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Facebook Security Technology

Facebook's Ex-Security Chief Details His 'Observatory' for Internet Abuse (wired.com) 41

Andy Greenberg, writing for Wired: When Alex Stamos describes the challenge of studying the worst problems of mass-scale bad behavior on the internet, he compares it to astronomy. To chart the cosmos, astronomers don't build their own Hubble telescopes or Arecibo observatories. They concentrate their resources in a few well-situated places and share time on expensive hardware. But when it comes to tackling internet abuse ranging from extremism to disinformation to child exploitation, Stamos argues, Silicon Valley companies and academics are still trying to build their own telescopes. What if, instead, they shared their tools -- and more importantly, the massive data sets they've assembled?

That's the idea behind the Stanford Internet Observatory, part of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center where Stamos is a visiting professor. Founded with a $5 million donation from Craigslist creator Craig Newmark, the Internet Observatory aspires to be a central outlet for the study of all manner of internet abuse, assembling for visiting researchers the necessary machine learning tools, big data analysts, and perhaps most importantly, access to major tech platforms' user data -- a key to the project that may hinge on which tech firms cooperate and to what degree.

"Misinformation is not just a computer science problem. It's a problem that brings in political science, sociology, psychology," Stamos says. "Part of the idea of the Internet Observatory is to build a place for these people to work together, and we want to build the infrastructure necessary to allow all the different parts of the political and social sciences to study what's happening online." Stamos says the observatory is currently negotiating with tech firms -- he names Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit as examples -- that it hopes will offer access to user data via API in real time and in historical archives. The observatory will then share that access with social scientists who might have a specific research project but lack the connections or resources to grapple with the immensity of the data involved.

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Facebook's Ex-Security Chief Details His 'Observatory' for Internet Abuse

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  • Five eyes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @09:54AM (#59017422) Homepage
    Yes, let's allow big tech to become the new world government. Facebook already attempted to become a central bank. We know it's coming if we don't break them up now.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, let's allow big tech to become the new world government.

      Another name that comes up in a search for the Stanford Cyberpolicy Program is Danil Kerimi [linkedin.com] of the World Economic Forum and the Berkman Center. Those two names should throw red flags for anyone familiar with modern geopolitics.

      A name that comes up in a search for Stanford Cyber Policy Center is Nathaniel Persily of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences which is controlled by Microsoft [deepfreeze.it].

      Craig Newmark has powerful friends. [wilsoncenter.org] I'm gues

      • Hijacking the top comment; won't this make it near impossible for any of the data partners to comply with the GDPR? The article talks about this project archiving expunged data (like the Christchurch shooting). Such archiving would probably be illegal on EU citizens.
  • and perhaps most importantly, access to major tech platforms' user data

    What could possibly go wrong?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I want to opt out. Thank-you.

    Not that I shared anything with these assholes anyway, but I opt out of further dissemination of any covert information they may have collected about me, and I further explicitly deny them permission to do so.

    Just F-Off!

  • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @10:24AM (#59017626)

    Stamos says the observatory is currently negotiating with tech firms -- he names Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit as examples -- that it hopes will offer access to user data via API in real time and in historical archives. The observatory will then share that access with social scientists who might have a specific research project but lack the connections or resources to grapple with the immensity of the data involved.

    More importantly, they can keep everyone on the same page by denying access to researchers who step out of line, e.g. by not observing the implicit rule to completely ignore leftist misinformation, extremism, abuse, etc in their results. Why would anyone expect political censors to consolidate their efforts for any other reason?

    • It hardly matters whether the censorship comes from the left, that's merely incidental. That fact that this kind of centralized structure exists at all only guarantees that someone will eventually try to control and subvert it. Maybe the people who are trying to build it have some particular political bent, but history is rife with examples of these kinds of institutions eventually being taken over and turned against the very people who created them.
    • More importantly, they can keep everyone on the same page by denying access to researchers who step out of line, e.g. by not observing the implicit rule to completely ignore leftist misinformation, extremism, abuse, etc in their results.

      Hey, you forgot Jews and their international banking conspiracy!

    • The problem in all these cases is that what they are saying is misinformation. None of this is going to be guaranteed put to use to stop misinformation as evidenced to what this is a reaction to, the elite, media companies and other influential parties controlling the masses. In a democracy the influence voters have towards deciding the outcome is usually around 5% at best, on average at least. The other 95% is influenced by the press, organisations, people with disproportional wealth, etc.

      New player on
      • Insightful, regarding doubling down on their prior tactics. I think that points to the reality that the elite, both on the Right and the fake-Left, are actually not that smart. A lot of the dysfunction of our present world is the result of the abject sense of entitlement and self importance of the top 1%, they simply don't realize the world functions DESPITE their meddling rather than because of it.
    • By "leftist misinformation" you mean "leftist" misinformation, right? What we have in the US that presents itself as left is just the right wing globalists wearing fur hats. There is a whole lot more to leftism besides open boarders, censorship, tax free global trade and identity politics. While those issues individually might be supported by various leftists, they don't define leftism. I personally lean pretty far left, but I also strongly agree with using tariffs to improve and protect our domestic indu
    • "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. "
    • "Denying access to researchers who step out of line" is exactly what happens whenever enforcement of a political narrative overrides facts, and to illustrate the perilous consequences of putting politics and feelings above facts, we can thank today's 39.8% prevalence of obesity on exactly that. Researchers who came to conclusions regarding the relationships between carbohydrates, saturated fat, and heart disease that were contrary to the low-fat high-carb narrative enshrined in USDA official dietary guideli
  • Let's have the universities and scientists work along side the big tech companies and build an all seeing "observatory" to peer into any aspect of the massive worldwide internet with intense focus and clarity. Nothing at all will be secret anymore, and they can identify problems and trends and crimes and work to correct or eliminate them.

    Once it's all set-up the Neanderthals (Simpleton fools that run our government) can come in and have a backdoor into everything!! it'll be great !

    Kinda almost exactly like

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I get where Mr. Stamos is coming from, but I can see two problems consolidating malware research the first being the bureaucracy that will come of it and the second being the bad guys know what's going on. This is an area I've always thought that competition was a very good thing - the analogy that multiple companies are like a bunch of astronomers pursuing science using multiple small instruments rather than one big one is something of a fallacy. It doesn't take billions of dollars to detect and eliminat

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What could possibly go wrong?

    Government would never want to use it.
    Advertizers would never want to use it.
    MPAA would never want to use it.
    etc.

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