NSA is now officially, "mass harvesting" information from myspace, friendster, etc.

[ChunkyAcidReflux]

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 However, the White House insists that the terrorist threat makes existing wire-tapping legislation out of date and is urging Congress not to investigate the NSA's action.
Meanwhile, the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone's contact network, a process sometimes called "connecting the dots". Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or "degrees" separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation.
By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons. Typically, online social networking sites ask members to enter details of their immediate and extended circles of friends, whose blogs they might follow. People often list other facets of their personality including political, sexual, entertainment, media and sporting preferences too. Some go much further, and a few have lost their jobs by publicly describing drinking and drug-taking exploits. Young people have even been barred from the orthodox religious colleges that they are enrolled in for revealing online that they are gay.
"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.
Other data the NSA could combine with social networking details includes information on purchases, where we go (available from cellphone records, which cite the base station a call came from) and what major financial transactions we make, such as buying a house.
Right now this is difficult to do because today's web is stuffed with data in incompatible formats. Enter the semantic web, which aims to iron out these incompatibilities over the next few years via a common data structure called the Resource Description Framework (RDF). W3C hopes that one day every website will use RDF to give each type of data a unique, predefined, unambiguous tag.
"RDF turns the web into a kind of universal spreadsheet that is readable by computers as well as people," says David de Roure at the University of Southampton in the UK, who is an adviser to W3C. "It means that you will be able to ask a website questions you couldn't ask before, or perform calculations on the data it contains." In a health record, for instance, a heart attack will have the same semantic tag as its more technical description, a myocardial infarction. Previously, they would have looked like separate medical conditions. Each piece of numerical data, such as the rate of inflation or the number of people killed on the roads, will also get a tag.
The advantages for scientists, for instance, could be huge: they will have unprecedented access to each other's experimental datasets and will be able to perform their own analyses on them. Searching for products such as holidays will become easier as price and availability dates will have smart tags, allowing powerful searches across hundreds of sites.
On the downside, this ease of use will also make prying into people's lives a breeze.
That paper, entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks, by a research team led by Amit Sheth of the University of Georgia in Athens and Anupam Joshi of the University of Maryland in Baltimore reveals how data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people. The footnote said the work was part-funded by an organisation called ARDA.
What is ARDA? It stands for Advanced Research Development Activity. According to a report entitled Data Mining and Homeland Security, published by the Congressional Research Service in January, ARDA's role is to spend NSA money on research that can "solve some of the most critical problems facing the US intelligence community". Chief among ARDA's aims is to make sense of the massive amounts of data the NSA collects - some of its sources grow by around 4 million gigabytes a month.
The ever-growing online social networks are part of the flood of internet information that could be mined: some of the top sites like MySpace now have more than 80 million members (see Graph).
The research ARDA funded was designed to see if the semantic web could be easily used to connect people. The research team chose to address a subject close to their academic hearts: detecting conflicts of interest in scientific peer review. Friends cannot peer review each other's research papers, nor can people who have previously co-authored work together.
So the team developed software that combined data from the RDF tags of online social network Friend of a Friend (www.foaf-project.org), where people simply outline who is in their circle of friends, and a semantically tagged commercial bibliographic database called DBLP, which lists the authors of computer science papers.
Joshi says their system found conflicts between potential reviewers and authors pitching papers for an internet conference. "It certainly made relationship finding between people much easier," Joshi says. "It picked up softer [non-obvious] conflicts we would not have seen before."
The technology will work in exactly the same way for intelligence and national security agencies and for financial dealings, such as detecting insider trading, the authors say. Linking "who knows who" with purchasing or bank records could highlight groups of terrorists, money launderers or blacklisted groups, says Sheth.
The NSA recently changed ARDA's name to the Disruptive Technology Office. The DTO's interest in online social network analysis echoes the Pentagon's controversial post 9/11 Total Information Awareness (TIA) initiative. That programme, designed to collect, track and analyse online data trails, was suspended after a public furore over privacy in 2002. But elements of the TIA were incorporated into the Pentagon's classified programme in the September 2003 Defense Appropriations Act.
Privacy groups worry that "automated intelligence profiling" could sully people's reputations or even lead to miscarriages of justice - especially since the data from social networking sites may often be inaccurate, untrue or incomplete, De Roure warns.
But Tim Finin, a colleague of Joshi's, thinks the spread of such technology is unstoppable. "Information is getting easier to merge, fuse and draw inferences from. There is money to be made and control to be gained in doing so. And I don't see much that will stop it," he says.
Callas thinks people have to wise up to how much information about themselves they should divulge on public websites. It may sound obvious, he says, but being discreet is a big part of maintaining privacy. Time, perhaps, to hit the delete button.

