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Show: Reality Exploit Roundtable
Episode: 12
Date: Nov 1, 2012
Topics: Mindmelding, Facebook-> 'We are THE Internet', Russia Saves the Children, US Campaign Data Mining your Ass
Moderator: Voodoo
Panelists: Voodoo, Wise-Guy, Hiro, Smuggler, Plato
Tags: big brother, censorship, cleanIT, data mining
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Intro music by Sun Araw - "Deep Cover"
- Voodoo: Black and Yellow Pages, Beer Can Engines
- Smugggler: http://anarplex.net, http://shadowlife.cc
- Plato: Twitter, Reddit
- Hiro: Agorist Radio
- Wise-Guy:
- MindMeld
-- Always on Siri
-- Expect Labs
Mindmeld is an iOS app expected to launch this fall that attempts to provide context to human conversations. Ars Technica reports:
MindMeld is ... an information-driven application which listens in to your conversation and attempts to understand what's being said. Once it figures out what you're talking about, MindMeld will try to create a model of the conversation's context, and from that it will attempt to locate and display relevant information from many different sources.
Expect Labs founder Tim Tuttle at TechCrunch Disrupt, explaining MindMeld:
mind_meld.mp3
Plato, there are some really neat use cases for this technology and I think, in maturity, it will be a good tool to increase productivity. However, as a security consultant to Expect Labs, what risks would Plato Security Group warn them about?
- Social Media Use is Confusing
-- Army Says 'Social Network' Use Is a Sign of Radicalism
-- Facebook Convincing New Users FB and Internet are the Same
According to Wired's Danger Room Blog, an assessment of a terrorism advisory organization inside the U.S. Army called the Asymmetric Warfare Group in 2011 listed some warning signs that a co-worker may be about to go postal.
Signs that you have turned into a terrorist who will soon kill your co-workers include recently changing your “choices in entertainment.” Having “peculiar discussions.” “Complaining about bias,” being “socially withdrawn” and frustrated with “mainstream ideologies.” Your “Risk Factors for Radicalization” include “Social Networks” and “Youth.”
Meanwhile, Facebook's plan to get its next billion users revolves around convincing current and potential users that Facebook IS the Internet, ala AOL.
In developing countries, Facebook applications are being packaged on SIM cards, text-only versions are available for feature phones, and, of course, Facebook mobile is available for smart phones.
Hiro, we've talked on the roundtable before about how not having social media accounts is suspicious to potential employers. Social media and widgets for social media seems like it's driving all development these days. So, the army assessment is completely at odds with what is going on in the world. Do you think it's a matter of the army panel being out of step, or do they really think that everybody is a potential terrorist?
- More Countries are Restricting Internet Access
-- Yahoo Story -- Something about Russia
Reuters reports that 20 of the 47 countries scored by Freedom House for Internet freedom declined in their rankings from January 2011. Pakistan, Bahrain, and Ethiopia saw the biggest rollbacks in Internet freedom.
Estonia tops Freedom House's list for greatest Internet freedoms, followed by the United States, which is in decline.
As in Russia, where government actors recently passed a law that can only be enforced through a deep packet inspection dragnet, the reasons given for Internet restrictions in all nations center around the four horsemen of the infopocalypse, but in practice end up being suppression of political speech.
Smuggler, the reasons for implementing restrictions on Internet freedoms are obvious. If government actors could roll back time, the Internet would have been specifically outlawed in the Magna Carta. But, since they can't put the worms back in the can, what do statists have to do to enact these restrictions and what counter-tech is available to users?
- Campaign Data Mining
-- Campaigns Mine Personal Lives to Get Out Vote
Strategists affiliated with the Obama and Romney campaigns say they have access to information about the personal lives of voters at a scale never before imagined. They are using that data to try to influence voting habits — in effect, to train voters to go to the polls through subtle cues, rewards and threats in a manner akin to the marketing efforts of credit card companies and big-box retailers. In the weeks before Election Day, millions of voters will hear from callers with surprisingly detailed knowledge of their lives. These callers — friends of friends or long-lost work colleagues — will identify themselves as volunteers for the campaigns or independent political groups. The callers get their information from tracking cookies, commercial data aggregators, credit reporting agencies, and social media.
Wise-Guy, politicking is a science and political operatives have long used the latest and greatest techniques to influence the behavior of individual voters. That's what they get paid the big bucks for. Do you think there is a line politicians will not cross in terms of using this data, or has it already been crossed?