War 2.0 » facebook

75 Percent of British Favor Giving Government Social Data to Prevent Rioting

Tanveer Ali — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:57:54 +0000

Following the social unrest during the summer that swept England with help of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger, a poll shows that 70 percent of adults support the restriction of such services during such events. Only 27 percent disagreed, The Guardian reports.

Perhaps more notably, 75 percent said that the government has the right to open access to social network data to prevent crimes. Unsurprisingly, younger adults were more likely to be against such measures and older citizens were more supportive.

The poll by the online security firm Unisys is interesting given a report by The Guardian that pored over 2.5 million Twitter updates. The Guardian‘s study cast doubts on the rationale to ban or restrict the use of social networks, given usage of social media was mostly related to reaction to the riots, not its planning.

What do you think about this poll? Is it right for a government to use social media data to track domestic activity? Should usage of these tools be restricted?

Internet Usage and Internet Snooping Growing in Uzbekistan

Tanveer Ali — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:18:42 +0000

Despite the autocracy’s best efforts, Internet usage has been growing in Uzbekistan in recent years. With that growth has come the government’s fear of an Arab Spring-style revolt fueled by social media. As a result, it looks like the government is keeping access to social media sites such as Facebook open to keep a pulse on its citizens.

EurasiaNet.org (by way of The Atlantic) has a story that covers President Islam Karimov’s call earlier this year to pay attention closer to the Internet, an announcement that led some young Internet users to think twice about saying anything political on the Internet.

The government interestingly decided not to shut down access to all corners of the Internet. With Facebook’s popularity growing in the country and potentially becoming a forum for political dissent, it has become a tool for monitoring. According to the story:

The security services “rely on Facebook and other social media sites to extract information about citizens,” said a Tashkent-based journalist who writes about media and technology. The journalist said that when a source was interviewed for a job at the National Security Service (SNB), his interviewers had printed copies of most of his Facebook activity.

Social Robots Prove How Easy It is to Mine Data From Facebook

Tanveer Ali — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:07:33 +0000

A quartet of researchers recently proved that a handful of “socialbots” could be used to exploit data from Facebook that users would otherwise believe to be hidden from the public, PCWorld reports. Different than traditional online robots, these socialbots are designed to gain access by pretending to be friends of real users only to mine important information such as email addresses and phone numbers.

This study comes after the hacker group known as Anonymous alleged the military would move to monitor social networks like Facebook using similar fake personalities.

Facebook, Twitter Can Aid in Arms Control Efforts

Tanveer Ali — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:19:51 +0000

The next great tool in monitoring arms control efforts and terrorist activity may be watchful citizens reporting their observations via social media, according to Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller. Gottemoeller gave her take on the role Twitter and Facebook may play in future efforts at a lecture at Stanford University last week. According to Gottemoeller:

The ability to identify patterns and trends in social networks could help the arms control verification process. In the most basic sense, social media can draw attention to both routine and abnormal events. We may be able to use data mining to understand where strange effluents are flowing, to recognize patterns of industrial activity, to queue sensors and satellites. Such queuing could help us to make better use of our scarce and expensive National Technical Means, or in some cases to supplement them in important ways. This is a major issue in an age of budget austerity, when the price tag for big hardware like satellites continues to rise. We need this “big hardware”, but we need to use it efficiently.

She pointed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Red Balloon Challenge in 2009 as an example of how social media had effectively helped the eventual winners find 10 red balloons placed around the world for a $40,000 cash prize.

The State Department website has Gottemoeller’s speech, in text, here.

Counterterrorism Efforts on Social Networks Prove Difficult

Tanveer Ali — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:32:16 +0000

The Obama administration is struggling to fight Islamic terrorist recruiting through websites and social media, Politico reports. The story discusses how terrorist networks use traditional social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to broaden their reach, while also evading counterterrorism efforts with methods that include manipulating language. Notably, it brings to light how difficult it has been to adapt to recommendations in a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report “recommended that officials get a better handle on the tools, techniques and methods terrorists are using.”

Read the full story: W.H. online counterterrorism woes.