[ChunkyAcidReflux]

link:
http://www.newscientisttech.com/arti...-websites.html

[Ash]

nsa can harvest my nuts

[Hey Bubu]

If you think about it though, not just the goverment can do this. While it is rather shitty the the gov is doing this, it is up to the individual to be careful.

[Rufus Punk]

Originally Posted by TypeH

If you think about it though, not just the goverment can do this. While it is rather shitty the the gov is doing this, it is up to the individual to be careful.

Exzachary. While there are a host of fictitious names on this site, people that are smart enough to post their lives' worth here from time to time reflect that on their Myspace/blog/what have you. If that is your real name, then attempt to at least mask your trace.

Good ole' Stanner even took the precaution of having any local reference to his name and changed it entirely. He still enjoys LOLing at us, still enjoys anonymity (to a degree), and has no worries.

It is on the INDIVIDUAL to not offer more than what the world needs to know. At least make people work for your info.

Sheesh.

[Satchel]

Can we just go ahead and list all of these My Space douchebags as terrorists?

[DataBass]

*deletes Osama from friends list*

[Hey Bubu]

Originally Posted by rufuspunk

It is on the INDIVIDUAL to not offer more than what the world needs to know. At least make people work for your info.

Sheesh.

Here, I know more about some people's social, sexual life and mental state than I would ever care to know, but at the same time it does allow me to see who the crazies are.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by TypeH

If you think about it though, not just the goverment can do this. While it is rather shitty the the gov is doing this, it is up to the individual to be careful.

Why is it shitty?

If people want to post up their plans to shoot up Columbine pr blow of the WTC and law enforcement gets wind of it and prevents it - it sounds like the shitty thing would have been ignoring the available information - not finding it and not acting on it. Do you think the gov't is interested in Billy Bob's cornfield kegger?

[Mr. Sam]

Originally Posted by xian

Do you think the gov't is interested in Billy Bob's cornfield kegger?

No but local law enforcement pressed charges because of a kid who threatened his teacher on a Myspace blog. That's pretty weak if you ask me - which you didn't.

Intraweb is not real life and a threat on there should not be considered serious. It's like writing in a fucking journal. It's not like he sent the threat directly to the teacher. It is just a little overboard I think.

I think punishing students for what they do at home on the internet is rather silly. Soon students won't be able to play violent video games because they cause Columbine.

It's also worth noting that the fact that school board officials are poking and probing around students' Myspace pages is kind of creepy.

Originally Posted by MSNBC

Last month, another suburban Chicago school district decided students would be held accountable for what they post on Internet blogs and social-networking sites.

Starting next year, all students in extracurricular activities in Community High School District 128, which includes Libertyville and Vernon Hills high schools, must sign an agreement that evidence of “illegal or inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

(Taken from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13162846/

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

No but local law enforcement pressed charges because of a kid who threatened his teacher on a Myspace blog. That's pretty weak if you ask me - which you didn't.

Intraweb is not real life and a threat on there should not be considered serious. It's like writing in a fucking journal. It's not like he sent the threat directly to the teacher. It is just a little overboard I think.

A vacant threat absent anything else - you're right. But, it's a reasonable clue to follow up on to see if there's any substance to it.

To argue your point to an absurdly extreme destination we'd have to think nothing of the AQ guys posting their plans on myspace because it's just the interweb and therefore it's farce even if it's real. And of course that's absurd.

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

I think punishing students for what they do at home on the internet is rather silly.

Of course it is - until they publish plans to blow up Columbine.

Again, if they planned a major violent crime and posted the plans on the net and then blew up a school everyone and their brother would be screaming the government didn't protect them from the perpetrators when the event was so clearly and obviously forecast.

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

Soon students won't be able to play violent video games because they cause Columbine.

That's just a silly assertion. If it weren't - then there would be no violent video games. Frankly, there's no correlation between violent games and violence. There is a corelation (and precedent) between posting one's plans to blow up Columbine and blowing up Columbine.

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

It's also worth noting that the fact that school board officials are poking and probing around students' Myspace pages is kind of creepy.

Like I said, until thier school gets blown up and the plans were laid out in detail on myspace prior to the blowing up....


listen - publishing stupid bullshit on a public forum and complaining the the government is listening is a bit like complaining that you got caught meeting in a park and planning to shoot the mayor.

There's no violation of privacy even remotely at issue - maybe a waste of resources but that's about it

[Mr. Sam]

I really wasn't meaning to state it was a violation of privacy, because Myspace is a public domain - it is not private.

