Why do you believe this should be their highest priority?
359 karma · joined April 2, 2015
Whoever usurps Dick Costolo, if they pursue 'removing and preventing fake accounts', they are also likely to partner more closely with the Department of State and DoD to support strategic communication and counter-strategic communications efforts - taking down accounts the US claims represent efforts by Russia, other actors, or contain ideas and narratives that harm United States national security.
With a title like "'Troll hunting' algorithm could make web a better place" (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/14/google-algori...) this algorithm seems like a true boon. It's only slightly suspicious (and can easily be explained away) that two of the three websites used in its study were political websites. You'd have to be pretty zany to leap to the conclusion that the paper had anything to do with censorship.
It would look worse if one of its co-authors (Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil) received funding from the DoD to study the propagation of information through social media online (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.01383.pdf) as part of DARPA SMISC - a strategic communications (DoD term for propaganda) research group that studies how information flows on social media and how to direct and disrupt it.
Many researchers take grants from all over though, and anything in this area of study is likely to get investment from the DoD. So still it's more reasonable to think that, since he works in that area, of course he will receive DoD funding.
Yet it was posted with 22 likes to NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (https://www.facebook.com/StratComCOE), a Facebook wall also contains a review of a book called "The Weaponization of Social Media" and announces its participation in a conference on “Cyberattacks and Propaganda: the Battlefield of Future”.
As evidenced (again) as recently as this week by a group of people who run an anti-TPP website, there is an inter-website system for blocking posts to certain content (https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/38pmg8/hey_redd...) - Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc all simultaneously blocked this website. Whether this was an error or not (it probably was), it points out there is a centralized system for blocking content.
Both the Facebook emotion experiment and the Facebook vote experiment had ties to funding to the DoD (and Air Force though blurbs about funding from the Air Force, which handles cyber in the US, was erased from the academic's page when there was public attention; it was reported to be a clerical error).
This is not to say that this is used inside the US to block US contibuted content. While the history of the United States Government in applying strategic communication and information support to US audiences has been slippery, and the Smith-Mundt Act (anti-propaganda law) was recently weakened under the justification that global interconnectedness of conversation, news and social media makes it difficult to prevent US propaganda intended for foreign audiences from making it back home.
The new CEO of Reddit is on the board of a Washington Defense Thinktank. This anecdote doesn't imply anything. But it does mean that you should be asking Reddit and its CEO hard questions, you should be skeptical of intentions, and you should demand that Reddit - like all other companies that own your communications and socialization - keep themselves to the highest possible standards.
In the McVeigh case the FBI pronounced (and media reverberated) that the OK City bombings were a Muslim terrorist attack until it was shown, in fact, to be definitively not the case.
The language used to describe McVeigh's crimes and intentions was then continually watered down.
I found your thesis about the racist nature of police abuse interesting, especially how you tie it to mass surveillance.
I think you are probably right that this plays a large role in which communities and majorities will support or excuse this behavior.
I don't want to draw it too far, though. We should recognize that Muslim Americans get far more surveillance - more targeted surveillance - for merely being Muslim or having Muslim community respect. It's also true that people can and are fooled into believing and supporting principles, spurred by things like nationalism or political party identity, that actively harm or target their own minority groups.
This caveat I don't think invalidates your misgivings, which I think are good. If mass incarcernation and police abuse were as widely practiced on the wealthy or the majority there would be far more outcry.
It's just not only about terrorism, or mostly about terrorism.
When terrorism is invoked what the public is left with is, 'oh it's used for that so that's what it's intended for'.
Surveillance is about power, plain and simple. Surveillance is information and this is the information age. Information is a weapon and it drives the world.
Intelligence on persons of interest, propaganda, censorship, 21st century census operations, information for guiding policy, protest and riot management, aid in background checks, information support for public affairs and diplomacy, detection of cyber attacks - all of these things are enabled by massive data collection and analysis systems.
There are hints, from the Snowden docs especially, and from others, that these systems are used for these purposes.
So yeah, they are used for terrorism. In the US when the Attorney General did an investigation into why the brothers hadn't been caught by the FBI and National Counter Terrorism Center, it did just that. The report named the NSA two times - ones in the opening paragraph and once in the appendix. FBI use NSA intelligence to support investigations, but the NSA is not in charge of counter-terrorism. Other agencies have asks of the NSA and yes - I think it was Drake, but maybe it was Binney? - whistleblowers have reported on these capabilities being used to do background checks (in this case on Obama before he ran for President); they've been used against journalism outfits (the Associated Press); they've been used in cyberwar; they've been used for corporate espionage; their fusion centers have been used to target political parties (Tea Party) and protests (Occupy); the UK used them for propaganda in the Falkin Islands.
Dragnet surveillance is not about terrorism. Or rather, it is not, has never been, and will never be merely about terrorism.
It looks like the speech has no good reliable source.
That doesn't mean this isn't happening or doesn't happen. Merely it means that the quote isn't supporting evidence.
The Government in this case is willing to make a promise (who knows how well it will be kept) not to use the information for parallel construction or explicit enforcement. In turn they get to protect the business and American industries from cyber attacks and give the data for analysis and processing for whatever national security purposes the DoD deems necessary.
