
Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else - primitive
http://techfruit.com/2014/11/26/internet-companies-not-monitoring-terrorists-anyone-else/
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rwmj
It's also impossible. "I'm going to kill some soldiers when I get back" might
refer to my super secret terror plot, or my PlayStation-related plans for the
evening.

~~~
amirmc
Here's my solution to that. Gather all the information possible, including
things you've purchased so that I know whether or not you actually _have_
those games or any of your friends do (and whether you actually play them).
Assess, whether any major life changes have occurred for you based on all my
data-mining and algos and assign a risk-factor for that particular statement.
Monitor/filter your subsequent (or even previous?) communications (SMS, calls)
for anything that might increase the risk-factor. If it's above a certain
threshold, dispatch a discrete drone to follow you around 'just to be sure'
(it's ok, you won't even know it's there). Maybe one day, I might decide to
have armed drones, you know, 'just in case'. Oh, and make all of this
automated because software is eating the world and what not (bugs? what
bugs?).

Obviously, I say all of the above tongue-in-cheek but it wouldn't surprise me
if there are people in government (or the security services) who actually
think that way.

~~~
madaxe_again
There very definitely are people who think that way who make policy decisions
- most of them. They see themselves as invulnerable demagogues, and their
apparatuses as being able to do anything, because they say they can. Computers
are this amazing thing you can wave a wand at and anything can happen, and
because it came out of a computer, you know it's GOT to be right.

We used to have a saying for this, which was "high on their own bullshit".

Career politicians are just that - in politics, for _their_ career. Not for
your sake. Not because they want to change things. Because they see a trough,
and daddy stuck his nose in it and did alright, so why can't I too? This
doesn't require any particular knowledge of the world around you, or empathy,
just a machiavellian drive to clamber on corpses until you reach the top,
where you can crown yourself king of the ashes.

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retube
Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions
between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and
terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or
oversight are deemed insufficient.

I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the
legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be
demanded of internet companies?

~~~
smtddr
_> >I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the
legitimacy of their customers behaviour._

I don't think most people have this expectation.

Banks to be accountable for customers breaking law? What's an example of this?
If I open a bank account in a different country, under an LLC, to illegally
avoid paying taxes or to receive kickbacks it's up to the bank to figure that
out? I do not expect banks to be responsible for their customers unless
something outrageous happens, like a non-corp account suddenly reaching a
billion USD balance. And this is ____much____ easier to automate for banks too
and will produce almost no false alarms. If Joe-The-Plumber's account is
suddenly more than Donald Trump's net worth... something is going on.

Conversely, with Facebook/Apple/Google you'd just get this[1] happening all
the time. And have you ever had the joy of XboxLive's in-game audio and
messaging? False alarms galore. Blowing up planes and burning down / shooting
up schools was a common joke even when I was a kid in the '80s, not even to
talk of today's youngsters. <\--- And now if HN had terrorism-dection built
in, will this comment of mine get flagged?

1\. [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/long-island-high-school-
student-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/long-island-high-school-
student-17-threatened-to-blow-up-school-arrested-by-police/)

~~~
pjc50
Enough people have shot up schools that I think some sort of response to "I'm
going to kill people at school" is warranted. A conviction may not be the best
outcome, but I don't think it's entirely safe to ignore all of them.

~~~
amirmc
How about trying to understand and deal with the _root-cause_ of people
shooting up schools?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You can do both.

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pbhjpbhj
Is this just the first offer in a bid to get police access to data for
investigation purposes - like ask for the world and then asking just for a
mountain sounds reasonable.

In this case it would be asking that service providers monitor everyone; but,
the actual desire is to allow investigative authorities (police, MI5, ...)
access to suspected terrorists online dealings _via_ the service providers at
the back end.

In the Lee Rigby case it seems that the exchange about murdering soldier would
have been sufficient to push the suspect in to the camp of making terrorist
threats and allowed for an arrest.

It's curious in some ways as Adebowale had been the focus of investigations
and yet GCHQ clearly didn't have information on all his online exchanges (that
could be tied to him), yet a company in the USA did have access. This suggests
that the level of integration in to online communications that GCHQ has is far
less than we've recently been led to believe. We're being told left-and-right
that government spooks know our every move and whisper - this seems not to be
true, not even for people associated with terrorism investigations.

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tim333
I don't think it's practical to require the likes of Facebook to monitor for
terrorists and the like. After all one man's terrorist is another's freedom
fighter. However it would be quite reasonable for them to choose to look out
for that and bullying, grooming and the like especially if the posts are semi
public.

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ptaffs
I thought the global intelligence services _already_ had access to Facebook
etc. data, maybe the question in-light of the Ed Snowden leaks, is _why_ they
didn't see this. Except, as commented there would be an extreme false-positive
rate. In which case, why do we continue to fund the intelligence services...

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cpncrunch
The title of this article is slightly misleading. The article actually says we
should be monitoring known terrorists. Perhaps they should change the title to
"Internet companies should not be monitoring non-terrorists".

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lumberjack
I think that's a bit hard to do when your business model is built around user
profiling, even if it is only for purely legal business ends.

