Search Something, Say Something: David Cameron Asks Google, Yahoo To Be 'Good Citizens' And Report Users Searching For 'Terrorist' Subject Matter
from the so,-why-is-the-GCHQ-still-collecting-paychecks? dept
UK Prime Minister David Cameron doesn't ask for much from the world's tech companies. All he wants is for them to proactively police the web for child pornography, piracy and extremist content. He's not offering to pay for these services. He just expects Google et al to do this on their own time and own dime to make the world a better place.Now, he's enlisting Google and Yahoo into the counterterrorism battle. As if the GCHQ and its stateside partner didn't have enough tendrils intertwined with every cable and backbone between here and the UK, Cameron now wants the two search companies to be a part of an informal "search something, say something" program… all for free and all because it would be the neighborly thing to do.
Internet companies like Google and Yahoo should tell the police if possible terrorists are searching for tips to make bombs on the internet, David Cameron has said.It's simply not enough to index the web for searchability. Now, search engines need to act as unpaid informants for the world's law enforcement agencies, turning over information on questionable searches to the proper authorities.
The Prime Minister said he wanted to apply to the internet the "principles of common sense, decency, moral responsibility as we do to real life".
Of course, Google and Yahoo have no way of knowing whether searches for bomb-making tips are originating from terrorism suspects or screenplay writers or bored youths using search engines as an Anarchist's Cookbook proxy. These prickly issues have likely never troubled Cameron's grey matter. If so, these inane soundbites never would have escaped his lips. The more he talks, the more inane his platitudes-masquerading-as-solutions sound.
Mr Cameron said he wanted internet companies to take the same moral responsibility as if someone overheard a group planning a bombing in a pub."See something, say something" has done little more than tie up limited resources with a mass of false positives. Putting Google and Yahoo in this position is just asking for more of the same. What Cameron is asking for is the compilation of useless information that will only snag the innocent and the inept. If these are the sorts of "terrorists" Cameron wants removed from circulation, he should just ask his local law enforcement to follow the FBI's lead. Busting handcrafted terrorists is far easier than hunting down actual threats, but it still sounds like real "wins" in press releases or politicians' mouths.
Any would-be terrorist who doesn't want to end up behind bars knows better than to plan violent acts in public, unlike the metaphorical extremists in Cameron's fantasy. Using the two largest search engines isn't much different than mapping out a bombing over a few pints at the local pub, but asking Google and Yahoo to treat their search engines like overheard conversations is guaranteed to end in futility.
Cameron compares it to child porn (because of course he does) even though there's a big difference between searching out plainly illegal content and searches that may seem ominous when observed without context. Search engines track searches to provide relevant results to users, so there's little doubt this information is retained somewhere. But it isn't something that should be turned over to law enforcement just because certain terms were used. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for researching topics that are "terrorist-related" but Cameron's request doesn't leave any room for essential nuances like these.
We expect our search providers to return search results, not subject us to additional government scrutiny simply because our searches contain a few arbitrarily-flagged terms. If search engines become just another form of direct government surveillance, more and more users will take their business elsewhere. Terrorists -- at least those with any instinct for self-preservation -- already have.
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Filed Under: david cameron, monitoring, privacy, search something say something, search terms, surveillance, terrorism, uk
Companies: google, yahoo
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They can start with the words "david cameron", "uk politics", and "prime minister" as the precursory to this "terrorist" search definition.
Call it for what it is.
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Influencing politics through fear.
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Think about it. Just because you are searching for terrorism and terroristic activity/plans it does not mean you are lloking for bombing something. Cameron is truly a moron. Since Blair the UK has gone from bad to utterly despicable in their leadership.
Looking at google trends I'd infer that quite a few thousands, if not millions, would be flagged.
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Having in your control details on how to build a bomb, even general explosives, is now a crime of which the Government can class you a "terrorist" and put you in prison.
Naturally that outcome is much assisted if you have the Middle East appearance.
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I can only imagine the fun my local bobby would have on a quiet day casting an eye over that one.
