5 ms·

Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior

151 points by mo 12y ago

rscott 12y ago
The quality of writing in this paper is quite terrible. I'm not sure what kind of review this went though, but I'm kind of shocked it got approved with data points named "After Prism Revelations". Revelations is an emotional word for that data descriptor.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- logicallee 12y ago
  Your comment is extremely bizarre. The paper seems exceptionally clear and well-written! It's rather short. It gives the necessary background and states its assumptions, it is very easy reading. Can you quote a paragraph you didn't like? Is your main issue that the data descriptor is defined elsewhere (as opposed to a date range)? I don't think the descriptor itself is emotional at all. By the way, I thought based on the abstract that the effect would be rather large. For anyone who downloads the PDF, go to the graphs - the effect is actually a very small difference even on search terms rated to get people in trouble with their governmetn, as well as on personal-privacy related search terms. The effect is clearly there but rather small compared to what I was expecting. Granted I only spent a few minutes with the PDF and could be misinterpreting.
- ggwicz 12y ago
  "Revelations" is not emotional, it's a form of "reveal". "After PRISM Revelations" simply means "After PRISM was revealed", since it was hidden from the public before. So, Snowden revealed the existence and scope of PRISM to the group of people whose search behavior this study is analyzing (the general public). Not an emotional word and, overall, not bad writing in the study.
- mjn 12y ago
  This wasn't approved by anyone in particular. SSRN is a preprint archive, like arXiv.org, where anyone can upload their work. Some of the work published there has also published in peer-reviewed venues, some hasn't. This particular paper hasn't been; the 2nd author's CV lists it as one of four "work-in-progress" drafts she currently has circulating for comments, before presumably revising it, and submitting it to a journal sometime in the future.
sigzero 12y ago
I doubt it changed the search behavior of "Joe User" at all.
- aluhut 12y ago
  It propably at least changed the search behavior of the Bad Guys.
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    Stupid bad guys. Smart ones already assumed the NSA was poring through everything.
    - aluhut 12y ago
      Of course. As well as there will still be some that are even more stupid so we can have nice statistics about how successful the new tools are.
    - csandreasen 12y ago
      Take a look at the average violent criminal. The stupid ones are just as dangerous as the smart ones, and there's a lot more of them.
      - bediger4000 12y ago
        Terrorists aren't much like criminals. For a start, they're ideologically motivated. And that's the argument for why we as a society, need to treat terrorists differently than criminals in the first place. There's only a very, very few terrorists, even when the US government has done its level best to create as many as possible. I doubt we can take a quantitative argument like yours and get decent results.
        csandreasen 12y ago
        The term "bad guys" is much broader than just terrorist. Feel free to substitute "drug smugglers", "human traffickers", "members of organized crime groups", "militant extremists", or, yes, even "terrorists". Nor did I make any argument as to how to handle any of them. The point is that you don't have to be smart to cause harm. The smart ones were presumably harder to track beforehand; the not-so-smart ones are likely a lot smarter now.
sentientmachine 12y ago
What Snowden did, or more specifically what the faceless, unaccountable and un-nameable NSA directors did was what George Orwell was trying to capture in his famous novel. The notion of thoughtcrime and crimethink being the punishable event in the minds of the people. Where people are afraid to research something because of the perception that the secret unaccountable police will come take you away if you give the idea too much thought. And there is nothing you or anyone can do about it because the entity doing the enforcing is completely hidden. Even asking for the names of the directors and writing about what they've done is crimethink. Thinking about or asking for the document describing which thoughts are crimethink is also crimethink. But perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe a utopian civilization would consider thoughts of evil, thoughts of crime and intentions to harm others as a justifiably punishable event. If your neighbor is thinking about how to make a bomb, or how to kill someone, or how to commit suicide, or how to defraud and deceive others, wouldn't it be better if the secret police put a stop to it there? We could live in a post-crime society. Where everyone is un-corruptable and all humans treat each other as lovingly as we treat our own bodies. The problem with this is that the secret police only enforce the rules of the rulers, which has a thicker script for the lower classes than the upper classes.
- NhanH 12y ago
  > But perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe a utopian civilization would consider thoughts of evil, thoughts of crime and intentions to harm others as a justifiably punishable event. If your neighbor is thinking about how to make a bomb, or how to kill someone, or how to commit suicide, or how to defraud and deceive others, wouldn't it be better if the secret police put a stop to it there? > We could live in a post-crime society. Where everyone is un-corruptable and all humans treat each other as lovingly as we treat our own bodies. The problem with this is that the secret police only enforce the rules of the rulers, which has a thicker script for the lower classes than the upper classes. In the past, philosophers have been discussing about "The problem of evil"[0] - which is the paradox of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God allowing (morally) evil to exist. Obviously, it's normally discussed in a theological context, but one argument would apply to a non-theological context as well: the defense of free will. Since free will is the more important/ preferable than non-existent of evil, you can't have human with free will but without the choice of being evil. So as long as free will exists, you will have to be content with having evil/ crime etc as well. Just to be clear, "evil" in the previous paragraph is being used in the sense of morally bad, and not the invisible, flying, human-haunting type. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil
Holbein 12y ago
How about "how the Snowden relevations changed the behaviour with online porn"? Because I'm considering leaving all that behind. Some creepy organisation going all peeping tom on me? No thanks. Sure this has been researched as well?
- chippy 12y ago
  actually the study looks at other searches which would get them in trouble with friends, neighbours and colleagues. So yes it has been researched, partly.
greenyoda 12y ago
"Using panel data, our result suggest that cross-nationally, users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the U. S. government." Since their data is based on Google Trends, the only conclusion they can validly draw from their research is that users were less likely to search for such terms on Google. People with sensitive search topics may have moved to a search engine like DuckDuckGo, which doesn't log users' searches.

