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Wait, why not? Knowing who votes for what content, when, and in coordination with whom else seems like it would be extremely useful indeed! Aren't techniques li

Wait, why not? Knowing who votes for what content, when, and in coordination with whom else seems like it would be extremely useful indeed! Aren't techniques like this already used by FBI etc on Twitter when investigating illegal content and coordination of its' dissemination? Bot networks are taken down on Twitter and other sites all the time using voting data. Social voting data is a rather sizable and useful dataset for surveillance agencies. HN has a high concentration of current-high-impact and future-high-impact individuals and is therefore a reasonably interesting trove of information. I realize all this is indeed tinfoil-hat-ish stuff. But I'd be shocked in NSA/CIA/FBI etc was disinterested in online social voting habits of users. Also, you latched on to a single example I gave. HN may have your email address privately (if you gave it to them) and they also have your IP/access logs. This is all stuff that they save but is not publicly available information. I'm sure there's more as well. It's not just "internet points" and reducing the discussion down to simply dismissing a single one of my thoughts isn't going to get us anywhere.

Izkata 7y ago
GP said "score", so my guess is they weren't even thinking in that direction, just their posts that others voted on.
- cryptoz 7y ago
  > just their posts that others voted on But you can't calculate the 'score' without knowing who those people are, when they voted, and what else they voted on too. The score is a summary generated from lots of information. It's not just some number that carries no value.
_jal 7y ago
> HN may have your email address privately (if you gave it to them) and they also have your IP/access logs. This is all stuff that they save but is not publicly available information. I'm pretty certain there's nothing the NSA doesn't already have. See the Swowden gifts on MUSCULAR[1] the better-known PRISM[2], and XKEYSCORE[3]. There are other relevant programs, but I don't have my notes on that stuff with me at the moment. Anyway, I won't argue about how much the NSA values internet scores. Let's just say I can imagine a targeted extortion campaign against a specific individual using such inputs, but I can't see how the Great Hoover would use them as any sort of actionable signal. [1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsas-muscular-program-collects-too-much-data-from-yahoo-and-google/543/ http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsas-mus... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

Izkata 7y ago

GP said "score", so my guess is they weren't even thinking in that direction, just their posts that others voted on.

cryptoz 7y ago
> just their posts that others voted on But you can't calculate the 'score' without knowing who those people are, when they voted, and what else they voted on too. The score is a summary generated from lots of information. It's not just some number that carries no value.

_jal 7y ago

> HN may have your email address privately (if you gave it to them) and they also have your IP/access logs. This is all stuff that they save but is not publicly available information. I'm pretty certain there's nothing the NSA doesn't already have. See the Swowden gifts on MUSCULAR[1] the better-known PRISM[2], and XKEYSCORE[3]. There are other relevant programs, but I don't have my notes on that stuff with me at the moment. Anyway, I won't argue about how much the NSA values internet scores. Let's just say I can imagine a targeted extortion campaign against a specific individual using such inputs, but I can't see how the Great Hoover would use them as any sort of actionable signal. [1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsas-muscular-program-collects-too-much-data-from-yahoo-and-google/543/ http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsas-mus... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore