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US Government Is Building a 'Media Influence Database' to Track Journalists

36 points by dpatru 8y ago

ForHackernews 8y ago
This sounds like what Elon Musk wanted. Maybe his "Pravda" company can put in a bid.
CamelCaseName 8y ago
How short is the typical time to bid on a government contract? FTA, this was only accepting bids for 10 days! That hardly seems like enough time. Has there been any follow-up since the bid period closed on April 13th?
- acct1771 8y ago
  ...you don't actually think that the majority of government bids are anything more than for show, right?
Maarten88 8y ago
They can't store data from European journalists, it's not GDPR compliant to gather personal data without consent. (I'm assuming there is no law requiring this information to exist) In seriousness, it's scary how the US and EU seem to be driven apart recently. Incompatible laws and unilateral policies will lead to all sorts of real world problems.
- tartuffe78 8y ago
  Is your public work personal data?
  - Maarten88 8y ago
    I think not, but if you were to take thousands (maybe millions) of public articles, take the authors names and process the content to extract affiliations, opinions, religion and beliefs and compile a database from that, you are creating a new (and i.m.o. extremely dangerous) database with personal data. IANAL, but I think creating/having such a database would be highly illegal under GDPR.
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      Good thing the U.S. Federal government doesn't conduct business in Europe.
- rarec 8y ago
  >They can't store data from European journalists, it's not GDPR compliant [...] In complete seriousness, why would you think that the US government would give even the smallest of fucks about that? Why would any government care, for that matter? It's easy enough to just not tell you that they're doing it, and you would have quite literally no idea it exists.
microcolonel 8y ago
I don't think this is as sinister as it can be made out to be, or at least, I don't think this is a signal that things are becoming more sinister than they already were. It should be well known that this is one of the major things intelligence agencies like to track. It's hard to imagine that this wasn't part of the purpose of the original ORACLE contract; at this point it is a mystery to me why they need to contract externally for this, but I guess there's a bit more to it than is reported here. This is part of what they mean when they say PSY-OPS. In order to conduct the op, you have to select [an] asset[s]. In order to select [an] asset[s] you need to have some idea of which potential assets you can develop, and whether or not they will be helpful. From a policy perspective, I'm not sure operations like this should be permitted, but the mandate is there, and it has been there for decades by now. It is not unreasonable for them to request resources to fulfill that mandate.
fallingfrog 8y ago
There is no good reason for anybody to be doing this. I used to give the benefit of the doubt whenever a new action was taken by the government that seemed to have an exploitable loophole; but I've learned that if a regulation or agency can be weaponized and exploited, it will be. So to paraphrase George R.R. Martin, what's the worst reason that they could have to wanting to do this? Well, they likely want to stifle the voices of whoever they feel is opposing their power, or to map out the relationships between people in the media who make up the political left. Then, they may attempt to harass them, get them fired from their jobs, buy the organizations supporting them, and so forth. Or they may try to find some point of disagreement among them to turn them against each other. You probably think this is paranoid; but history suggests that something like this is what will happen.

36 points by dpatru 8y ago

This sounds like what Elon Musk wanted. Maybe his "Pravda" company can put in a bid.

How short is the typical time to bid on a government contract? FTA, this was only accepting bids for 10 days! That hardly seems like enough time. Has there been any follow-up since the bid period closed on April 13th?

acct1771 8y ago
...you don't actually think that the majority of government bids are anything more than for show, right?

Maarten88 8y ago

They can't store data from European journalists, it's not GDPR compliant to gather personal data without consent. (I'm assuming there is no law requiring this information to exist) In seriousness, it's scary how the US and EU seem to be driven apart recently. Incompatible laws and unilateral policies will lead to all sorts of real world problems.

tartuffe78 8y ago
Is your public work personal data?
- Maarten88 8y ago
  I think not, but if you were to take thousands (maybe millions) of public articles, take the authors names and process the content to extract affiliations, opinions, religion and beliefs and compile a database from that, you are creating a new (and i.m.o. extremely dangerous) database with personal data. IANAL, but I think creating/having such a database would be highly illegal under GDPR.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    Good thing the U.S. Federal government doesn't conduct business in Europe.
rarec 8y ago
>They can't store data from European journalists, it's not GDPR compliant [...] In complete seriousness, why would you think that the US government would give even the smallest of fucks about that? Why would any government care, for that matter? It's easy enough to just not tell you that they're doing it, and you would have quite literally no idea it exists.

microcolonel 8y ago

I don't think this is as sinister as it can be made out to be, or at least, I don't think this is a signal that things are becoming more sinister than they already were. It should be well known that this is one of the major things intelligence agencies like to track. It's hard to imagine that this wasn't part of the purpose of the original ORACLE contract; at this point it is a mystery to me why they need to contract externally for this, but I guess there's a bit more to it than is reported here. This is part of what they mean when they say PSY-OPS. In order to conduct the op, you have to select [an] asset[s]. In order to select [an] asset[s] you need to have some idea of which potential assets you can develop, and whether or not they will be helpful. From a policy perspective, I'm not sure operations like this should be permitted, but the mandate is there, and it has been there for decades by now. It is not unreasonable for them to request resources to fulfill that mandate.

fallingfrog 8y ago

There is no good reason for anybody to be doing this. I used to give the benefit of the doubt whenever a new action was taken by the government that seemed to have an exploitable loophole; but I've learned that if a regulation or agency can be weaponized and exploited, it will be. So to paraphrase George R.R. Martin, what's the worst reason that they could have to wanting to do this? Well, they likely want to stifle the voices of whoever they feel is opposing their power, or to map out the relationships between people in the media who make up the political left. Then, they may attempt to harass them, get them fired from their jobs, buy the organizations supporting them, and so forth. Or they may try to find some point of disagreement among them to turn them against each other. You probably think this is paranoid; but history suggests that something like this is what will happen.