
Terrorists Mock Bids to End Use of Social Media - bko
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/technology/terrorists-mock-bids-to-end-use-of-social-media.html
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ihsw
I'm surprised there aren't more reports of honey-pot use, particularly with
how easily it is to derive a behavioral patterns of terrorist propagandists.

Such honey-pots would no doubt catch false-positives but it is a known
effective means of reconnaissance and sabotage, considering how aggressively
and thoroughly they are connected to social media.

Recently Isil issued a warning to all social media propagandists to be safe
and vigilant in their online activities (eg: do not use personally
identifiable information, use VPNs or Tor, etc), so it stands to reason that
their online network and social network is under active attack.

The article cites honey-pot use as one of the reasons that Isil continues to
have a persistent online presence, but is it really that prevalent?

There are so many things we can do to combat their online war campaign that
doesn't involve poking tech firms to open up encryption or open up private
access channels for law enforcement, and honestly I think the various
governments aren't being forthcoming or cooperative in their online
adversarial campaigns. One could even say they're being obstructionist or
obtuse, with one-sided demands rather than a progressive partnership.

Where are our NSA pundits? Are they too busy with economic espionage against
their patrons' opponents? Does the MSM really have nothing further to add
other than "tech firms are lazy"?

~~~
talmand
The purposes of getting tech firms to open up encryption or private access
channels is not for fighting the online shenanigans of alleged terrorists.

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nobrains
"But as the 335 versions of the pro-Islamic State Twitter account demonstrate,
technology companies are dealing with a tenacious adversary."

\- Really? Tenacious Adversary? Because they create new accounts once old ones
are closed?

~~~
RegW
Not as tenacious as the bod who is now manually creating @TurMedia336 to
@TurMedia99999999.

But, one might have thought that Titter would have blocked creation of these
accounts already.

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gotchange
“Resolve means depriving jihadists of virtual territory, just as we work to
deprive them of actual territory,”

The problem with that line of reasoning is that we good people are poised to
lose some of our "virtual territory" i.e. freedoms too as a collateral damage
in this fight.

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rosalinekarr
At this point, the NYT is just a mouthpiece for the executive branch. They've
been pushing a ridiculous anti-encryption, anti-privacy agenda since Glenn
Greenwald.

~~~
knodi123
I'm apparently a little out of the loop on this - can you point me to some
examples?

~~~
rosalinekarr
I was generally thinking about the things Glenn Greenwald describes in his
book, [No Place to Hide]([http://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Hide-Snowden-
Surveillance-ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Hide-Snowden-Surveillance-
ebook/dp/B00E0CZX0G)). For example, even though Greenwald is a respect
journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, when the Snowden scandal
first broke, the NYT insisted on referring to him only as a 'blogger.' They
also published a lot of op-eds bashing Greenwald's work as dangerous and non-
journalistic.

Sorry, I don't have any better links or sources right now. I'm on mobile.

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iamsohungry
I'm fine with cracking down on ISIS propaganda as long as we also crack down
on the propaganda of hawks in the West. ISIS is bad, no question there. But
the US invasion of Iraq has caused more deaths than the fighting with ISIS. We
need to stop pretending that these actions are different. Killing people is
killing people even if it's done by militaries at the orders of men in suits.

~~~
mc32
It's debatable. Do you stand aside and look the other way and say, that's
their lot in the world, or do you do something.

It's not an was call. If you do nothing people die. If you try to do something
people will die. The idea is to pave a better path to the future.

To be sure, going into Iraq was a fools errand, but it's more difficult to
make the call about lets say strife in Africa, or the Caucasus, etc.

Or even today, do we say, forget Syria. Seal it up, let them sort things out
and condemn a whole country's population to great suffering?

~~~
iamsohungry
> It's debatable. Do you stand aside and look the other way and say, that's
> their lot in the world, or do you do something.

> It's not an was call. If you do nothing people die. If you try to do
> something people will die. The idea is to pave a better path to the future.

This was the propaganda used to excuse invading Iraq, but it's incredibly
naive to believe it.

> Or even today, do we say, forget Syria. Seal it up, let them sort things out
> and condemn a whole country's population to great suffering?

That's _exactly_ what we'd be doing if they weren't sitting in the way of
fossil fuel transportation routes.

It's ridiculous to claim that we're doing this to reduce the suffering of
people in Syria. The US has supplied Israel with bombs that have been used to
kill Syrian civilians for more than half a century, yet suddenly we care about
the suffering of Syrians now? Yeah, right.

~~~
mc32
So are you saying countries should retreat from Syria and let things fall
where they may, or are you saying we should get more involved?

Of course countries act selfishly. It's crazy to think otherwise. Everyone
will act selfishly. Europe the ME, etc. want stability in Syria selfishly, but
coincidentally it's a good thing.

~~~
iamsohungry
> So are you saying countries should retreat from Syria and let things fall
> where they may, or are you saying we should get more involved?

I'm saying that our current involvement in Syria is worse than not being
involved, and talking about Syria as if "helping" is even an option our
leaders are considering is naive, and buying into the propaganda.

I can see a number of ways we could be involved positively in Syria, but we're
not, and we're not going to be.

