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What so few people realize about the NSA spying debates is that the issues will extend into everything. This private company is building a mass surveillance d

by staunch 12y ago

What so few people realize about the NSA spying debates is that the issues will extend into everything. This private company is building a mass surveillance database to track people. They're scraping and archiving what used to be considered anonymous postings. Their current goal is to go after sex trafficking, but they could easily expand into spying on people for any reason. They're not the government, so I think they have a strong right to do this, but don't let cause of "the children" confuse the issue. This is a new kind of spying, unlike anything that has existed in the history of American society. Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. There's no question that we could save thousands of children per year. You would have to be a monster or a terrorist not to consent to having your data searched.

zenogais 12y ago
Warped kinda logic you got there.
- remarkEon 12y ago
  Not at all. The parent describes pretty succinctly how a liberal democratic society can chip away, over time, at some of its core values in order to go after "the bad guys". The bad guys in this instance are sex traffickers. But who knows who the next "bad guys" will be. Think of it this way - these guys built something that collects online behavior and checks it against known behaviors, catalogs "suspicious" listing activity, unmasks phone numbers etc (on a technical level, could someone add to the specifics of how this works?). In this case it's being used to target sex trafficking. But could it not also be used in less progressive countries to target minority community behavior? Could Russia, already with a history of discrimination against the LGBT community, use it to find and target those members? Edit: I don't mean that Russia could literally use this company's product. I meant the principle.
  - orbifold 12y ago
    There is research on identifying sexual orientation from Facebook profiles beyond those that volunteer thar information.
- nkozyra 12y ago
  Nothing warped about it, it's historically demonstrable. Emotional pleas are very effective at dulling an otherwise abrasive proposal. Think of how much complacency U.S. citizens yielded any time terrorism invoked. If someone said they had software that analyzed these same sites but provided no reason or impetus, a lot more eyebrows would be raised. When you say it's to protect children, there's an (expected) emotional response that makes this sort of thing easier to digest.
userbinator 12y ago
They're not the government, so I think they have a strong right to do this Personally I agree, but only on the basis that they appear to be only archiving publicly accessible information and the old mantra of "what you post online, stays online". Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. Or if everyone's lives were already controlled to the extent that they're essentially living in jail already... that seems like the ultimate result of a gradual increase in pervasive surveillance: people will become so used to, unable to oppose, and scared at the possibility of even thoughtcrime that they'll have no choice but to complacently conform, not unlike Orwell's 1984.
- sitkack 12y ago
  I think Wall-E is the more likely outcome. With some getting slightly better prisons (malls).
jdoliner 12y ago
> This is a new kind of spying, unlike anything that has existed in the history of American society. I think it's a bit disingenuous to call this "a new kind of spying" all of the data they're using is publicly available. I don't think it's a realistic view for the future that we'll be able to put things we don't want people to know about on public forums and trust that no one's going to build the tools to piece it together. That sounds like a really unsustainable security through obscurity situation to me.
- andrewfong 12y ago
  > I think it's a bit disingenuous to call this "a new kind of spying" all of the data they're using is publicly available. Actual spies devote substantial resources to analyzing publicly available information.[1] I'm not really sure how I feel about all of this as a moral or political issue, but I do think it's fair say that it's "a new kind of spying". Put another way -- the FBI has long had the ability to follow you around as you drove around town on publicly accessible roads. But the ability to track millions of people on public roads via cell phone triangulation is unprecedented. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence
- jdietrich 12y ago
  What, fundamentally, is the difference between a spy staking out your house and an algorithm analysing your social media data? A spy doesn't have to break into your house or break into your online accounts to spy on you. Just because something is possible and legal doesn't make it moral. The situation you describe as "unsustainable" is what many would call a reasonable expectation of privacy.
- noonespecial 12y ago
  They used to be able to follow anyone they wanted to. Now they can follow everyone. That is different indeed.
anigbrowl 12y ago
They're scraping and archiving what used to be considered anonymous postings. It's not anonymous when people put their phone number in the ad for commercial purposes.
analog31 12y ago
Google and Amazon doubtlessly already have more info about me.
art187 12y ago
Why does the government not have the right to crawl the internet and track content on it?
shurcooL 12y ago
> Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. If the police had that access, wouldn't the criminals avoid the insecure communication medium?
ryandalton 12y ago
I think we can distinguish ourselves from spies because we only collect open source intelligence - meaning publicly available records. Technology is like a knife. It can be used to create or destroy, can be used by a surgeon for good or for a killer for evil. The same is true for big data technologies. They can be used for mass surveillance and violation of civil liberties or for recovery of trafficked children. We're not violating anyone's civil liberties or right to privacy.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Centreal 12y ago
  That distinguishment is essential. Being able to offer distributed, decentralized, and open source intelligence is what we are waiting for maturity.
- angersock 12y ago
  Let's look through some of the things you claim, shall we? Images can be cross referenced against other ads to detect hidden relationships. Evidence artifacts can be collected and introduced during criminal proceedings. Rescue Forensics collects millions of records for anti-trafficking investigations and prosecution. Search by phone number, text, or images, and filter by location, age, and date ranges. Hidden phone numbers are unmasked so human traffickers can’t hide their victims online. Intelligence from across the world can be searched in one central location. Images can be cross-referenced against the rest of the web to find profiles and social media accounts. Our intuitive interface allows you to target the intelligence you need on all your devices. Yeah. So, you're straight-up building a massive blackmail ledger, without a stated business model other than "We're helping the police save the children!". One of my favorites, also from your front page: STOP SENDING SUBPOENAS Our database contains millions of records of classified advertisements representing up to two years of historical data. Stop waiting days or weeks to get a subpoena response from a hosting site that may only offer a few months of records. Find all the targeted intelligence you need right now. Yeah, man, that whole due-process thing is a pain in the ass, isn't it? Better to do the work for the .gov instead of making them follow their own laws. ~ I don't think it is a surprise to anyone who's been watching the trends lately with regards to law enforcement in the US and the trends with data mining that you are not receiving an unconditional pat on the back. Frankly, companies like yours are part of the problem--even if you do offer help in the small picture. EDIT: Bahahahahahaha, I love this one: The user-generated information archived by Rescue Forensics is completely unmodified and retrieval of this information is an automated process. We only redact copyrighted material, such as company logos or other intellectual property. Yes, so, you've got protection for companies, but nothing against, say, a deliberate smear campaign. Your platform looks like it doesn't do anything to prevent, say, a bunch of jerks deliberately scattering fake evidence, and you'll hoover it up all the same, I'm betting?
mc32 12y ago
The one thing I'd want to know about this outfit is whether they'd sell some of this intelligence to third parties. On their data collection they will discover paedos --which is great, but they will also be able to discover philanderers, cads, tax cheats, drug users, etc. If these things fall under law enforcement's orbit, that's one thing, the bad thing is the possibility of third parties getting this data and using it to blackmail people. Maybe they already have that angle covered, in which case, nevermind.
pekk 12y ago
Not being the government doesn't give anyone a strong right to build mass surveillance databases to target individuals.
- sitkack 12y ago
  There aren't any laws preventing the doxing of everyone, while the gov can't do it, they can buy those services on the open market. So mass surveillance gets outsourced to corps and we have instant fascism. So the flaw in the algebra is that the government can buy services for things it cannot legally do itself. Which means, doing or buying should be considered equivalent, to regular citizens it does. Corporations and governments have special rights where misdeeds are waved off with warnings or a change in position.

