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Social Media for Kettling Activists and Campaigners

posted by n1 on Monday July 03 2017, @08:51AM   
from the lambs-to-the-slaughter dept.

canopic jug writes in with a story which became:

Daniel Pocok blogs about the misguided picture that most people have over social media. These web sites turn out to be an effective means to monitor and control the population. One key point he makes is that the public ignores the ease with which social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, facilitate the effective kettling and surveillance of activists, campaigners, and other groups. He writes:

Facebook helps kettle activists in their arm chair. The police state can gather far more data about them, while their impact is even more muted than if they ventured out of their home.

And further down he asks,

Is somebody who takes pictures of you and insists on sharing them with hundreds of people, tagging your face for the benefit of biometric profiling systems, really a friend?

The addictive nature of these so-called services combined with the network effect make it really hard for people to escape, but the negative aspects really suggest that they should make the effort.

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Original Submission

• Long but worth it(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @08:21PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @08:21PM (#534563)

  It's a bit of a long read but well worth it:

  Suppose that I were the dictator of Elbonia (the mythical country from Dilbert cartoons). I would be autocratic, ruthless...oh, wait, I already *am* those things...anyway, I would be the typical tyrant attempting to retain power in the face of democratic movements and civil rights movements and worker's rights movement and other petty annoyances.

  I would *not* block Twitter. I would *not* block Facebook. I would *not* block Instagram or any of the others either. I wouldn't do this because the idealistic, enthusiastic, hard-working, noble young people who are most likely to pose a serious threat to my supremacy and are also naive, gullible, careless and stupid. They're using Twitter and Facebook and
  the rest and that is extremely helpful to me, since I very much would like to monitor them and know who they are and where they are and what they're up to. They've wiretapped themselves, saving me much of the trouble and expense.

  Instead -- because I *am* the dictator, thank you very much -- I would order the long-since nationalized telecoms and ISPs to provide a real-time feed of network traffic to my intelligence agency. I would monitor who is following #OverthrowTheDictator and who is liking the "DesposeTheDictator" page. And so on.

  And when the moment came that I felt really threatened, I would decapitate their movement by disappearing the 22 or 37 or whatever most active participants. Not a tidy solution, I'll grant you, but effective in the short term and it would certainly discourage others. I could probably do this 3-4 times before they caught on that they were making a major strategic mistake. That might buy me another decade in power.

  Now you might say...but what about HTTPS? Would about VPNs? What about Tor? ("What about Houston? What about Detroit?" Thank you David Byrne.)

  Yeah. I know. Most inconvenient. Fortunately, I have another way. Several other ways, actually.

  You see, Twitter wants to do business here in Elbonia. So does Facebook. So I would summon their corporate weasels to a meeting. In that meeting, one of my minions (you don't think I'd do this personally, do you?) would explain to them that we must protect our great nation from subversives and criminals and anarchists and terrorists (ding ding ding magic word!) and thus we must have certain data fed to us...or, most regrettably, we will not be able to allow them to do business in our country.

  I think they'll cave. Don't you? After all, there are profits to be made and it's such a small thing that I'm asking. And if the corporate weasels are perhaps..hesitant...than maybe some tax breaks will help. Or maybe some help with a few bureaucratic obstacles they're currently facing. Or maybe an envelope full of tax-free income will help persuade
  them to cooperate. (I have plenty, you know. We dictators have buckets of cash.) Or women. Or men. Or both. Or cars, condos, boats: surely they have an itch that I can scratch.

  And then I will do everything I said above, content with a full real-time feed of data-of-interest into my pet intelligence agency.

  Oh...come now, you don't *really* think that corporate weasels will stand on principle, do you? These are trained professional liars and con men, the finest products of business school: they don't have principles. Or spines. What they *do* have is greed. Lots of it. Their loyalty ispurchased by the highest bidder, and that will be me. Before you know it, they'll be working for me and moonlighting for their "real" employer.

  "But what if they're discovered?" Not a problem. Setting up plausible deniability is easy and we'll simply make it look like the Evil Nefarious Diabolical Hackers associated with the local liberatiXXXXXXterrorist movement did it. Or we'll blame Anonymous. Or we'll just stonewall.