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bko
> “When Twitter says, ‘We can’t do this,’ I don’t believe that,” said Hany
> Farid, chairman of the computer science department at Dartmouth College ...
> “There’s no fundamental technology or engineering limitation,” he said.
> “This is a business or policy decision. Unless the companies have decided
> that they just can’t be bothered.”

Can anyone comment whether this is true or not? It seems rather trivial to
create new accounts and post data. Is it just whack-a-mole or is there
something more sophisticated that goes on?

~~~
RegW
There can always be some checking that happens as part of creating a new
account.

Remember that to be effective, the follower needs to be able to find the new
account when the old one is closed. They will do this by searching for an
obvious keyword (in this case TurMedia or IslamicState), so checking the
username against a block list of known terms previously used by terrorists
should catch it.

For example, FB has a real names policy - try opening a FB account with a
stupid name and see what happens - its not that hard.

~~~
jessaustin
A "real names policy" is not appropriate to every situation, since it is
inherently hostile to users. Some have even criticized its use at FB.

~~~
RegW
I agree, but the point I was trying to make (perhaps unclearly), was that the
username can be checked against a list of blocked patterns at account creation
time.

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jcromartie
Why scramble to shut them down? Isn't this a valuable source of information?
Wouldn't we want to know what they are saying, who is engaging with them,
etc.? Why push them further underground?

Hell, why not just make a social network JUST for terrorists with no threat of
shutting anybody down and then just tap into that info?

~~~
golergka
Because propaganda actually works. We're not trying to push down the actual
terrorists; we're trying to win information war waged inside the minds of
potential future terrorists.

You would think that people aren't that stupid. I would think that too. But
after witnessing the whole country (Russia) going down the rabbit hole of
paranoid madness with just a couple of years of propaganda, I don't think that
anymore.

~~~
mapgrep
And clearly the best way to win the information war against an adversary who
says we've traded away our values for comfort, riches, and decadence is to
throw away the First Amendment because "propaganda works."

Keep in mind, we're not just talking about accounts used by actual terrorists
to coordinate actual attacks. We're talking about "pro-ISIS" Twitter accounts.

How will we decide who is pro-ISIS? I propose a system of hearings, with the
most important ones conducted by a senate committee. The most important
question at these hearings will be "are you now or have ever been a
sympathizer with Islamic State." If they "fail" the hearing we could put them
in some kind of database used by employers and government hiring agents and so
forth. A sort of blacklist, if you will.

And anyone on the blacklist doesn't get to use corporate media platforms. It's
not a First Amendment violation, you see, because it's VOLUNTARY. Just ask
these guys:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist)

~~~
jcromartie
Twitter deciding that they don't want ISIS supporters using their application
violates nobody's 1st Amendment rights.

~~~
mapgrep
Right right, just like the Hollywood blacklist didn't violate anyone's First
Amendment rights. (You could have at least read to the end of my comment, lol)

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williamcotton
The best solution would be to build a public platform for Twitter-like
communication.

This would give people the same free speech protections they have on public
streets and town squares, which they don't have when using private platforms
like Instagram or Facebook.

It would also give law enforcement the ability to do their jobs.

We have a public postal service, why not a public social media platform?

Wouldn't it be great if this public platform had a completely open API,
without the restrictions that Twitter puts in place to artificially limit
access in order to create demand?

Remember the good old days when 3rd party developers basically built
everything good about Twitter?

~~~
newjersey
I am not trying to attack you personally. Please don't take this the wrong
way. I just want to understand... why would a recruiter for a militant (likely
illegal) organization use a government-owned public platform?

The only possible reason for a recruiter to join is if there are potential
recruits there. With USPS, a recruiter would have the ability to send mail to
John Doe or current resident. There is some kind of targeting available as
well. But that is besides the point. The main problem is how do we get
everyone to be on this new public platform?

I think if we can get enough people to sign up for this public platform, it
could be feasible. There are still privacy implications of such a public
utility though. When you connect to the service, it can keep track of at least
your device ID (trivial with apps) and your IP address. Assuming everyone is
on this service, the service could reliably track who you are with at what
times.

I understand that there already exist "shadow" profiles for me on various
networks . However, I do not like the idea of an online identity that is
connected to my real, legal identity. what if someone else gets a hold of my
account while I am away for a few days and starts posting pro Sinn Féin
propaganda on it? Will I get flagged for terrorism? How do we know handle all
these false positives? I'll go ahead and create a straw man here that is
ridiculous: how about we require people to prick their finger and submit their
blood sample when they start using a new computer or when they have been
inactive for ten minutes?

~~~
williamcotton
You've answered your own question. Terrorist organizations wouldn't use a
public platform just like how they don't currently have recruitment booths in
Times Square.

If there are privacy implications those would be handled by legislature and
judicial oversight like the rest of our public infrastructure.

I don't see why a public platform for social media would need any sort of real
life identify verification.

Instead of having a private company decide who gets to say what, we have
public representatives handle the curation. The FCC has been regulating TV and
radio for many decades and as far as I can tell it is still relatively easy to
criticize the government over public airwaves.

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mintplant
The author keeps slipping in references to encryption but I don't really see
the connection. Clearly it has little to do with terrorists broadcasting
messages intended to be read by everyone on social media.

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AYBABTME
Don't delete their accounts, shadowban them.