by staunch 12y ago

zenogais 12y ago

Warped kinda logic you got there.

remarkEon 12y ago
Not at all. The parent describes pretty succinctly how a liberal democratic society can chip away, over time, at some of its core values in order to go after "the bad guys". The bad guys in this instance are sex traffickers. But who knows who the next "bad guys" will be. Think of it this way - these guys built something that collects online behavior and checks it against known behaviors, catalogs "suspicious" listing activity, unmasks phone numbers etc (on a technical level, could someone add to the specifics of how this works?). In this case it's being used to target sex trafficking. But could it not also be used in less progressive countries to target minority community behavior? Could Russia, already with a history of discrimination against the LGBT community, use it to find and target those members? Edit: I don't mean that Russia could literally use this company's product. I meant the principle.
- orbifold 12y ago
  There is research on identifying sexual orientation from Facebook profiles beyond those that volunteer thar information.
nkozyra 12y ago
Nothing warped about it, it's historically demonstrable. Emotional pleas are very effective at dulling an otherwise abrasive proposal. Think of how much complacency U.S. citizens yielded any time terrorism invoked. If someone said they had software that analyzed these same sites but provided no reason or impetus, a lot more eyebrows would be raised. When you say it's to protect children, there's an (expected) emotional response that makes this sort of thing easier to digest.

userbinator 12y ago

They're not the government, so I think they have a strong right to do this Personally I agree, but only on the basis that they appear to be only archiving publicly accessible information and the old mantra of "what you post online, stays online". Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. Or if everyone's lives were already controlled to the extent that they're essentially living in jail already... that seems like the ultimate result of a gradual increase in pervasive surveillance: people will become so used to, unable to oppose, and scared at the possibility of even thoughtcrime that they'll have no choice but to complacently conform, not unlike Orwell's 1984.

sitkack 12y ago
I think Wall-E is the more likely outcome. With some getting slightly better prisons (malls).

