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NYPD spent millions to contract with firm banned by Meta for fake profiles
- tyingq 3y agoSounds like the idea is that the fake profiles are created so they can make mass "friend requests". Then, when those friend requests are accepted by some amount of your actual friends, it unlocks more access to your data. Or even more if you're fooled and accept one of the fake profiles as a friend/follower. I guess NYPD's way around people that don't make their profiles fully public. It would be interesting if Facebook is willing to punish/ban/etc not just the companies directly doing this, but their clients as well.
- Simulacra 3y agoYou raise an interesting point. Friend requests. I remember some researchers set up a fake profile of a woman who worked for the US department of defense. The profile was inundated with men requesting friendship connections. I don't accept a friend request unless I actually know the person. Do people randomly accept these requests knowing nothing about the other person than what is on their profile?
- nojs 3y agoI mean IG et al are designed so “number of followers” is a visible metric of social status, so a lot of people do.
- Ensorceled 3y agoI get a couple of friend requests a month, mostly from very attractive young women. I get a couple of fake requests from people pretending to be friends or family a week.
- heavyset_go 3y ago> Do people randomly accept these requests knowing nothing about the other person than what is on their profile? Yes, most people don't have a million friends on social media and will take what they can get, and the age-old honeypot tactic will never not work. If an attractive person shows interest in someone, they'll probably take it.
- MiddleEndian 3y agoThat's really odd to me. My Facebook friends are people I know from real life. Every so often I get random accounts (usually attractive women in random locations with no mutual friends) trying to add me and I will report them as spammers.
- heavyset_go 3y agoI'm the same way, but the platforms incentivize the collecting of friends and have like a decade+ of gameification features to promote it.
- MiddleEndian 3y agoPerhaps Twitter or Instagram, which seem to involve people mixing their personal lives with strangers (idk never really used them), but regular Facebook doesn't seem to be used that way by anyone I know.
- heavyset_go 3y agoThis is an old strategy, and one of the reasons I don't accept random friend requests. It isn't just the NYPD that does this, it's advertisers, data mining companies, financial institutions, employers, nation-states, ex's, stalkers, etc. It's cheap and easy to do, so why wouldn't organizations mine that data that have the resources to do so?
- sneak 3y agoIf your strategy is to give private data to an ad company and then expect who you do or do not friend to be the perimeter that controls its distribution, you have already lost. The best thing you can do is to delete your profiles on these services.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoSuch services are useful (to me, for one), you're throwing out the baby with the bath water.
- sneak 3y agoThe problem is that when you are on it, you contribute to the network effect and make it more useful to others to submit themselves to surveillance in turn. You and your interactions with your friends becomes the honey in the trap. I urge a visit to the Stasi museum in Berlin.
- noman-land 3y agoThe Stasi museum was horrifying. It felt like walking thru the history of American politics of the past 20 years in parallel.
- noman-land 3y agoThe baby has already died and the bathwater is diseased and festering. Give it a proper funeral if you like, but it needs to be buried deep in the ground where it cannot spread any more disease.
- couchand 3y agoYet another disturbing revelation about the NYPD brought to light by the STOP project. They're doing great work fighting an uphill battle -- they also tried (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to keep Mayor Adams's NYPD from flying surveillance drones among the crowds, and even into private backyards, at J'Ouvert this weekend. (He got the idea from his recent trip to visit Netanyahu, who does all sorts of crazy stuff like that regularly.
- Spooky23 3y agoThis type of stuff is the predicted consequence of the increase in surveillance and intelligence functions with state and local police that escalated after 9/11. You can’t give military style tools to poorly disciplined police forces without consequences. With the NSA or the Army, the problems are policy. With an org like NYPD, they don’t really have control of “the troops”, so who knows what’s happening.
- willcipriano 3y agoIn America we have a "policy" against search without probable cause that the NSA consistently violates. Policy doesn't keep them in line.
- hypeit 3y ago> Policy doesn't keep them in line. This is correct. It's also the argument for ending qualified immunity and defunding the police.
