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Headlines : Civil LibertiesPentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
“You should always assume anything you write online is stapled to your resumé. People don’t realise you get Googled just to get a job interview these days,” says Callas.
Having found our phone records of limited use. Once again the US government is using technology in ways that would give George Orwell nightmares. Be careful kids. Big brother is always watching.
[Posted By brujo]Republished from NewScientist.com
“I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves.” So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop’s dream.
New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology – specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C – to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
Americans are still reeling from last month’s revelations that the NSA has been logging phone calls since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The Congressional Research Service, which advises the US legislature, says phone companies that surrendered call records may have acted illegally. However, the White House insists that the terrorist threat makes existing wire-tapping legislation out of date and is urging Congress not to investigate the…
Posted by brujo
“Having found our phone records of limited use. Once again the US government is using technology in ways that would give George Orwell nightmares. Be careful kids. Big brother is always watching.”
There is an enormous difference between phone records and social network mining. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to phone records; anything posted in a public place is just that, public. How is this a concern?
Predictive AI social profiling.
Sure, but unlike illegitimate searches, this is based on information that is published freely by the person in question. Complaints about this seem to be roughly equivalent to confessing to a crime in a blog and then wondering why the police come knocking. If you don’t want them to know, choose not to publish.
Bumper stickers, editorials written to the local paper, the clothes you wear, how your yard or apartment door looks, where you eat, where you shop, and other varieties of information are available to the public. I would have major issues with the government cataloguing this all. That is not done, due to the logistics of it. The internet makes it very easy to take one set of data and gulp it up and organize it into a different more workable database. Because it can be done does not mean it must be done. What is it—in the name of safety that millions of people’s public personal informations is kept? That conglomeration of information can be used in all sorts of ways against a person were it to be mishandled. No offense but I know a better way than the promise that my information would not be used against me—don’t collect it. It’s as public as conversation is in public places, and I wouldn’t want the government eves dropping on my every conversation just because it is in public.
ok gotta go check osama’s livejournal, I think he’s posting directions to his birthday party, and his myspace has great new pics of his mohawk and rook piercing.
What if we are not alone. What if there are older intelligences in the universe that are way way past NSA.? There would be no evidence of such intelligence because they can block our signal detection or their signal emission as a part of their simplest security measures. Our entire species’ communications processes could be easily hacked and influenced with psyops as elaborate as has been attributable to GOD.
NSA would intervene as thoroughly as I suggest on an evolving intelligence somewhere else in our galaxy or another galaxy — if it lived long enough. So would Anthony, Izzy and Snark.
NSA is developing naturally for an intelligence in a universe that has no more mature, more developed intelligence already at maximum intervention and influence. Other earth intelligence agencies are or will try to advance in NSA directions. But, only one unified earth intelligence system can set up a global transparency among otherwise competing interests in order to ferret out the extraterrestrial influences that I wish I could assure you are very active today and way way beyond NSA.
Global intelligence unity with respect for the masses and awareness of higher intelligence, a global program for ecology and population — or extinction or the certain knowledge of extinction within 200 years.
Believe me. Just focusing on NSA will distract good earthlings like some GNNers for more generations than remain for homo sapien.
Lot08,
Just what in the heck are you implying? Extraterrestrial beings are monitoring our species to eventually eliminate all of mankind? I sure hope your post was meant to be taken satirically. Please advise.
MVR
They need live data to feed their predictive models. This data cannot be generated. It has to come from interpretation of social patterns through a balancing system. It’s quite close to Google’s technology. It’s purpose is quite different …
Not in order to eliminate mankind, kosmos2k,but to live through/off of/in the evolution and devolution of mankind, having themselves evolved to a transmaterial form. And — not just as monitors, but participating in some infuential ways throughout human history through hacking or co-inhabitation of individuals, thus quite some significant degrees differently from what Skinner did with rats and the NSA is beginning to get into.
does this mean I should take myspace profile down? Jeez I kinda figured this, but I was just trying to get laid.
I subscribe to the Chinese theory that the root causes of any problem can be reduced to either food or sex.
Jeez I kinda figured this, but I was just trying to get laid.
You and everyone else on this planet, man… you and everyone else.
extraterrestrial influences that I wish I could assure you are very active today and way way beyond NSA.
I’ve admittedly only read portions of your more detailed writings and likely a small percentage of your posts. I don’t entirely understand the full implications of the conclusions you’ve drawn but from this statement.
I do however see some similarities to biblical references and beliefs in demons who are and have been influencing humanity according to the beliefs of many literalists.
These “spirit” beings that are described and referred to as “demons” by various religious cultures are described as possessing very similar characteristics and injecting the influences I’ve read you describing. The “extraterrestrial origin” is also a similar theme as these “demons” have been cast from the biblical “heavens” and relegated to the earth.
I am not trying to catalog or label your beliefs nor am I asking you to, but just pointing out that though many contributors and readers of this site seem to dismiss “religion” out of hand, and/or refuse to believe anything that cannot be quantified, photographed and reproduced upon demand; there indeed is more to this life than always meets the eye.
Peace,
I subscribe to the Chinese theory that the root causes of any problem can be reduced to either food or sex.
There may well be something to this as well.
Make love, not war.
Peace,
There is a counter for predictive profiling. It’s analogous to google bombing. The weighting system for hyperlink can be fooled into circles if a movement/people/protestors decide to link circles within circles of self-referencing hyperlink descriptors. Recursivity as a poison pill.