our everything.
Those who would take our freedoms are the ones who are "ruining our everything." Those engaged in asymmetric warfare (including terror techniques) are definitely a concern. However, we've compromised our ideals (liberty, freedom of expression, freedom from government intrusion into the practice of our belief systems, etc., etc., etc.) with the focus on that small group, by allowing the government to intrude on our lives, our persons and our ideas.
You're still more likely to be killed by lightning than in violent attack against the general populace. You're many, many times more likely to die in or by an automobile than in such an attack. Strange that we're not allocating our resources to fit the probability of such occurrences.
That leads me to believe that the agenda of those engaged in curtailing our liberty is not one of preventing such attacks, but something else. What is that something else? A good question. It's possible that there is a nefarious plot to destroy our way of life (which, if true, is succeeding). However, I think Hanlon's Razor should be applied here.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"
- George Orwell, 1984
Agreed. I remember an article on slashdot before outlining the process of parallel construction and how it was used against U.S. residents/civilians. They may be mining the data for an investigation and then not using it in court which is illegal, and if it isn't it should be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Where do you think "anonymous tips" come from?
On another site, there was a thread about a guy ranting on his Facebook wall about militias and general right wing stuff. He included something along the lines "you should watch out, people are getting angry" (paraphrased). The FBI called and wanted to talk to him.. Stupidly, he went to them. They had a folder FULL of his online activity, some of it going way back previous to the rant. They had no warrant, and he went willingly (stupid, but whatever).
The point being, they record everything you do with an electronic communication device, and back fill until they find something or think they "know" you.
There is likely to be an entire hidden justice system going on. The problem is, because it's hidden, we don't know what makes it work and how it is motivated. (Hint: IRS investigations used as a political weapon.) This "justice system" acts by tipping off the facade justice system out front.
There has been a HUGE increase in the number of "we got these guys" without a reason HOW they got those guys. I think the hidden system is trying to appear useful. They used to just ignore smaller stuff like drug lords, gang activity, etc. Now they don't. They need people to think it's useful now, where it was just used for political purposes before.
This stuff is way bigger than just "parallel construction." Whatever it is, it is not us anymore. The grand children of the Millennials (those idiots) will not have a "United States" as we knew it to live in.
Not posting anonymously, because they'll figure it out anyway.