Molly Redden, at The New Republic, reproducing the best MSM sentence of the week, if not longer. In a (mostly) serious article, even:
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that U.N. investigators have asked for the private details of Somali pirates’ Facebook profiles—and that top Facebook officials, chastened by Edward Snowden’s revelation that the company had provided the NSA with emails and pictures, said no.
The news begs the question: What are foreign fighters or terrorists dumb enough to share on an American-based social media site that U.S. officials (if not the U.N.) can access pretty easily by subpoena? That is, what exactly did the U.N. monitoring group expect to find? The AP wondered as much, and it even put the question to the targets themselves: “Two Somali pirates who spoke to The Associated Press said pirates don’t use social networks for piracy work.”
Of course, social media accounts can furnish, in theory, data about a known aggressor’s or known associate’s social connections. But turning the data about who friended whom into useful information turns out to be a surprisingly painstaking, analog process….
Scamp Dog
Here’s some good news, as requested in the previous, but now dead, post: one of the schools I teach at WILL have classes for me in the fall. It had been in doubt, but I’ve got my labs again, and I’ve got some good stuff to add to the experiments this time around. Yay!
Elizabelle
@Scamp Dog:
Yippee! An insomniac applauds your good fortune.
Villago Delenda Est
Duh.
They’re not as stupid as say, Paulistas.
srv
Facebook: We fight them here so we don’t have to fight the over there.
Yatsuno
Is this that there cyberwarfare they was tellin’ us all about?
Tim Mc
I really enjoy the mental image of the AP reporter flipping through their rolodex for their Somali pirate contacts.
Suffern ACE
@Tim Mc: not as hard as you think. The Piracy Speakers Bureau sends out flyers to news organizations like crazy.
kuvasz
YARR!
srv
@Villago Delenda Est: Honestly, this should be a bumper sticker.
Redshirt
@kuvasz: YARGH!
Scotius
“The pirate source code be more like a set of guidelines.”
TriassicSands
@Scamp Dog:
Congratulations. Teach the children well, as they say.
“…begs the question…”
A logical fallacy whose true meaning has been virtually lost; more or less overwhelmed by people who think that “begging the question” is meant to be read literally, when, in fact, it dates back to Aristotle’s Prior Analytics in ancient Greece. Now, when someone says something “begs the question,” it just means that one statement requires a specific question to be asked or seems to be avoiding answering a specific question.
Once again careless common usage defeats educated understanding. I guess the only place left where its original meaning is likely to be understood is in a college philosophy class.
NotMax
Arrrgh.
Put something in the oven earlier and spaced out setting the kitchen timer.
The prospectus on seniordom didn’t mention this.
Jon H
@Villago Delenda Est:
“They’re not as stupid as say, Paulistas.”
I’m sure some of them are pretty dumb. There’s always going to be the guy who’s only there because he’s someone’s son or brother or whatever.
A British woman who was kidnapped in Kenya (during which her husband was killed) and held hostage in Somalia for months says that when her release was finally arranged, one of the captors asked her to email him when she got home, and to show him around London sometime.
mdblanche
@Tim Mc: Maybe the reporter contacted them on Facebook.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Have any of you been watching “Under the Dome”? I’m just about caught up with it and it’s been pretty darn good so far.
MikeJ
Has Fox been going on about Somali pirates lately? My wingnut mother was blathering about how we “don’t do anything about them any more” a day or two after those two were convicted in US district court. I just assumed it’s something new they’ve started.
TheMightyTrowel
I have a bit of pop culture to recommend too: Welcome to Night Vale – it’s a surreal horror public radio podcast. I can’t describe it better than that. It’s also amazing.
andy
Well, brothers and sisters, it’s been august first here in Minnesota for a couple hours, which means same sex couples all over the state have been having midnight weddings as our new marriage law goes into effect.
The state did not slide into a lake of fire, and life went on, for lovers and haters alike. Today I am especially proud to be a Minnesotan!
RSA
Jon Chait has an even better catch, I think, in an Ohio paper‘s look back at local history:
piratedan
I guess I’ll have to adjust my Facebook privacy settings yet again……
RSA
@RSA: Oops. Checking again, I see that the newspaper piece was published in 2011.
