

Edward Snowden, Ars, the NSA, and me: digging through the past - jadell
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/edward-snowden-digging-through-the-past-of-the-gamer-who-changed-the-world

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ChuckMcM
I remember seeing all my comp.sys.amiga posts return to life after DejaNews
indexed them all. Shudder. I find it interesting to read peoples writings over
the years to see where they have focussed and where they have moved on. Its
like going through the boxes and boxes of snapshots which had been taken over
the years. When my kids die, nearly their entire lives worth of bits of
ephemera will probably be on some archive somewhere. Sure will make for an
interesting addendum to some famous persons biography.

~~~
unimpressive
>Sure will make for an interesting addendum to some famous persons biography.

The copyright status of forum posts probably means that they'll never be
included in any book or work written this century except in the very limited
form allowed by their authors. (Assuming that the current copyright
ridiculousness is not quelled.) Which is too bad, as they're pretty
interesting and I doubt their authors care so much unless you got rich off
them.

~~~
arrrg
Eh?

Summarising and paraphrasing what someone else wrote publicly is totally ok
and legal. Biographers can at the very least use all the available material
for their writing. Even quoting non-substantial parts of someone else’s
writing – something that could be copyright infringement – is pretty
uncontroversial and legal. It falls under fair use. And not the wobbly part of
fair use you can easily shot holes into. Especially if the quotes are embedded
in a much larger work (say, a biography).

Copyright law sucks but it’s not that bad.

~~~
unimpressive
>Summarising and paraphrasing what someone else wrote publicly is totally ok
and legal.

It is, thankfully. The problem is that because of the ephemeral nature of
digital media, it's quite possible for biographies to outlive their primary
sources.[0] This means that a complete biography would need to include the
actual article, if for no other reason than to preserve the original.

[0]: This is one of the reasons why the Internet Archives mission is so
important.

------
gyepi
I am reminded of the relatively recent poll on HN about whether to use real
names.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5721896](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5721896)

At the time, I was of the opinion that using real names was fine because the
internet is a public space and one could self moderate. However, one big
difference between this public space and public spaces INRL is that this one
never forgets. I think _this_ is a significant qualitative difference. With
the ability to sift through the past, this means that your past self is not
really past. I guess Faulkner was right. Imagine having to explain your past
to every new person you meet!

~~~
hobs
Don't worry, you are not that interesting.

~~~
gyepi
Not to you, at this point in time. In any case, the point stands regardless of
your level of interest. Even boring people deserve the same measure of privacy
as interesting people, maybe even more.

Furthermore, I claim that when the costs (dollars or time) of finding out
about anyone are low enough it won't take much interest to warrant a look at a
person's history.

How long did it take for people to start googling new acquaintances and
potential dates?

------
rdl
I would feel so sorry for the analyst(s) who had to read everything I've
written online, even just in public and semi-public forums, over the past...23
years.

~~~
jfb
Yeah, no kidding. "Sorry, faceless NSA algorithm. I'll buy you a beer next
time I'm in the same zipcode as the server that you're running on."

~~~
rdl
I guess you're lucky/you win if you only ever get automated analysis :)

~~~
andrewflnr
My assumption has always been that there's too much data for the vast majority
of cases to get anything more than automated analysis.

~~~
grey-area
The storage is the problem, not the analysis. After all, if anyone does
anything notable, all their past conversations (public or private) can be
pulled up for retrospective analysis. That's why anonymity on the internet is
a mirage - better to assume that public postings can and will be used to
construct a complete history of you at some point in the future.

------
geetee
Ironically, digging up someone's Internet post history and judging them on it
is in part exactly what Snowden is trying to prevent the government from
doing. We (collectively) can't hold the government to a standard that we can't
even abide by.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Ironically, digging up someone's Internet post history and judging them on
> it is in part exactly what Snowden is trying to prevent the government from
> doing.

That's only true if you ignore the distinction between intentionally public
posts and e-mails, phone calls, and other communications intended to be
privately exchanged.

I suspect that there would be a lot less people upset about the NSA monitoring
only _intentionally public_ communications.

~~~
205guy
You have to believe they do monitor all public postings, though that is a job
in itself. 2 thoughts about that:

1) they could probably justify secret rooms and data gathering on the volume
of public traffic alone. In other words if they are hitting the public APIs
millions of times a day, Twitter, FB, et al. Would rather give them privileged
access. Then whoops, might as well read all the private stuff as well.

2) just imagine the power of analyzing topics, trends, and personalities on
all public forums across the Internet, US and international! Google indexes
it, but what if the NSA were able to make sense of it somehow. From usernames
and posting profiles alone (and maybe language analysis) they might be able to
bullied a DB of online personas. Of course, if they could read everybody's
email or get IP addresses from servers and ISPs, then they could easily
correlate with actual persons.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You have to believe they do monitor all public postings

Naturally. I just don't believe that that's what the controversy is about, and
that comparing searching through someone's public postings to the subject of
the NSA surveillance controversy is missing the point of the controversy
rather badly.

------
wyck
Much ado about nothing.