jdoliner 12y ago

> This is a new kind of spying, unlike anything that has existed in the history of American society. I think it's a bit disingenuous to call this "a new kind of spying" all of the data they're using is publicly available. I don't think it's a realistic view for the future that we'll be able to put things we don't want people to know about on public forums and trust that no one's going to build the tools to piece it together. That sounds like a really unsustainable security through obscurity situation to me.

andrewfong 12y ago
> I think it's a bit disingenuous to call this "a new kind of spying" all of the data they're using is publicly available. Actual spies devote substantial resources to analyzing publicly available information.[1] I'm not really sure how I feel about all of this as a moral or political issue, but I do think it's fair say that it's "a new kind of spying". Put another way -- the FBI has long had the ability to follow you around as you drove around town on publicly accessible roads. But the ability to track millions of people on public roads via cell phone triangulation is unprecedented. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence
jdietrich 12y ago
What, fundamentally, is the difference between a spy staking out your house and an algorithm analysing your social media data? A spy doesn't have to break into your house or break into your online accounts to spy on you. Just because something is possible and legal doesn't make it moral. The situation you describe as "unsustainable" is what many would call a reasonable expectation of privacy.
noonespecial 12y ago
They used to be able to follow anyone they wanted to. Now they can follow everyone. That is different indeed.

anigbrowl 12y ago

They're scraping and archiving what used to be considered anonymous postings. It's not anonymous when people put their phone number in the ad for commercial purposes.

analog31 12y ago

Google and Amazon doubtlessly already have more info about me.

art187 12y ago

Why does the government not have the right to crawl the internet and track content on it?

shurcooL 12y ago

> Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. If the police had that access, wouldn't the criminals avoid the insecure communication medium?

ryandalton 12y ago

I think we can distinguish ourselves from spies because we only collect open source intelligence - meaning publicly available records. Technology is like a knife. It can be used to create or destroy, can be used by a surgeon for good or for a killer for evil. The same is true for big data technologies. They can be used for mass surveillance and violation of civil liberties or for recovery of trafficked children. We're not violating anyone's civil liberties or right to privacy.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Centreal 12y ago
That distinguishment is essential. Being able to offer distributed, decentralized, and open source intelligence is what we are waiting for maturity.
angersock 12y ago
Let's look through some of the things you claim, shall we? Images can be cross referenced against other ads to detect hidden relationships. Evidence artifacts can be collected and introduced during criminal proceedings. Rescue Forensics collects millions of records for anti-trafficking investigations and prosecution. Search by phone number, text, or images, and filter by location, age, and date ranges. Hidden phone numbers are unmasked so human traffickers can’t hide their victims online. Intelligence from across the world can be searched in one central location. Images can be cross-referenced against the rest of the web to find profiles and social media accounts. Our intuitive interface allows you to target the intelligence you need on all your devices. Yeah. So, you're straight-up building a massive blackmail ledger, without a stated business model other than "We're helping the police save the children!". One of my favorites, also from your front page: STOP SENDING SUBPOENAS Our database contains millions of records of classified advertisements representing up to two years of historical data. Stop waiting days or weeks to get a subpoena response from a hosting site that may only offer a few months of records. Find all the targeted intelligence you need right now. Yeah, man, that whole due-process thing is a pain in the ass, isn't it? Better to do the work for the .gov instead of making them follow their own laws. ~ I don't think it is a surprise to anyone who's been watching the trends lately with regards to law enforcement in the US and the trends with data mining that you are not receiving an unconditional pat on the back. Frankly, companies like yours are part of the problem--even if you do offer help in the small picture. EDIT: Bahahahahahaha, I love this one: The user-generated information archived by Rescue Forensics is completely unmodified and retrieval of this information is an automated process. We only redact copyrighted material, such as company logos or other intellectual property. Yes, so, you've got protection for companies, but nothing against, say, a deliberate smear campaign. Your platform looks like it doesn't do anything to prevent, say, a bunch of jerks deliberately scattering fake evidence, and you'll hoover it up all the same, I'm betting?

mc32 12y ago

The one thing I'd want to know about this outfit is whether they'd sell some of this intelligence to third parties. On their data collection they will discover paedos --which is great, but they will also be able to discover philanderers, cads, tax cheats, drug users, etc. If these things fall under law enforcement's orbit, that's one thing, the bad thing is the possibility of third parties getting this data and using it to blackmail people. Maybe they already have that angle covered, in which case, nevermind.

pekk 12y ago

Not being the government doesn't give anyone a strong right to build mass surveillance databases to target individuals.

sitkack 12y ago
There aren't any laws preventing the doxing of everyone, while the gov can't do it, they can buy those services on the open market. So mass surveillance gets outsourced to corps and we have instant fascism. So the flaw in the algebra is that the government can buy services for things it cannot legally do itself. Which means, doing or buying should be considered equivalent, to regular citizens it does. Corporations and governments have special rights where misdeeds are waved off with warnings or a change in position.