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.
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”.
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.
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.
Filed Under: david cameron, monitoring, privacy, search something say something, search terms, surveillance, terrorism, uk
Companies: google, yahoo
Comments on “Search Something, Say Something: David Cameron Asks Google, Yahoo To Be 'Good Citizens' And Report Users Searching For 'Terrorist' Subject Matter”
Google and all should comply.
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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Isn’t this textbook terrorism?
Influencing politics through fear.
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“It’s not terrorism if we do it, we’re the good guys!” – the mantra of many modern politicians, sadly, without a hint of irony or self awareness.
These days I was looking for information on high/low explosives and as a bit of curiosity I went on to check on nitrous fertilizers and how they can become combustible or be stabilized. I was researching on rock blasting to produce construction aggregate, specifically on the explosives, detonating cords and all the detonation plans. What would happen to me in a world where Cameron has things done his way?
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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“we’re going to need a bigger budget”
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That is indeed the UK now called Cameron’s World.
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.
Some enterprising hacker could create a botnet that perpetually floods search engines with questionable queries. What would you do then Cameron?
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This has been done to death just for datamining from search engines. It’s already out there and only needs a new list of words added to make Cameron’s idea totally useless.
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Arrest all suspected hackers for cyberterrorism, of course. And detain them indefinitely, because children.
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what if they cant find them?
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“suspected” i.e., whomever they want.
Watching a re-run of Stargate I became curious about the gun they carry with the magazine on top, so I Goggled it and watched some videos about its construction and use. This led to film stunts and how they make the explosions look dramatic using a fuel-air mixture
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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we are on a list somewhere just for visiting sites like this that question our overlords on their lies
This looks like if you are going to use HTTPS, they you will have to do what GCHQ was doing.
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Your theory is a little off. HTTPs wouldn’t do anything for the end processing the request. Of course, the request has to be unencrypted to process the query. that happens at google, et al..
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It’s a little more complicated than that. As others have noted, someone in the middle that has access to any certificate authority can manipulate your browser to trust it. They can tell your browser that said certificate authority certifies a specific website (stripping away the proper CA’s), they can pretend to be the website, and they can then certify it with this certificate authority of their choosing. Your browser won’t know the difference.
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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this isn’t as much of a problem with Chrome, which uses certificate pinning for Google services (not sure if search itself is limited that way, i know for certain that gmail is). basically, if Chrome detects a certificate with a different fingerprint than expected it rejects the connection and alerts the user. its one thing to subvert a trusted CA, its another to generate a certificate with the same fingerprint.
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No we don’t
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Uhm … That seems to only work if the browser already has information about the website you are connected to. So Chrome has certificate information about various Google services but that doesn’t seem to be a valid strategy for every possible website out there.
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You can’t pin the entire Internet. At some point you must rely on a hierarchy of certificate authorities.
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https does hide the search terms from GCHQ, unless they can get the decryption keys, or mount a man in the middles attack, or make Google do the search for them. Someone may be thinking that search is Googles expertise, so they may do a better job than the spooks.
there marches a good little quisling
of course if they happen to see government corruption they have to ignore that as that’s national security level of secrets
Criminalizing reading
RIP free and open internets.
https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRequiresFreeMediaAndWhyFreeMedia
I use Google as a spell check. Really useful as I can check the definition and make sure it’s the exact word I want to use. Just last week I searched a word (don’t remember which one) who’s misspelling was the correct spelling of a nuclear bomb.
That was an interesting few seconds while I debated on clicking the Wikipedia link.
The real extremist content seems to be flowing out of Cameron’s office everytime he opens his mouth and beats on the dead horse that he has no fscking clue what he is doing other than trying to keep everyone panicked to keep himself in office.
I guess search engines really do record everything you type into them. It’s like having someone standing next to the card catalog at a local library, writing down every book you’re looking up.
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.
Great idea! Because we all know it is impossible to get a UK IP from outside the UK and god bless that there are no trolls who might spam those two search engines with words on the list just for fun…
duckduckgo
Since no-one has yet mentioned it, please direct your future search queries to duckduckgo.com for a better, safer, and less intrusive experience.
(NB! Please make sure that you’re logged out of ALL of your Google accounts first)
Re: duckduckgo
ixquick does this, all over https, and will even search google for you.
If you have no integrity, you earn no respect
Cameron says they want this information, but when confronted with Ryan McGee and his actual terrorist-related activities, they simple shrug it off. He’d earn more respect if he had the slightest bit of integrity on the issue.
Cameron applies none of those to real life either.
Thank God!
Thank God that wasn’t around during the Revolutionary War… the US would be UK West.
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?
The new Stasi (tm) Search Engine
detects terrorist terms such as “hummus” “rectal feeding” etc.
oh ya ?
time to do tons a terrorists searchs all day and then do jack shit
How many more feet must this eejit shove in his mouth?
@3 @19
@3 already done lol
@19 go back further think roman empire….
you’d all be slaves…white black alike
Everyone should just search for these suspicious words so that everyone can get reported.
Funny thing is, advertisers already can and already do this type of targeting, but for their products. Why should government security be any different?
Re: Advertising
The solution is clear then. UK Gov should just buy a bunch of terrorist keywords on AdWords.