  Oh? You think that maybe, just maybe, that won't work? Fine. There are other ways. I don't actually *need* the willing or even knowing cooperation of the people at the top of those companies. One engineer in the right place will probably suffice. I strongly doubt that they've architected themselves to defend against insider attacks. Why would they?
  Why would Twitter or Facebook spend the money? It's not THEIR data. Their track records clearly indicate that they don't give a damn about protecting it, so why would they suddenly start now?

  I just need to find an engineer who's feeling a little under-appreciated and make a deal. Or I need to find one who can be blackmailed, extorted, threatened, etc. Maybe someone who has family still under my rule. Maybe someone with a monkey on their back. Maybe someone with a nice house, beautiful wife, two kids and three mistresses. This is what I *pay* my intelligence operations services to do, you know: find the weak points and turn the screws on people until they comply.
  And then I will get a full data feed of everything of interest to me.
  I won't *have* to care about HTTPS or VPNs or Tor or any of that because I'll be tapping in at the source.

  Suppose that doesn't work? I'll buy a 0-day or six. Or I'll use one of their many security holes -- again, why should they fix those? It's not THEIR data. There are plenty of talented, clever people out there who are capable of breaking into these operations and some of them will work for me willingly (because I pay well) or unwillingly (see coercive tactics above).

  And if not *that*? Given enough time, I can get one of my own people -- someone completely loyal to me -- hired there. (Of course, since this requires lead time, I already had my people get to work on that six years ago. I've got people planted in various startups, some of which will succeed, some of which won't, but if they make it I'll have someone well-positioned on the inside when they do.) This is pretty good work for someone who wants to take home two paychecks, and the best part is that they may not ever have to do *anything* for me.

  But but but...suppose that doesn't work either. (Highly unlikely, but let's go there.) I have allies. Either political or economic or military or otherwise. Some of them have probably done exactly what I'm trying to do and would be willing to make a deal. I can get all this data from them in exchange for oil or arms or maybe a little military help with a small problem they're currently experiencing. I help them out with their annoying pro-labor movement, they help me out with my pesky pro-democracy agitators. A little quid pro quo between dictators, if you will, because we have common interests in crushing dissent.

  Of course, being a highly competent dictator, my approach is to use ALL of these and a few more I won't trouble you with. I don't want my access to be limited to a single method which might fail at an inconvenient time.

  The bottom line is that I *will* get the data that I want, I'll probably get it in real time (or close), and I'll use it to ruthlessly crush any movement or organization that I think poses an existential threat to my reign. And I'll chuckle quietly to myself that they were so very helpful in providing the instruments of their own demise.

  My point in writing this snarky little narrative is that it's a bad move to use Twitter, Facebook or the rest to organize. It is one of the worst possible things that any political/social/economic/etc. movement can do, because it means that they're handing extremely useful, real-time, geolocated, correlated, actionable intelligence over to a third party which has, no doubt, long since by subverted not just by agencies of the US government, but by as many other governments as can manage it.

  And quite likely by non-governmental entities. If you think about it for a moment, you'll realize that anybody with sufficient power (i.e. money) could do exactly the same things as the mythical dictator of Elbonia. If you think about it for another moment, you should be able to come up with a list of entities that have both the money and the desire to do so.

  And this is the point at which you, if you're an activist using those sites, should be sweating. Because it should be dawning on you about now that you have been doing your adversary's intelligence work for them. For free. All they have to do is harvest the results...which is not a particularly challenging problem for any intelligence agency worthy
  of that title.

  So...if you don't think the Chinese or the Saudis or the Elbonians have a data feed, then you're being highly optimistic. Of *course* they do, it's a completely obvious, highly cost-effective move. As soon as *any* of these so-called "social networks" gets popular enough to matter, it WILL be targeted and while not every country can afford it, and not every country, corporation, or organization will succeed, enough will try and enough will manage it. And if not? They'll try again tomorrow.
  And the next day.

  So when I see a note from some well-meaning, highly-motivated organization that says "...and follow us on Facebook" I just shake my head slowly. They've not only turned themselves into sharecroppers, but they're doing their best to get their own supporters surveilled, tracked, and much worse.

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