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The way to try and counter that is, at least with firefox, to click on the little lock box and make sure that the verified by shows the proper certificate authority. For techdirt it is currently showing, for me, "GlobalSign nv-sa" (I'm assuming that's the right one unless the NSA is trying to spy on me ;)
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Criminalizing reading
https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRequiresFreeMediaAndWhyFreeMedia
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That was an interesting few seconds while I debated on clicking the Wikipedia link.
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In the modern age. Google is the card catalog and the internet is the library.
Cameron's spy on everything advice (friends, family, neighbors, search engines) reminds me of advice the Stasi was gaving out from 1950-1990.
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duckduckgo
(NB! Please make sure that you're logged out of ALL of your Google accounts first)
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Re: duckduckgo
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If you have no integrity, you earn no respect
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Cameron applies none of those to real life either.
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Thank God!
Or for that matter, good thing that wasn't around during before the Magna Carta days... or England would still be a Monarchy.
Or... before the French Revolution... or...
And what classifies as "terrorist" searches? Bomb making? Firework making? Anarchists Cookbook? Hacking? Islam?
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The new Stasi (tm) Search Engine
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oh ya ?
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@3 @19
@19 go back further think roman empire....
you'd all be slaves...white black alike
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Re: Advertising
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Re: Advertisers
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I hope this never happens. I see little in the way of common sense, decency, and moral responsibility in the "real world" these days. Maybe it's just because most of what I read is about politics.
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Just more of the same
All this crap with Cheney, and torture all of the talking points are meant to confuse the issue, the IRA WERE TERRORISTS, the objectives of bombing was not to cause direct damage to the UK military but to make them over react and become more and more repressive so that the population would resist them and revolt, and guess what it worked, assassinating Franz Ferdinand was a direct attack on the state, like blowing up a police station, or assassinating a president, NOT TERRORIST, no intent to cause the state to attack the population and provoke revolt just kill the king, so that he cannot do whatever oppress Serbia or whatever their beef really was.
Even people that attempt to understand what is happening get sucked into this crap, people that oppose the state are not terrorists just because they do things that the state does not like, language matters and descriptions of people matter, and people matter much much more that the state.
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Funny, my moral responsibility says that if I overheard a group planning a bombing in a pub, I would need to clearly hear the entire conversation from start to finish before I would even begin to think of assuming it was anything more than the discussion of some work of fiction or another, or at worst a bunch of drunkards fantasizing about something they'd never have organization ability, much less the balls to actually attempt.
Because while there's not really a hard and fast rule about it, people planning violent acts of mayhem don't discuss them in public restaurants, or other locals where random people can overhear them. They discuss them in the privacy and comfort of their own residence or vehicle.
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Funny, my moral responsibility says that if I overheard a group planning a bombing in a pub, I would need to clearly hear the entire conversation from start to finish before I would even begin to think of assuming it was anything more than the discussion of some work of fiction or another, or at worst a bunch of drunkards fantasizing about something they'd never have organization ability, much less the balls to actually attempt.
Because while there's not really a hard and fast rule about it, people planning violent acts of mayhem don't discuss them in public restaurants, or other locals where random people can overhear them. They discuss them in the privacy and comfort of their own residence or vehicle.
No we don't
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How many sitcom plots have revolved around the idea of such an innocent discussion being misunderstood?
The latest episode of "Not going out" on the BBC was an example
Funny - I thought David Cameron took his policy ideas from fictional sources - and would have been aware of that problem.
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I couldn't agree more. There is no way I would ever report such an overheard conversation unless I was 100% certain that they were actually intending to blow something up. Just planning such an escapade (especially doing so openly in public) is a far, far cry from that.
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All in the name of safety and security of course!
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Don't sign that! It's a trap!
They will be able to point at search engines and scream "Their fault! They didn't find the terrorist". They probably know it will be too much data to handle, so if search engines deliver all the data, they will get blamed for not narrowing down the field. If they narrow the field, they will get blamed for not providing enough details and if they don't agree to provide the data they will be accused of protecting terrorists.
