Category Archives: social media

Privacy issues could threaten the future of commercial social media

Jonathan Salem Baskin writes: The FTC has ruled that data brokers need to be more transparent. The slow reveal of NSA snooping details continues (as Glenn Greenwald’s book may get made into a movie, and you can bet Snowden’s tome is already being ghost-written). eBay has just joined the long list of businesses to have its data hacked. The privacy issue isn’t going away any time soon, though the commercial social media sites have deftly surfed the edges of the wave. Considering the low thresholds of user loyalty these platforms command, and the inexpensive ease by which true P2P communicating can be accomplished, I wonder how long before the leading “Big Social” companies either address the issue clearly , or are forced by regulators or consumers to suffer the consequences of failing to do so.

For instance, when Facebook recently announced changes to its default privacy settings on sharing with friends, it was revealed also that it could access smartphone mics to capture and analyze the songs, TV shows and other things users heard. Google suffered a court ruling in Europe earlier this year, forcing it to allow petitioners to be “forgotten” by its search engine, just as the continued rollout of its glasses promised to add every waking moment of users’ lives to its database (it also recently announced it would no longer scan students’ emails for marketing purposes, while admitting it had used data collected from its apps for government customers for just such purposes).

Add to these headlines the recurring experience of opt-in screens or other detailed mouseprint agreements users are required to approve in order to use many online services (Yahoo just changed its policy to deny users the ability to request that their behavior not get tracked, and called it an improvement in “personalized experience”). Even Wiki’s latest privacy changes are laudable for their transparency, but still woefully complex, as if they’re written only for the initiated to understand, let alone find.

This is muddled communicating, at best, and it’s hard not to think that it’s purposeful, since the profitability of these services depends on users remaining unaware of the extent to which their privacy is (or will be) exploited. [Continue reading…]

The cloud of unknowing

Karl Taro Greenfeld writes: I can’t help it. Every few weeks, my wife mentions the latest book her book club is reading, and no matter what it is, whether I’ve read it or not, I offer an opinion of the work, based entirely on … what, exactly? Often, these are books I’ve not even read a review or essay about, yet I freely hold forth on the grandiosity of Cheryl Strayed or the restrained sentimentality of Edwidge Danticat. These data motes are gleaned, apparently, from the ether — or, more realistically, from various social media feeds.

What was Solange Knowles’s elevator attack on Jay-Z about? I didn’t watch the security-camera video on TMZ — it would have taken too long — but I scrolled through enough chatter to know that Solange had scrubbed her Instagram feed of photos of her sister, Beyoncé. How about this season of “Game of Thrones” and that nonconsensual intercourse in the crypt? I don’t watch the show, but I’ve scanned the recaps on Vulture.com, and I am prepared to argue that this was deeply offensive. Is Pope Francis a postmodern pontiff? I’ve never listened to one of his homilies nor watched his recent “60 Minutes” appearance, but I’ve seen plenty of his @Pontifex tweets retweeted, so I’m ready to say his position on inequality and social justice is remarkably progressive.

It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything. We pick topical, relevant bits from Facebook, Twitter or emailed news alerts, and then regurgitate them. Instead of watching “Mad Men” or the Super Bowl or the Oscars or a presidential debate, you can simply scroll through someone else’s live-tweeting of it, or read the recaps the next day. Our cultural canon is becoming determined by whatever gets the most clicks.

In his 1987 book “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” E. D. Hirsch Jr. listed 5,000 essential concepts and names — 1066, Babbitt, Pickwickian — that educated people should be familiar with. (Or at least that’s what I believe he wrote, not having actually read the book.) Mr. Hirsch’s book, along with its contemporary “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom, made the point that cultural literacy — Mr. Bloom’s canon — was the bedrock of our agreed-upon values.