There are industries that are already onboarded - financial and energy. CISA would expand these to other industries.
The FAA's legislation further opens up the skies for surveillance drones - sets the regulations and permanent airspace for it - though everyone is going to be excited about some silly delivery service.
Wouldn't the National Security Council know about this FBI program? They know about NSA mass surveillance. It's true that Congress is kept mostly in the dark about these programs, but the NSC gets some reasonable level of summary.
During the bronze age militaries and governments wielded bronze.
During the iron age militaries and governments wielded iron.
We shouldn't be surprised that, during the information age, militaries and governments wield information.
The utilization of technology, like any tool, can be used for bad or good or positive or negative or might or right. It is agnostic to propriety and to morals.
When techies magnified the power of technology in the 80s, they used to herald information and its decentralization as something to magnify the power of the people.
Today when techies magnify the power of technology, they herald its use by large corporations or mimick the interests of their military. They think they are champions for people, for decentralization, but the vocabulary changed without their knowing about it and the excuses are more plentiful than good intentions, manifestos or philosophies.
This is not new, shocking or crazy information. It is not an unreasonable or alien claim.
If you do start reading serious journalism, paying attention to cyberwarfare, read up on current US propaganda efforts, or pay attention to US legislation or anything else that may turn your interest you've discovered that I'm willing to blather quite verbosely and would love to chat more.
Understanding how the US operates, how US companies cooperate, and the context, timing, history and actor roles appear not to be enough.
I suppose you're looking for a smoking gun - a document from Google that explicitly states that Google's intention is to support American NGOs for the purposes of US power projection.
No, I don't have a smoking gun. I can not provide that for you.
It is established that America uses NGOs for culture export/soft power projection.
It is established that Google is a geopolitical actor.
It is established that Google provides investment for researchers who are funded by and for DoD programs.
It is established that Google aligns itself with US culture expansion abroad (they wrote a book on this).
It is established that the US partners with private industry to achieve its objectives. It is established that the US has been calling for more partnership on the cyber domain and with strategic communication.
It is established that Google will be protecting American NGOs.
If it is reasonable to conclude that Google's involvement protecting American NGO's is partnership with US foreign policy is bullshit or handwaving, how would you read the situation?
I think it's unreasonable to think that:
A company that is legally obligated to maximize shareholder profit, and which partnered with the US government for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, and whose executives fairly regularly meet in person with the president of the United States and who has a revolving door with the same Department of State for roles in under Public Diplomacy - that this company, completely separate from these details - on its own 'good will' - decided it would be a nice charitable thing to host US NGO sites and US news intended for foreign audiences.
The United States disbanded USIA (the agency in charge of US propaganda) after the end of the Cold War in 1999. USIA was split into a couple components. Overt programs were given to the Department of State, covert ('black') programs to the Department of Defense and the Board of Broadcasting Governors were split off into their own organized body.
During the Bush administration there was a lot of turmoil about how to organize efforts - they found that splitting the efforts caused confusion as various programs weren't coordinated with the same messages. Bush created Policy Coordinating Committees for "Strategic Communication" to help interdepartment and interagency cooperation. Mostly during this time efforts were focused on the Middle East, and indeed today the US heavily blankets the Middle East with propaganda.
Things have evolved since Bush. There has been a growing role of social media analysis and interaction. The Department of State has a Digital Outreach Team where they will engage on forums in the Middle East (it's an overt program, so they will identify themselves) - but the goals as can be seen from FOIA requests and strategic documents are to confuse adversaries, 'get in their heads' and to engage parties whose opinion may be swayed. Covert operations do much of the same, but under false flags and with persona management software (check out Earnest Voice). You can find out more about these efforts by searching for the Department of States "war of ideas" or congresses "Jihad 2.0", or generally doing due diligence and reading legislation and strategy documents.
Another big change in US strategy is that its audience is much wider. Strategy documents toward the end of the Bush Administration and through the Obama Administration focus on the need to counter anti-American ideas abroad.
Now the CIA especially runs NGO and CSO fronts, many times through USAID, and more generally NGOs and CSOs are invested in if they align with US strategic objectives. If you like you can find CIA reports on investment in NGOs inside of Ukraine as part of their long term plan as project UNITER and how this turned out with NGOs leading Euromaiden protests (if you read foreign media - Germany's Der Speigel is a good source you may trust). ZunZuneo is a very transparent example because there's been lots of journalism on it - in this case the CIA set up a fake Twitter network in Cuba where they were monitoring citizens and planning to turn their network (peaking somewhere around 60,000 users) into an outlet to stir dissent and organize protests.
Many countries try to quell this activity. Cuba, for example, banned smart phones at one point. Russia recently, after the Ukraine affair, kicked out all NGOs with funding from or ties to Western governments.
Aaannnyyway. There's tons of more details to be had (US research into manipulating social networks a la DARPA SMISC, Project MINERVA) but in reading through material and reports on the various task forces of Congressional meetings it's quite clear - though really not surprising as these have been longstanding US practices.