- trinsic2 3y agoDoes defunding the police mean stop having a police force in the country?
- ryandrake 3y ago"Defunding" has unfortunately become a vague word that means different things to different activists. To me, it means removing the "military tools" that OP mentions, removing their incentives to escalate to violence and otherwise violate people's rights (or providing financial disincentives), and ideally, ultimately disarming them. Stop the money flow from taxpayers that encourages, enables, and results in all the bad behavior.
- 54rfefrg 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- einpoklum 3y agoI'm guessing Meta also probably spent millions to contract a firm raided by the NYPD for fake-something.
- steveBK123 3y agoScraping social media platforms may be against their terms of service, but its not illegal or unethical. People seem to think social media is akin to private communications where it's more akin to the public square. Making your IG/FB/whatever profile private doesn't change that. In NYC for example, there's been a large uptick in teen shootings, many adjacent to schools, and a lot of it involves the idiots posting on social media before & after. One tool could be simply scraping social media for these postings. Another alternate, pre-internet tool was stop&frisk. While you have a constitutional right to not be searched without consent/probably cause, you do not have a constitutional right to spouting off in the public square without consequence. What you say publicly can & will be used against you in the court of law. Putting out an IG post of yourself with illegal guns or inciting a shooting is no more private than printing out posters of the same and putting them up around the neighborhood.
- throwawayapples 3y ago> you do not have a constitutional right to spouting off in the public square without consequence Actually, in the U.S., you literally have that specific constitutional right. The First Amendment protects "spouting off in the public square without consequence" via the Freedoms of Assembly (the right to gather), Speech (say what you like without consequence), Religion (believe what you like), and the right to petition the government. Loud complaining or even vague and non-specific threats (such as "I'll make you pay for this!") are actually protected by the First Amendment. There are very rare and limited exceptions, such as "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".
- 10000truths 3y agoLet's be clear here. You have the right to spout off in the public square without government consequences. Others, including Meta itself, are still free to hold you accountable for what you say.
- throwawayapples 3y ago
- SN76477 3y agoPolice should not be able to lie without a warrant.
- lr4444lr 3y agoWhat's the warrant supposed to do? If you don't want to talk to police, don't. If they have arrested you on probable cause, their having a warrant is the least of your concern.
- SN76477 3y agoIf the police are acting as a citizen to gather information, they should have a warrant. It cannot and should not be arbitrary.
- westurner 3y agoIf they do not disclose credentials, and they are defrauding and/or identity-thefting and thereby sabotaging one, is one fairly regarded as hostile and what is a fair use of force in self defense?
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThe force they use to kill you when you try this will be considered valid in court for sure.
- westurner 3y agoScenario: A harasses/assails/defrauds/identity_thefts/sabotages B. (A does not disclose any credential of legal authority to B, who has the right to check the validity of A's credentials if claimed as material prior to such altercation.) Given self-defense right due to the initial positive hostile action of A, B is not legally obligated to request that the or a state pursue Due Process against A in the immediate or before the Statute of Limitations. So, if someone is defrauding you, you have the right to self defense (and also Equal Protection of your Equal Rights).
- cvccvroomvroom 3y agoSo the NYPD is getting into precrime "detection" like the PRC. Are they going to beat confessions out of "guilty" thoughtcrime "perpetrators" too?
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThey definitely already do that it's an important part of the role of police. Chicago did it so much they made a special compound for it, but it's not like chicago invented the practice or are the only ones ever to have done it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility
- prions 3y agoNot new. Seeing as the NYPD also surveils people well outside of the city: https://www.nj.com/news/2012/02/nypd_muslims.html https://www.nj.com/news/2012/02/nypd_muslims.html
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoNYPD sends undercover cops across state lines to spy on other states' residents that are engaged in lawful activities. It's well documented. The NYC government has traditionally treated their police force as its own personal millitary and intelligence service, and neighboring states as hostile foreign enemies.