What we all feel now is the constant pressure to know enough, at all times, lest we be revealed as culturally illiterate. So that we can survive an elevator pitch, a business meeting, a visit to the office kitchenette, a cocktail party, so that we can post, tweet, chat, comment, text as if we have seen, read, watched, listened. What matters to us, awash in petabytes of data, is not necessarily having actually consumed this content firsthand but simply knowing that it exists — and having a position on it, being able to engage in the chatter about it. We come perilously close to performing a pastiche of knowledgeability that is really a new model of know-nothingness. [Continue reading…]

Two major threats to the internet: The U.S. government and the Russian government

Ars Technica: Hector Xavier Monsegur, the hacker known as “Sabu,” became a confidential FBI informant following his 2011 arrest. But he continued to direct other hackers to attack more than 2,000 Internet domains in 2012, including sites operated by the Iranian, Syrian, and Brazilian governments.

Based on documents obtained by the New York Times, those attacks were carried out with the knowledge of the FBI agents supervising Monsegur. The Times report suggests that the data obtained in the attacks—including information on Syrian government sites—was passed to US intelligence agencies by the FBI.

Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly wants to exploit the climate of distrust that has been generated by the NSA and other branches of the U.S. government that have undermined internet security and sees in this the opportunity to push for a Russian internet — one in which the Russian government can exercise greater control over social media.

Vesti.ru reports (translation):

“The Internet emerged as a special project of the CIA USA, and continues to be developed as such,” said Putin [at the conference Mediaforum in St. Petersburg today]. Moreover, the president noted that the national search engine Yandex and the social network VKontakte are trying to develop business, mathematical and informational programming in Russia. “Our companies didn’t have resources free for such capital investments, but now they have appeared,” said the head of state. Putin expressed the hope that the Russian Internet would develop rather intensively and rapidly and will secure the interests of the Russian Federation.”

Meanwhile, ITAR-TASS reports:

Russia’s popular bloggers will now have to brace for considerable restrictions of their rights. The State Duma has just adopted a law introducing new rules they will have to abide by. The document incorporates a package of bills for effective struggle against terrorism and extremism. Earlier, the bill drew a mixed response from society, including sharp criticism from human rights activists.

The law introduces a new term: “Internet user called blogger.” Bloggers will be obliged to declare their family name and initials and e-mail address. Those authors whose personal website or page in social networks has 3,000 visitors or more a day must have themselves registered on a special list and abide by restrictions applicable to the mass media. In other words, registration requires the blogger should check the authenticity of published information and also mention age restrictions for users. Also, bloggers will have to follow mass media laws concerning electioneering, resistance to extremism and the publication of information about people’s private lives. An abuse of these requirements will be punishable with a fine of 10,000 to 30,000 roubles (roughly 300 dollars to 1,000 dollars) for individuals and 300,000 roubles (10,000 roubles) for legal entities. A second violation will be punishable with the website’s suspension for one month.

The Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan write:

The NSA scandal made a perfect excuse for the Russian authorities to launch a campaign to bring global web platforms such as Gmail and Facebook under Russian law—either requiring them to be accessible in Russia by the domain extension .ru, or obliging them to be hosted on Russian territory. Under Russian control, these companies and their Russian users could protect their data from U.S. government surveillance and, most importantly, be completely transparent for Russian secret services.

Russia wants to shift supervision and control of the Internet from global companies to local or national authorities, allowing the FSB more authority and latitude to thwart penetration from outside. At December’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) conference in Dubai, Moscow tried to win over other countries to its plan for a new system of control. The key to the project is to hand off the functions of managing distribution of domain names/IP-addresses from the U.S.-based organization ICANN to an international organization such as the ITU, where Russia can play a central role. Russia also proposed limiting the right of access to the Internet in such cases where “telecommunication services are used for the purpose of interfering in the internal affairs or undermining the sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity, and public safety of other states, or to divulge information of a sensitive nature.” Some 89 countries voted for the Russian proposals, but not the United States, United Kingdom, Western Europe, Australia, or Canada. The result is a stalemate.

Web services would be required to build backdoors for the Russian secret services to access what’s stored there. Prominent Russian MP Sergei Zheleznyak, a member of the ruling United Russia party, has called on Russia to reclaim its “digital sovereignty” and wean its citizens off foreign websites. He said he would introduce legislation this fall to create a “national server,” which analysts say would require foreign websites to register on Russian territory, thus giving the Kremlin’s own security services the access they have long been seeking. Of course, building such a national system would defeat the global value of the Internet.