Punishing a student at school for something that he does outside of the school and not in school sanctioned events is just silly to me. I do think they should have looked into it, but the article states they are filing felony charges for harrasment via electronic communications and I think that is ludacrous.

Investigating it because of the possible intent of causing true physical harm is one thing, but producing charges simply because they blogged about it outside of school is a bit off the wall.

I understand your point that it is possible he could have actually killed the teacher and had that happened in hindsight not pressing charges would have been stupid, but I thought the way our legal system worked was "innocent until proven guilty" and an empty threat via an online journal is no more than jotting something down in a journal.

However, they did not link or quote the actual threat. If it was a drawn out plot on how they were going to harm the teacher then I would completely understand, but just by the wording in the article it makes it seem like he wrote something as simple as "I hate Mr. Smith. He is a faggot ass teacher and I am going to kill him."

I figure the article would have had a lot more details about the elaborate plot to harm the teacher, unless that plot was never even designed or posted via tardblog de Myspace.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

I really wasn't meaning to state it was a violation of privacy, because Myspace is a public domain - it is not private.

Punishing a student at school for something that he does outside of the school and not in school sanctioned events is just silly to me.

And I have agreed.

What I was suggesting is that failing to take note of and to take steps to prevent criminal nastiness that has been broadcast on mspace is even sillier.

What HS kids do or don't do and what their school bds and PTAs do is frankly up to them.

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

I do think they should have looked into it, but the article states they are filing felony charges for harrasment via electronic communications and I think that is ludacrous.

More facts would be helpful in drawing that conclusion or discrediting it.

If the threat was credible... I don't see why doing it over the net, over the phone or screaming through a door makes any difference.

[quote=Mr. Sam]Investigating it because of the possible intent of causing true physical harm is one thing, but producing charges simply because they blogged about it outside of school is a bit off the wall. [/QUIOTE]

Well, the issue is the credibility of the threat.

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

I understand your point that it is possible he could have actually killed the teacher and had that happened in hindsight not pressing charges would have been stupid, but I thought the way our legal system worked was "innocent until proven guilty" and an empty threat via an online journal is no more than jotting something down in a journal.

Arresting some one is not a conviction. So, unless the person was adjudicated guilty at time of arrest your point is kinda moot.

And, a journal is not a published document. If the threat was in an editorial that was published would you think differently?

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

However, they did not link or quote the actual threat. If it was a drawn out plot on how they were going to harm the teacher then I would completely understand, but just by the wording in the article it makes it seem like he wrote something as simple as "I hate Mr. Smith. He is a faggot ass teacher and I am going to kill him."

So, are you suggesting that we don't have a very good understanding of all the facts here?

[Mr. Sam]

Originally Posted by xian

So, are you suggesting that we don't have a very good understanding of all the facts here?

Oh, absolutely. There isn't enough evidence available at all to dispute the case as much as we already have, but it was still fun.

I agree with most of your points and I am really just being a temporary insomniac tonight, because I have a flight to D.C. in the morning. I always get anxious before a flight.

I do think it would be different if it were in a published editorial, but thank you for bringing it to my attention. I think that the youth today (I am including myself in that category) has become some familiar with online that it seems completely harmless to us. Until you just brought it up, I guess I really failed to see anything written on a blog or a discussion board as published material - but it is just that.

Which in that case, I do agree with the investigation of the incident. Either way, I think the kid is a moron.

(p.s. the thing about the school board prying into the kids' Myspace was creepy to me in the "hey sweetie I will bring you candy for a blowjob" type way... not the "get the fuck out of my space" kind of way)

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

Oh, absolutely. There isn't enough evidence available at all to dispute the case as much as we already have, but it was still fun.

fair point

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

I agree with most of your points and I am really just being a temporary insomniac tonight, because I have a flight to D.C. in the morning. I always get anxious before a flight.

I do think it would be different if it were in a published editorial, but thank you for bringing it to my attention. I think that the youth today (I am including myself in that category) has become some familiar with online that it seems completely harmless to us. Until you just brought it up, I guess I really failed to see anything written on a blog or a discussion board as published material - but it is just that.

Which in that case, I do agree with the investigation of the incident. Either way, I think the kid is a moron.

I can't tell if you're teasing me or not and agreed - kid = moron

Originally Posted by Mr. Sam

(p.s. the thing about the school board prying into the kids' Myspace was creepy to me in the "hey sweetie I will bring you candy for a blowjob" type way... not the "get the fuck out of my space" kind of way)

lol - again - fair point - that would indeed be creepy