Either way, just by suggesting this, they have already started the process of shifting blame.
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I thought
Or is the Utah data center FULL ALREADY?? BROKEN?
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Next up, G. & Y! will be asked to patriotically search for tax cheats hiding money in Luxemburg, because certainly there isn't any gov't run (*cough* Inland Revenue *cough*) operation tasked with this responsibility.
Who needs Monty Python or Yes Minister with nutbars like this running around?
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Treat It Like Advertising
For example, a local golf store would love to know if people's Internet searches identify them as golfers, so that they can buy ad placements on that user's screen. They can bid at auction for search terms such as "golf, clubs, country club, lame sport" etc.
Why not let GHCQ bid for terms like "ammonia, bomb, jihad" etc. Then they can place fake ads for the would-be terrorists, and lure them in with cut-rate trinitrotoluene.
No free lunch, Cameron. You've gotta bid for the keywords versus Dow, Union Carbide, and other agricultural ammonia sellers.
Hmmm. What would click-bait "news" sites look like for these ads?
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Hmm...
First thing is, the thought occurs to me that what he's suggesting may not actually be legal.
If memory serves, Google, et al, are required under UK and EU law to keep user-information confidential, retaining and disseminating data only as required for:
• legitimate business purposes;
• responding to a valid law-enforcement or security-agency request;
• another purpose, where the user has given explicit consent.
I don't think Cameron's proposal meets any of these requirements - and judging by some of the more condemnatory rulings and assessments coming out of the EU, I doubt the courts will be any less sceptical.
Second thing is, the general picture that's emerged from the Snowden leaks is that the security services across the five-eyes have gained access to virtually every corner of the internet, for the purposes of searching for exactly this information.
It's incredibly unlikely that they don't already have full and near-instant access to what Cameron's asking for - and no-one in the intelligence services can be bothered to do anything useful with it.
In any event, what's the point in Google doing the same search? Intelligence-laundering is hardly likely to fly again.
The Telegraph article doesn't explicitly say where Cameron thinks Google and the rest should report the information - and I somehow doubt that David Cameron has any idea.
Perhaps Google is supposed to crapflood police stations across the country with all the random rubbish his idea would produce.
Google should do it, just for the fun of watching every police station in Britain grind to a complete dead stop, under the weight of thousands of tonnes of useless paperwork. :)
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I am already sure that the European Court of Justice have already ruled that Governments can't do this. To force businesses to do unpaid work is akin to modern slavery.
After all the Government does not hand an arms manufacturer a long list of desired hardware and then go "all for free" or to demand engineers build a new bridge for "zero charge".
So I have no idea why the Government wants to freeload off Internet data services when they pay GCHQ for data right but not Google for data?
As has been made clear before then if the Government wants Google to do work then the Government can enter into contract with Google to buy services at a fair market rate. Should Google refuse then sure the Government can aim to change the law to force them but they still need to pay for the work.
What a day this is when Joe Public has to explain basic economics to the poxy Government who seem intent on forcing slavery.
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They will protect pedosadists with this one
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Haiku
Anyone remember what is was?
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http://nsahaiku.net/
HAVE FUN!
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Just sayin'.
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"Ow! I stubbed my toe! Stupid pedophile rock."
"Oh great. The pedophile bus is five minutes late again."
"This pedophile vending machine ate my money!"
A cynic would accuse them of protesting too much. I prefer Hanlon's razor, myself.
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Watch it backfire on Hollywood
So what happens when Google starts reporting the searches to the UK? Will the producers of "Saw" get in trouble for looking up torture devices?
Will producers looking for scientifically-accurate chemicals and bombs for their movies also be reported to the UK?
But, so what if these people are writing a fictional movie- let the police sort them out.
But doesn't that take time away from investigating real threats? Or does this mean there aren't enough real threats to justify the time and expense of having a terrorism investigation unit?
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I think that that this much is clearly true.
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Cameron cobblers
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Perhaps with a variant of this: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3514
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So, the intelligence services are okay then
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What you say and what you do are lies
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