
Meet Prism's little brother: Socmint - djm_
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/26/socmint
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simonbarker87
I don't see anything wrong with this - they are scanning public activity -
that's fair game as far as I am concerned, it's fishing through and storing
the private stuff that bothers me.

Infact, the more I think about this topic the more I realise it's not the
monitoring that bothers me - it's the storage element and the fact they could
go back through in years to come and paint whatever picture they can about a
person.

Disclosure: I'm British

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null_ptr
You don't see anything wrong with

""" "Sentiment analysis" that can determine your mood; "horizon scanning" that
tries to pre-empt disorder and crime; facial recognition software that can
track down individuals; geo-location that is able to pinpoint your
whereabouts, and profiling that can map who you are and what circles you move
in. """

~~~
sailfast
All of that information is provided by the social media user, voluntarily to
the public internet. If you don't want your mood analyzed then it is best not
to post "I'm grumpy this morning" on Twitter. Companies do the same thing for
marketing campaigns - I'm not seeing a problem here or how this relates as a
"little brother" to other programs.

~~~
digitalengineer
Not quite. I did some UI work for a phone-company and their in-store camera's
were able to detect clients mood within a second. They even demo'd it and
showed the mood of people walking in. Right now it's only capable of 'happy,
neutral and not-happy' as well as suggest man/woman. I'm pretty sure the
software driving those camera's will only get better. Combine that with facial
recognition and it get's creepy.

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gregparadee
Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a staff of 17 officers in the
National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) has been scanning the public's tweets,
YouTube videos, Facebook profiles, and anything else UK citizens post in the
public online sphere.

The HUGE difference here is the last three words of that paragraph, "public
online sphere." They are doing no more then analyzing publicly accessible data
just like any other company, specifically advertising and marketing companies,
do on a daily basis.

~~~
rob_mccann
TLDR: This is nothing like Prism. Prism (illegally) accesses private data,
NDEU legally accesses data made public.

~~~
_djo_
Not quite, PRISM provides access to data legally acquired through mechanisms
(like FISA requests) that should ideally not be legal.

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aznjons
A number of initial responses to this article seem to acquiesce to the program
because it scans technically "public" information. Speaking from the context
of the United States, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution is what may be
violated by PRISM, which protects citizens from unreasonable search and
seizure. It has been interpreted by the courts that this protects citizens
when they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

At what point with the powerful sensor technologies and analytics techniques
that government agencies can employ and are mentioned in the article (semantic
analysis, horizon scanning, predictive analytics, facial recognition,
geolocation) do we draw a line that a reasonable expectation of privacy has
been violated? I am not sure that the users of social networks who are not
tech industry workers necessarily expect the extent to which extrapolations
can be made and conclusions can be drawn about behavior that is technically
"public" and mundane at face value.

Another separate question to consider is whether agencies will distinguish
between content that is "public" or "private" in the cloud. It may be
reasonable that content put in the cloud publicly is searchable, but will
agencies respect cloud providers/users administrative privacy options? If I
put physical property in storage I expect a warrant will be required to search
it, but if I put intellectual property in the cloud, will the government
respect that as protected by the 4th amendment when it is much easier to
obtain, especially with the cooperation of tech companies?

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tudorw
I believe underpinning this is a need for new tools to give citizens the
ability to ensure good governance. We can watch the watchmen, and we should.

~~~
kimlelly
Correct. But you can start with the low-hanging fruit, i.e. use
[http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/) as
your new social network & secure communication.

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danielsamuels
I would have been more surprised if they WEREN'T doing this.

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gasull
Related talk at the last HOPE conference:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az7txN0599M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az7txN0599M)

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r00fus
So it's just _scanning_ public info, right? What about the creation of fake
personas [1]? What if these fake personas posted, commented and attempted to
gain more information, or attempted to sway/entrap people?

It seems the line to be crossed from (a bit more than public) surveillance to
manipulation is a very very thin line.

[1] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/23/1218189/-HBGary-
Pal...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/23/1218189/-HBGary-Palantir-
Prism-Facebook-The-Industrial-Surveillance-Complex)

~~~
virtu
Topic is connected to PRISM sooo much. I don't understand how so many people
here can't see that technology and it's implementation bypassed the
legislation and conversations for a majority of population except for
cypherpunks and a few others?