151 points by mo 12y ago

The quality of writing in this paper is quite terrible. I'm not sure what kind of review this went though, but I'm kind of shocked it got approved with data points named "After Prism Revelations". Revelations is an emotional word for that data descriptor.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
logicallee 12y ago
Your comment is extremely bizarre. The paper seems exceptionally clear and well-written! It's rather short. It gives the necessary background and states its assumptions, it is very easy reading. Can you quote a paragraph you didn't like? Is your main issue that the data descriptor is defined elsewhere (as opposed to a date range)? I don't think the descriptor itself is emotional at all. By the way, I thought based on the abstract that the effect would be rather large. For anyone who downloads the PDF, go to the graphs - the effect is actually a very small difference even on search terms rated to get people in trouble with their governmetn, as well as on personal-privacy related search terms. The effect is clearly there but rather small compared to what I was expecting. Granted I only spent a few minutes with the PDF and could be misinterpreting.
ggwicz 12y ago
"Revelations" is not emotional, it's a form of "reveal". "After PRISM Revelations" simply means "After PRISM was revealed", since it was hidden from the public before. So, Snowden revealed the existence and scope of PRISM to the group of people whose search behavior this study is analyzing (the general public). Not an emotional word and, overall, not bad writing in the study.
mjn 12y ago
This wasn't approved by anyone in particular. SSRN is a preprint archive, like arXiv.org, where anyone can upload their work. Some of the work published there has also published in peer-reviewed venues, some hasn't. This particular paper hasn't been; the 2nd author's CV lists it as one of four "work-in-progress" drafts she currently has circulating for comments, before presumably revising it, and submitting it to a journal sometime in the future.

sigzero 12y ago

I doubt it changed the search behavior of "Joe User" at all.

aluhut 12y ago
It propably at least changed the search behavior of the Bad Guys.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Stupid bad guys. Smart ones already assumed the NSA was poring through everything.
  - aluhut 12y ago
    Of course. As well as there will still be some that are even more stupid so we can have nice statistics about how successful the new tools are.
  - csandreasen 12y ago
    Take a look at the average violent criminal. The stupid ones are just as dangerous as the smart ones, and there's a lot more of them.
    - bediger4000 12y ago
      Terrorists aren't much like criminals. For a start, they're ideologically motivated. And that's the argument for why we as a society, need to treat terrorists differently than criminals in the first place. There's only a very, very few terrorists, even when the US government has done its level best to create as many as possible. I doubt we can take a quantitative argument like yours and get decent results.
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        The term "bad guys" is much broader than just terrorist. Feel free to substitute "drug smugglers", "human traffickers", "members of organized crime groups", "militant extremists", or, yes, even "terrorists". Nor did I make any argument as to how to handle any of them. The point is that you don't have to be smart to cause harm. The smart ones were presumably harder to track beforehand; the not-so-smart ones are likely a lot smarter now.

sentientmachine 12y ago

What Snowden did, or more specifically what the faceless, unaccountable and un-nameable NSA directors did was what George Orwell was trying to capture in his famous novel. The notion of thoughtcrime and crimethink being the punishable event in the minds of the people. Where people are afraid to research something because of the perception that the secret unaccountable police will come take you away if you give the idea too much thought. And there is nothing you or anyone can do about it because the entity doing the enforcing is completely hidden. Even asking for the names of the directors and writing about what they've done is crimethink. Thinking about or asking for the document describing which thoughts are crimethink is also crimethink. But perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe a utopian civilization would consider thoughts of evil, thoughts of crime and intentions to harm others as a justifiably punishable event. If your neighbor is thinking about how to make a bomb, or how to kill someone, or how to commit suicide, or how to defraud and deceive others, wouldn't it be better if the secret police put a stop to it there? We could live in a post-crime society. Where everyone is un-corruptable and all humans treat each other as lovingly as we treat our own bodies. The problem with this is that the secret police only enforce the rules of the rulers, which has a thicker script for the lower classes than the upper classes.

NhanH 12y ago
> But perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe a utopian civilization would consider thoughts of evil, thoughts of crime and intentions to harm others as a justifiably punishable event. If your neighbor is thinking about how to make a bomb, or how to kill someone, or how to commit suicide, or how to defraud and deceive others, wouldn't it be better if the secret police put a stop to it there? > We could live in a post-crime society. Where everyone is un-corruptable and all humans treat each other as lovingly as we treat our own bodies. The problem with this is that the secret police only enforce the rules of the rulers, which has a thicker script for the lower classes than the upper classes. In the past, philosophers have been discussing about "The problem of evil"[0] - which is the paradox of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God allowing (morally) evil to exist. Obviously, it's normally discussed in a theological context, but one argument would apply to a non-theological context as well: the defense of free will. Since free will is the more important/ preferable than non-existent of evil, you can't have human with free will but without the choice of being evil. So as long as free will exists, you will have to be content with having evil/ crime etc as well. Just to be clear, "evil" in the previous paragraph is being used in the sense of morally bad, and not the invisible, flying, human-haunting type. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

Holbein 12y ago

How about "how the Snowden relevations changed the behaviour with online porn"? Because I'm considering leaving all that behind. Some creepy organisation going all peeping tom on me? No thanks. Sure this has been researched as well?

chippy 12y ago
actually the study looks at other searches which would get them in trouble with friends, neighbours and colleagues. So yes it has been researched, partly.

greenyoda 12y ago

"Using panel data, our result suggest that cross-nationally, users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the U. S. government." Since their data is based on Google Trends, the only conclusion they can validly draw from their research is that users were less likely to search for such terms on Google. People with sensitive search topics may have moved to a search engine like DuckDuckGo, which doesn't log users' searches.