How Facebook Changed the Spy Game | Hacker News Reader

How Facebook Changed the Spy Game

politico.com

44 pointsnl15 comments

A real solution to this, which may seem indirect to many, is more aggressive antitrust enforcement. These internet giants have become the new (global) public square at the expense of all the old world institutions for civic discourse and if that were more fractured I suspect things would be better. Certainly newspapers, magazines and other web publishers would have more bargaining power (and they wouldn't have to ask for their own exemptions from antitrust law [1]).

I'm becoming more and more convinced that lax antitrust enforcement since the 1980s is the source of many problems in America today: income inequality, corporate profits at all time highs, capital expenditure seemingly no longer being necessary in the economy to obtain those profits, lack of inflation particularly in wages, and the "de-equitization" of America [2].

Concentration is a problem not just in pure economic terms in terms of higher prices or less innovation but also as a threat to liberal democracy itself (as I've gotten older I've started to take a more political economy approach to things).

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/10/newspapers-bid-for-antitrust...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-roster-of-public-compa...

Reading into your post, I think you're implying that the presence of a single monolithic target in the Federal Union of Heresland for The Republic of Adversaria to mess with represents a greater risk for carrying out the business of democracy, and that a multitude of smaller social networks would be harder to compromise.

I'm not sure how true this is though - inevitably those smaller organisations have lesser resources and capacity to detect and resist such attacks, and would in any case quite quickly balkanise themselves into clear demographics, leaving it obvious to the adversary exactly which of these smaller, more vulnerable organisations to target.

The solution in my mind is for these internet giants, regrettably, to get bigger - to become /more/ global, and to be present everywhere. Fragmentation of world society will not bring us progress - consolidation will.

If I understand your solution, it seems to suggest more global monopolistic size and behavior for the "Internet Giants".

Do you mean to define "Internet Giants" as the social media platforms or the infrastructure carrying these platforms and traffic?

Separating the social platform from the physical transport platform may change how enforcement is carried out depending on who owns which part, i.e. physical infrastructure being publicly owned vs private etc.

Without that type of change and distinction, I'm not sure how your solution is a solution without better understanding it.

  Do you mean to define "Internet Giants" as the social media platforms or the infrastructure carrying these platforms and traffic?

Well, both. But the distinction is getting less clear as time goes on. And for Joe Public, the distinction doesn't even exist, of course.

If there was a centralized platform that allowed social networks on top of it with their own governance powers, could that curtail unwanted issues? Or would that central platform/body be breachable as well - if not, under what conditions would it be safe?

I feel like the article boils down to "the Russians have a big advantage influencing the US because we allow free speech and they don't" with a strong implication that we need to give law enforcement more tools to crack down on free speech.

I vehemently reject any such notion. In the long term, the best counter to speech is more speech.

The article gave an example of FARA. Do you think FARA cracks down on free speech?

Depending on how it is used, my answer is "possibly".

Put yourself back in the days of Joseph McCarthy and the "red scare", but with today's laws (and hopefully we seek an outcome that is MORE friendly to free speech, not less). How would you feel about a law that required anyone supporting communism to register as a foreign agent? Or more precisely, one that allowed the government to arrest anyone who argued in favor of communism (a right protected by free speech) and force them to prove they do not have any ties to any foreign government at risk of imprisonment for 2 years.

I have little problem asking those actually employed by a foreign government to register. But if you stretch the definitions far enough ("you were eligible for a tax deduction, which counts as compensation so you are employed") then it can be abused.

...allowing the FBI to unilaterally access and police social media accounts—which would make us start to look a lot like Russia...

I think the author is aware of that point.

  > I feel like the article boils down to "the Russians have a
  > big advantage influencing the US because we allow free
  > speech and they don't" with a strong implication that we
  > need to give law enforcement more tools to crack down on
  > free speech.

Your common-language summary is right on the money.

Quoting from the article:

  > Currently, platforms like Facebook and Twitter have little
  > incentive to help counterintelligence beyond their own
  > goodwill. But Congress could pass legislation that requires
  > social media companies to cooperate with counterintelligence
  > in the same ways they do with law enforcement.

As a US citizen, I will never consent to the abrogation of our First Amendment rights due to fear about how the First Amendment might be used.

And I mean never.

Tangentially, Asha Rangappa's (author of the linked article) suggestion makes me wonder about the timing and effect of Russia-sponsored meddling against the 2016 election.

In particular, the influence of Russia-tampering was no more evident than in the then-FBI Director's public statement that HRC's emails were still under FBI investigation mere days before the election. (Comey works for the US, but the emails were collected by Russia-sponsored agents.)

Up to that point, I knew Comey best as leader of the FBI which insisted that Apple and other smartphone OS manufacturers should provide a tool to circumvent encryption safeguards (e.g. leveraging the All Writs Act in the San Bernadino shooter case).

The US should and must protect itself against foreign threats.

However, abrogating the First and Fourth Amendments (security from unreasonable searches and seizures) does not protect the United States but critically weakens it.

Indeed, in fact the FBI is absolutely the last organization we should trust with any oversight over anything of this sort. They have a history of infiltrating as well as explicitly murdering and plotting for the death of leading figures in the American left and in the civil rights movement. They currently spend a huge amount of resources tricking mentally ill Muslims into buying weapons they provide and making some statement about terrorism in order to fabricate thwarted terror attacks. I certainly hope they have changed their tune since COINTELPRO (they claim to have!) and they absolutely do some essential law enforcement work but their headquarters is still named after a disgusting traitor who worked hard primarily to subvert and destroy American democracy. I wouldn't trust similar hypothetical organizations like the Adolf Hitler center for Jewish rights or the Ayn Rand institute for Marxist Theory either. And I certainly wouldn't give any credence to someone at the FBI talking about stifling speech, infiltrating political groups, and propaganda without acknowledging the organization's sordid history doing exactly that to its own people.

The piece reads like whining that the US LE apparatus is now, with the advent of the Internet, having trouble exerting total control over acceptable political discourse in the US, and using scary red-baiting to trick us into giving it back to them. If you pause for a moment and look past all the scary faux-military language like "Perception management operation", what he is saying is that the Russians are posting on the Internet and that this reality is so horrifying, so fundamentally threatening to democracy that we need to tear down the regulations that stop the FBI from controlling what is said online. That is far more terrifying than the prospect that I might have to read some posts that are pro-Russia.

I didn't know about FARA(Foreign Agent Registration Act), "that requires any individual acting on behalf of foreign interests to register as a foreign agent with the State Department", also "passed in 1938 to counter Germany’s dissemination of Nazi propaganda in the United States". That's genius.

The article is calling for FARA update to the age of social media.

The linked piece about "The Agency" on the new york times also is a very interesting read.

- https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?...

> Any solution that we create will require a balance between national security interests and constitutional rights

As I, as a European citizen, perfectly understand that FBI mission deals with internal US, and so the OP option is an internal point of view, wouldn't it be also wise to deal with it on an international way ?

Of course, with Putin and Trump, two strong virile personalities, dialog might seem hard, even impossible.

But any way, instead of trying to deal with it internally, "forcing" (and I honestly have no idea how it should be possible) American social media companies to be more transparent could be a breath of fresh air in this situation ?

Candid question.

That's already happening. Germany, for example, has enacted new legislation to force social media companies to take down hate speech posts or face fines [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-facebook...

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