Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set up by the NSA to get data on people.
Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of thing the NSA would do.
Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?
Of course they already have all government IDs. But tying it to a username helps correlate data across other services, and additionally if the user checks from mobile phone or other device, tying it to recent IPs could also be useful. OPSec could prevent some of that, but how many users are doing that?
Just a thought. Not an endorsement.
To me, the more realistic (and scary!) explanation is this thing is just one huge identity theft machine.
It's a interesting thought to entertain but Parler is most likely not this.
> Do you really think the best way for a government agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?
The best way to get a bunch of white supremacists and insurrectionists to robustly, undeniably identify themselves might be to ask them to upload their ID. :P
The best method for target acquisition, sure. If someone is so perturbed by their reality being rejected by the mainstream that they're willing to sign up for an alternative to maintain their worldview, then running that alternative would be a fantastic way to identify people at risk of radicalization, domestic terror risks, etc.
And if we're being clear, the USIC has run companies with this explicit mission in the past. In fact, running a company to provide one service at face level while providing a different service to the IC underneath is the mode that yielded some of the biggest intelligence wins in Western history. See Crypto AG.
That said, no reason to run it themselves; they're well aware that someone else will end up running it for them, and with security nowhere near front-of-mind for any startup, they can just pick up the key from underneath the doormat and take the farm.
No, but it’d be a really good way to get behavioral data on people and use a government ID to tie that data to real identities rather than pseudonyms.
I'm not saying it's likely, but certainly possible.
Actually why the flying fuck would someone think it is a good idea to plan an insurrection on this site in the first place?? It's like opposite day opsec
Turkey and Russia are good examples of how this attack works. It relies on a large number of people, possibly even a majority, to overthrow the republic with a populist government with no rules the leader can't change or selectively enforce. The leader shuts down one threat to himself at a time, making his control permanent.
IMO the military is obligated to arrest Trump for treason, which was the turkish backstop, and after a few rounds Turkey finally missed the last time. So once it is used, you have to patch your system to drop privileges from the Presidents office for the next round.
One example would be cambridge analytica...