If you would like to read more about propaganda and CIA fronts in the Iraq war, searching for Rendon Group, the Iraqi National Council, and the Office of Strategic Influence.
The United States unequivocally funds and supports NGOs and CSOs that align with its strategic interests and invests them as operating fronts for special operations. This isn't really something that's widely contested.
The Department of Defense (just search for this using your favorite client/search engine) is right now investing large amounts of money through partnerships with Venture Capitalists into Silicon Valley and the tech sector. There is a call for both cybersecurity startups and for civil society apps.
Google is offering (and there are plenty of examples of Google's involvement with US national security investments, perhaps you'd like to ask about this) to protect news and human rights agencies. This will of course be providing protection to US and US-aligned news media organizations and NGOs (they can call my bluff by supporting Chinese NGOs - and China is now starting to try to have its own culture export, news organizations, and human rights groups in Africa, South America and Eurasia).
Not in the least. Is there anything you'd like corroborated?
Russia and China in particular are upset with this form of cultural domination and export by the West. Both have stated quite frankly in real terms that they seek to maintain and spread their own culture instead and in fact both Russia and China have begun programs for culture export based on the US model.
China is heavily invested in working in Eurasia, Africa and South America at the moment. They are a bit careful about the Middle East.
That's a silly suggestion.
A more productive and charitable way to enter this conversation would be to engage it with fact-based and evidence-laden argumentation, and citation where necessary.
On that end if you have any fact-based questions I'm willing to unpack various claims and to discuss issues and ideas on their own merits.
There is no need to ridicule this poster, as parallel questions about national security efforts and how, where and when US tech companies help are topical, factual and technical.
The Magna Carta was a concession made by the king of England (he had to make them, or he would have been killed) to limit his power and to accept that the person holding the throne was not above the law.
This vote had more to do with regulation of the internet by state mandate and enforcement. Pretty divergent.
It's disappointing to hear that the report is on more youth voting for safety over freedom online. The original mythical promise of the internet was a sort of freedom that of course never came to pass - where free speech could not be censored, where information was traded without cost and where propaganda would not and could not lurk.
The past three decades, especially the most recent one, have proven this wrong.
A managed, regulated and enforced internet is an interesting idea - on that protect people from dangerous ideas and information - but it's also a scary and an alien one; it's an idea that Western governments have consistently criticized other countries for doing.
I myself think that law enforcement is here to protect civil liberties, and that civil liberties are only to be given up in times of great struggle and only upon the highest of imperatives.
I know that the West is being significantly challenged to keep its place in the world, but I don't know that this shift in the winds is one of those great imperatives.
I would not claim to believe that they are a front or a partner. I'm not a good person to ask though, I don't know very much about CloudFlare.
Here's what I understand: the United States and the West are partnering very heavily with India to get it to rise in tandem with China. India doesn't have a goal to be a global power, and its economy is much more closely integrated with the West, so it's a very kind strategic ally in the changing global economic situation. Its growth and its rise is an area of balance for the West in a world where trade and economy are shifting away from the old world and into the Asia Pacific.
India, with regard to geostrategy, is uniquely placed for growth. Of course it has a large population, which is a huge help, but it also likely to benefit from the trillions of dollars of investment being made by China's investment in Eurasian oil pipelines and trade routes (and Russia's attempt to galvinize a Eurasian Union).
That is to say India will benefit both by West and by East investment.
Now, in support of this Modi (which is in large part the 'West's man') has agreed to Westernize a very great deal and to grow India in very specific and strategic ways.
An example of this is China's investment and experimentation with "Smart Cities" - cities that are designed so that every piece of socioeconomic data can be recorded and adjusted. The idea with a smart city is that this level of insight allows huge boons in the study of, governing of, and changes to the municipality.
With the West's encouragement and investment (through multilateral investment groups) India has not only performed huge amounts of financial reorganization but also promises to build 100 smart cities of its own.
And interesting twist on this is that the smart cities invented by the West have an investment clause: the West wants to 'own' the city - to have equity in it - so that the cities are privately owned and that when people pay to live in the cities and as the cities produce surplus this money goes back into the pockets of private investors.
This is a kind of scary prospect for those who have traditional Western grounding as it makes these cities seem more like giant corporations (or maybe 'fiefs'?) than democracies.
But this probably isn't what the poster above is talking about?
Could you speak more about what trends you see in India?
The performance numbers are inspiring.
Will be interesting to see crypt-analysis that attempts to break a solution like this.
Google is aligned with the United States State Department and DoD when it comes to investing and spreading American culture and values around the world.
This partnership brings the United States a lot of value, and those at Google also believe that it enriches their company, America and the world.
There is a bit of a paternalism to the conscious design of culture export, and it can be hard to think clearly about.
US investment in organizations and outlets that align with its strategic goals (or when they are fronts for one department or another) are looked very poorly upon by some countries around the world, which will attempt to take them down - either by legal means, cyber attack or network (e.g. DNS) level blocks.
It is a geopolitical project and a very valuable investment for the United States overseas power projection.
For example those from the Board of Broadcasting Governors, or from the BIIP, or from USAID, or from US sponsored NGOs are definitely going to get support.