Re: Advertisers
When an advertiser makes a mistake, they don’t conduct an inappropriate SWAT raid, kill your pets, and trash your house. When the government makes a mistake, they do all those things and if you survive, they might be nice enough to sweep the whole thing under the rug, but don’t count on them compensating you for the mess they made.
Re: Re: Advertisers
in the eloquent words of edward snowden: twitter doesn’t put warheads on foreheads.
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”.
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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I wouldn’t worry about it happening any time soon… it’ll take ’em years to figure out how to puree the internet.
Just more of the same
FUD, Fascist FUD, the use of “terrorist” as a term applied to anyone that has any disagreement with the state has become so pervasive that even people pretending to do historical works are applying it to things like the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it makes a profound conflation of anti- authority action with terrorism Assassinating the King is not blowing up a subway station they have different objectives and different effects.
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.
all Cameron is trying to do is please, yet again, his bosom buddy, Obama! he hasn’t got a friggin’ clue to anything of todays world and the UK will be so much better off when he gets booted out of office! we all know politicians lie for a living but to actually do so how Cameron did when instigating internet censorship and website blocking in the UK, using the ‘protect the children’ ploy, ignore everything and anything he was told and had pointed out to him as it being the start of the Great Firewall of the UK, but do it anyway just to try to make file sharing more difficult, he deserves anything that can happen after the next General Election! if any company wants to employ him afterwards, it’s their funeral!!
“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.”
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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“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.”
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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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,
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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Cameron actually seems to think that people took those ridiculous posters from a few years back seriously. Oh noes, someone looked at a CCTV camera, they must be about to bomb us!
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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…”
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.
How long until search engine black flagging algorithms start changing from ‘for the children’ and ‘terrorists’. Into ‘piracy’ and ‘political decent’.Those two will come next, before the algorithms are expanded even further.
All in the name of safety and security of course!
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but there is no algorithms
Don't sign that! It's a trap!
This has nothing to do with actually catching terrorists. It has much more to do with wiping their hands of responsibility when (not if) the next terrorist attack happens.
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.
I thought
I thought the Alphabet soup of Gov. agencies were already doing this, ON THEIR OWN?
Or is the Utah data center FULL ALREADY?? BROKEN?
Re: I thought
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?
Treat It Like Advertising
Meh. Treat GHCQ like any other advertiser.
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?
Hmm...
Two things.
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. 🙂
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.
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.
They will protect pedosadists with this one
Look up #opDeathEaters on Twitter. If this request is fulfilled they will use words related to pedophilia and child abuse to scrutinize and chill the conversation about it.
Haiku
Somewhere I read there was a website that would generate a Haiku based on key search words they were looking for.
Anyone remember what is was?
Re: Haiku
Nevermind, found it:
http://nsahaiku.net/
HAVE FUN!
Re: Re: Haiku
By the way, anyone Googling “Black Ops”, looking for the latest COD game is screwed!
Just sayin’.
Of course he does. Who doesn’t? Latest trend for politicians! Don’t like something? It supports child porn.
“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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The Great Firewall of Cameron does a much better job of blocking access to resources for victims of child abuse than it does of actually catching the perpetrators. Make of that what you will.
Watch it backfire on Hollywood
I remember watching a “best horror movies” special that had an interview with the producers of the “Saw” movies. They admitted that they did a lot of research into torture devices in the Middle Ages, most of which were too graphic for even them to use in the movies!
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?
Re: Watch it backfire on Hollywood
“Or does this mean there aren’t enough real threats to justify the time and expense of having a terrorism investigation unit?”
I think that that this much is clearly true.
Cameron cobblers
On what planet does this this technologically-challenged, ill-informed buffoon actually live? Certainly not in what is known as THE REAL WORLD, eh, chaps? How does he expect these companies to just magically differentiate between all these bits of data and determine who might (or might not) just be a terrorist? The whole thing is a complete nonsense and sounds like something cooked up by a desperate political party’s publicity department anxious to capitalise on similar technophobes’ fears, which, unfortunately, accounts for a large percentage of the population. In a nutshell, all this means is that, once again, the terrorists have won.
Re: Cameron cobblers
” How does he expect these companies to just magically differentiate between all these bits of data and determine who might (or might not) just be a terrorist?”
Perhaps with a variant of this: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3514
Search Something, Say Something: David Cameron Asks Google, Yahoo To Be ‘Good Citizens’ And Report Users Searching For ‘Terrorist’ Subject Matter
So, the intelligence services are okay then
This is basically the few dictating to the many
So instead of making it loud and clear to corporations that they should be respecting peoples privacy, their broadcasting that, yes.please.invade.peoples.privacies…….while falsly saying they respect peoples privacy
What you say and what you do are lies
Yeah, sure, lets do this……right after you implement google/yahoo search in every system of government with lax security so people can access it to make sure, FIRST that your not utterly.completely.fucking.corrupt
Surveilance’R’US
Their basically waging war on the tool that most effectively, and i’d go as far as finally, given the individual a voice………waging war on opinions
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Im talking of the real reason, not this bulshit terrorist justifying illegal actions crap
Justifying illegal warrantless surveilance on the riffraff i.e those who wont secure their positions of power by smiling, clapping, parroting their goals……goals masquerading as the wants of a nation
David Cameron is Internet’s nightmare.