NotMax
re: contemporary piracy
While a devastating and deadly tsunami is not recommended, it was a factor accelerating the decline of the centuries-old piracy ongoing in the Strait of Malacca.
NotMax
Passing strange.
Queen Elizabeth’s secret World War 3 speech from 1983 is released.
Alex S.
I don’t have a facebook account. I’m probably already half-terrorist.
Omnes Omnibus
Why doesn’t the NSA just friend the pirates and get the info that way?
BArry
@Scamp Dog: Congratulations!
Bart
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I stopped after episode two, in which far too many people who should be smart did a whole lot of stupid things (like the female cop running into a burning building). I expect the rest of the series is more like that, just like The Walking Dead had a great pilot and then squandered all that on stupid plots and cheap CGI.
Dr. Dave
@andy: Rhode Island has also not been turned into Atlantis with the legalization of SSM today, though the crazies from Westboro Baptist Church are supposed to be putting in an appearance to warn us that fire and brimstone await us all. Just one more curved step along that “moral arc of the universe” Dr. King envisioned. Yay us!
Schlemizel
side note because its my field of ‘expertise’:
What can be shared on FB? Well in addition to the obvious code phrases there is this process called steganography in which large files can be hidden inside .jpg or .gif or .png files in such a way that it takes fairly sophisticated tools to detect them. So I tell you if you ever see the sentence “Spent the weekend with the in-laws” in my update grab the picture that goes with it and decrypt the file to get to the information I want you to have.
It is this sort of thing that makes the metadata so important. Detecting changes in patterns reduces the number of items that have to be examined in depth and car reveal people up to something before they are identified as a target.
It is irrelevant if you like the NSA/FISA/Snooping regime in place or not (I am not comfortable with it have have not been since it was passed while the nation collectively wet itself in the early days of the last decade) but there is a good reason for every piece of it. It is entirely possible that good people see only that they are doing a good thing & they might in fact be doing a good thing. Its the ability for it to be used as a bad thing that makes it unacceptable.
The Red Pen
People would be surprised what you can “leak” with supposedly innocuous postings on Facebook. Sometimes stuff is in the background of photos, there can be EXIF data on images indicating coordinates, and postings have timestamps which gives clues to activity patterns. There’s lots of useful data on a Facebook feed.
@TriassicSands: Thank you for posting that so I don’t have to. People mean “raises the question.”
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I like it. Like Bart says, it’s got its stupid moments, but overall it’s pretty cool.
Schlemizel
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
No but I watched the first 5 episodes of “Copper” from BBC America this past week. It had a lot of potential but is pretty much a period piece soap opera that requires the most amazing sets of coincidences to reach each conclusion. The acting is good but the story telling needs work. I am not sure if I will continue with it or not
kc
@MikeJ:
It is funny how all one’s wingnut acquaintances will suddenly start bitching about the same oddball topic, seemingly out of the blue.
Dan
re: Facebook and the pirates – a huge takedown of a gang (over 50 members!) in my neighborhood a few years ago was helped along, in part, by careful examination of their Facebook and MySpace profiles. not only were some of the gang members dumb enough to post pictures of themselves brandishing machine guns and posing with fat wads of cash, but their Friends Lists served as an excellent resource for investigators to make sure that they were talking to/researching all people relevant to the case.
The Red Pen
@Schlemizel:
I’ve been meaning to check this out. I actually learned about it because the production company that makes it was (is?) considering a reality show centered on Amy’s Baking Company.
(For those who don’t know about Amy’s Baking Company, Google it and watch the Kitchen Nightmares episode. It’s worth the effort.)
Citizen_X
@Redshirt: “Arrr, why ye be ignoring me Friend requests, ye scurvy dog?”
Paul in KY
Gnar, me Hearties! Ye would have to be pert stupider than ye headless sea turtle to put ye pirating on Facebook!
That’s probably what they said.
Tone in DC
HEADDESK rinse lather and repeat
I cannot read shit like this so early in the damn morning.
daverave
Arrrr! Agenda 21 in my Facebook feed!!1! Must unfriend pirate acquaintances…