- p_j_w 3y ago>Are they going to beat confessions out of "guilty" thoughtcrime "perpetrators" too? Have police across the country NOT been doing this for decades now?
- solarpunk 3y agoin the event people want to read about one of the most egregious instances of this in recent times: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility
- WaitWaitWha 3y agoI have become jaded with most news, specially with those that are unable (refuse?) to link to the basis of their claims. "Documents obtained by ...shared with the Guardian" "Internal documents [...] obtained and shared with the Guardian in 2021" The only external item I found was NYPD "Social Network Analysis Tools: Impact And Use Policy" from April 2021 which does state how they collect and use social media data. Similarly described & linked LAPD behavior also lacks evidence. Anyone have links to these documents? (I do not want to do this. Why do I have to do the work of investigative journalist? I just want to be able to trust them; alas trust is built over time and broken in seconds. [insert lamenting grumbling]) edit: documents can be redacted.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoSometimes not all documents can be shared publicly if they contain sensitive information, so it's balanced out by sharing it with a trusted third party that reports on it. I understand the frustration when the report is dealing with public documents or research. Other reporters will probably end up getting access to these documents and should be able to confirm the claims, presumably.
- hef19898 3y agoSo you want journalists to doxx their confidential sources?
- vorpalhex 3y agoNo, they want the evidence to be confirmable.
- hef19898 3y agoEvidence that most likely leads directly to the source. Especially in investigative journalism, true that a lot quick online stories are a different story. I do understand why not all spurce material can be published, but that source material is usually strictly vetted before publication. And that is were the brand of newspapers comes in.
- celtoid 3y agoVoyager Labs and Cobwebs Technologies are both linked to foreign intelligence, specifically Israeli intelligence. NYPD and foreign intelligence are an uncomfortable mix, imo.
- 23B1 3y agoThe NYPD and other big city police departments have been buying and using the same tools as the IC for years. When you hear about 'dual use' tech like Palantir, after DOD/IC these companies immediately target and sell to domestic law enforcement, from the FBI all the way down to the local PD. I don't want to defund the police; I do want them to behave like they are part of the neighborhood and not its enforcers. EDIT: Slashing funding ≠ defunding. It's a terrible, terrible argument that makes no sense, alienates people who'd otherwise support a more reasonable approach, and perfectly embodies the 'all or nothing' style of modern day performance politics.
- hypeit 3y ago> I don't want to defund the police; I do want them to behave like they are part of the neighborhood and not its enforcers. The only way this can be achieved is through defunding the police. Take away all of their military arsenal budget, cyber spy budget, money for pensions... The good that money could do the communities it's currently actively harming is almost unfathomable.
- 23B1 3y agoAbsolute rubbish. Police are a necessary part of a peaceable society; 'Defund the police' is virtue signaling for wealthy people who live in safe neighborhoods and who've never experienced real violence.
- hypeit 3y agoThat's absolutely not true. The impoverished communities are the ones most damaged by over policing. Common sense would tell you that if the massive police budgets were invested into bettering the health of those same communities, that crime would go down.
- 23B1 3y agoNo, that is not common sense at all, especially when you think about incentives. Bureaucracies, if left unmanaged as they are today, will always find ways to increase their own budget or resource. It's as true with police departments as it is with... HR departments, or the Catholic Church, or the gun lobby, or unions, or congress, or Google. The way to manage unchecked behavior is through structures and leadership that aligns incentives to policy. We do it all the time in plenty of other areas of society.
- Mizoguchi 3y agoIf something is banned by Meta it must be criminal or at least unethical. Meta, the paladin of data privacy.
- hhs 3y ago> Voyager Labs, a surveillance company that has been sued by Meta for using nearly 40,000 fake Facebook accounts to collect data on an estimated 600,000 users. If interested, this is Meta’s newsroom piece of legal action against Voyager Labs for scraping user data: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/leading-the-fight-against-scraping-for-hire/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/leading-the-fight-against-...
- whodoesthat 3y ago[flagged]