Shane Harris writes:

When U.S. officials warn of the threat foreign cyber spies pose to American companies and government agencies, they usually focus on China, which has long been home to the world’s most relentless and aggressive hackers. But new information shows that Russian and Eastern European hackers, who have historically focused their energies on crime and fraud, now account for a large and growing percentage of all cyber espionage, most of which is directed at the United States.

Individuals and groups in Eastern Europe, and particularly in Russia and Russian-speaking countries, are responsible for a fifth of all cyber spying incidents in the world, according to a global study of data breaches conducted by Verizon, published this week. The spies are targeting a range of companies as varied as the global economy itself, and are stealing manufacturing designs, proprietary technology and confidential business plans. The cyber spies steal information on behalf of their governments in order to manufacture cheaper versions of technologies or weapons systems, or to give their home country’s corporations a leg up on their foreign competitors.

U.S. secretly created ‘Cuban Twitter’ to stir unrest

The Associated Press reports: In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government.

McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company’s ties to the U.S. government.

McSpedon didn’t work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid.

According to documents obtained by The Associated Press and multiple interviews with people involved in the project, the plan was to develop a bare-bones “Cuban Twitter,” using cellphone text messaging to evade Cuba’s strict control of information and its stranglehold restrictions over the Internet. In a play on Twitter, it was called ZunZuneo — slang for a Cuban hummingbird’s tweet.

Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through “non-controversial content”: news messages on soccer, music, and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize “smart mobs” — mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”

At its peak, the project drew in more than 40,000 Cubans to share news and exchange opinions. But its subscribers were never aware it was created by the U.S. government, or that American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes. [Continue reading…]

Turkey YouTube ban: Full transcript of leaked Syria ‘war’ conversation between Erdogan officials

International Business Times reports: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ban of YouTube occurred after a leaked conversation between Head of Turkish Intelligence Hakan Fidan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu that he wanted removed from the video-sharing website.

The leaked call details Erdogan’s thoughts that an attack on Syria “must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turkey]”.

In the conversation, intelligence chief Fidan says that he will send four men from Syria to attack Turkey to “make up a cause of war”.

Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Yaşar Güler replies that Fidan’s projected actions are “a direct cause of war…what you’re going to do is a direct cause of war”.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said the leaked recording of top officials discussing the Syria operation was “partially manipulated” and is a “wretched attack” on national security.

In the leaked video, Fidan is discussing with Davutoğlu, Güler and other officials a possible operation within Syria to secure the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman empire.

Full transcript (translated by @castizbey): [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: Turkey threatened two weeks ago to retaliate for any attack on the tomb following clashes between militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda breakaway group, and rival rebel groups in the area, east of Aleppo near the Turkish border.

“An operation against ISIL has international legitimacy. We will define it as al Qaeda. There are no issues on the al Qaeda framework. When it comes to the Suleyman Shah tomb, it’s about the protection of national soil,” a voice presented as that of foreign ministry undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu says.

When the discussion turns to the need to justify such an operation, the voice purportedly of Fidan says: “Now look, my commander, if there is to be justification, the justification is, I send four men to the other side. I get them to fire eight missiles into empty land. That’s not a problem. Justification can be created.”

The foreign ministry said it was natural for state officials to discuss defending Turkish territory.

“In the meeting it was confirmed that Turkey would take necessary steps decisively to protect the security of our personnel at the Suleyman Shah tomb and Turkey’s will to defend it in the face of an attack was reiterated,” the statement said.

Compare the NSA’s Facebook malware denial to its own secret documents

Ryan Gallagher writes: On Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald and I revealed new details about the National Security Agency’s efforts to radically expand its ability to hack into computers and networks across the world. The story has received a lot of attention, and one detail in particular has sparked controversy: specifically, that the NSA secretly pretended to be a fake Facebook server in order to covertly infect targets with malware “implants” used for surveillance.

This revelation apparently infuriated Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg so much that he got on the phone to President Barack Obama to complain about it. “I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post Thursday. “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.”

That wasn’t all. Wired ran a piece saying that the NSA’s widespread use of its malware tools “acts as implicit permission to others, both nation-state and criminal.” Slate noted that the NSA’s hacking platform appears to be “becoming a bit more like the un-targeted dragnets everyone has been so upset about.” Meanwhile, Ars Technica wrote that the surveillance technology we exposed “poses a risk to the entire Internet.”

In response, the NSA has attempted to quell the backlash by putting out a public statement dismissing what it called “inaccurate” media reports. The agency denied that it was “impersonating U.S. social media or other websites” and said that it had not “infected millions of computers around the world with malware.” The statement follows a trend that has repeatedly been seen in the aftermath of major disclosures from documents turned over by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, in which the NSA or one of its implicated allies issues a carefully worded non-denial denial that on the face of it seems to refute an allegation but on closer inspection does not refute it at all. [Continue reading…]

Blackwater in Ukraine? No, it was Alpha

Has Blackwater been deployed to Ukraine? http://t.co/6MMI0rzhnJ

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 9, 2014

Nobody can identify who these troops in Ukraine are http://t.co/70KAvaEBlB makes it hard for me to choose whether to hate or worship them

— David Swanson (@davidcnswanson) March 11, 2014

'#Blackwater in #Ukraine'? Despite rumors, @AcademiElite tells @WSJ it has no people in Ukraine. http://t.co/CvMxCJ21RR

— Dion Nissenbaum (@DionNissenbaum) March 10, 2014

Yesterday I laid out a timeline suggesting how the Blackwater-in-Ukraine story may have evolved. I did not, however, attempt to identify the armed men in the video that has kept this rumor alive in social media.

Thanks to a reader who said that the Ukrainian press identified the armed men as “Спецназ (Alpha) СБУ,” I have been able to piece together the story.

The elite Alpha special operations unit is attached to the Security Service of Ukraine.

The reason for their appearance outside the regional administrative building in Donetsk was given in the following local press report, Преступности.Нет (English version):

In Donetsk day 3 March during the seizure of the regional state administration of protesters attacked the ex-Governor of area Andrey shishatskiy.

It is reported by channel «Donbass» on his Youtube page.

So, the footage shows a group of people, among them people with the Russian flag in his hands, and beat former Governor of Donetsk region Shishatskiy.

According to the TV company, beat it from the attackers, interferes with the police and the special forces of the security service of Ukraine covers of his departure.

As is known, today the building of the Donetsk regional Council were captured by a group of Pro-Russian activists, who declared about the illegitimacy of Kyiv and declared himself the new authorities in Donetsk region.

This is the video showing former Governor Shishatskiy being attacked. Although the Alpha unit is not shown, they can be seen in another news report on the same incident.

Before any of the dozens of copies of the video labelled “USA military mercenary BlackWater in Ukraine (Donetsk)” appeared on YouTube, the same video had been posted with this title: “Alpha” – Donetsk. 03/03/2014. The video’s description says: “After the Russian provocations, Special Forces of Alpha security appeared in Donetsk.”

No mention of Blackwater.

Turkish government seeks legal power to shut down any website in four hours

Semih Idiz writes: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried hard to bring the Turkish media under government control, succeeding to a significant extent by getting crony businessmen to buy major national dailies and television channels.

Turkey has nevertheless remained an open society to a large extent with regard to the flow of information to the public, due not only to the independent portion of the media that continues to resist government pressures but also the Internet, and particularly social media.

It is no surprise then that the Internet should have become the bane of Erdogan’s life, particularly after taped conversations implicating him and members of his government in massive corruption allegations started appearing on video sharing sites.

Kadri Gursel’s March 7 post for Al-Monitor gives details about a voice recording leaked in this way, which has provided more fodder for his political rivals just as his Justice and Development Party (AKP) heads for crucial local elections at the end of this month.

Erdogan’s troubles with social media began after last summer’s Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, and the following nationwide anti-government riots during which many people were mobilized through Twitter, the social networking service.

“There is now a scourge called Twitter. The biggest lies can be found there. This thing called social media is currently the worst menace to society,” Erdogan complained bitterly on June 2, 2013.

Aware of the growing political threat to itself from social media, the Erdogan government introduced a draconian Internet law that effectively allows the head of Turkish Telecommunications Directorate (TIB), a government appointee, to close down any Internet site in four hours. [Continue reading…]