Academic version: http://db.tt/6UA1bXZq
DIVIDE AND CONQUER: DISTORTED COMMUNICATION IN NETWORKS, POWER, AND WEALTH DISTRIBUTION Wilson Perez-Oviedo
Cornell University and Banco Central del Ecuador
Abstract In a society composed of a dictator and its citizens, what are the determinants of the political equilibrium between these two? What are the conditions for a successful citizens’ revolt? What kind of strategies do governments follow to prevent such revolts? The situation of these types of societies can be understood as a game played between a leader, who has to decide the distribution of the aggregate income, and a group of citizens who have the opportunity to revolt if they are unhappy with the distribution. Coordinated action by citizens is possible because they form nodes in a communication network. However, communication through the network is distorted, which could preclude the emergence of collective action among citizens. The network structure and the distortion level are determinants of the political equilibrium and wealth distribution. The model explains how the dictator could use propaganda, cooptation, and repression to increase his expected utility. Finally, the model is illustrated by applying it to cases in Nigeria and Zaire/Congo.
So could we spoof bogus metadata to hide Paul Revere?
In other words, if a large enough number of people started start calling and texting random Verizon customers, tweeting with random people from the middle east, inviting random people with Muslim-sounding names to Google+ Hangouts, and commenting on every Facebook like with "This ____ is the bomb!"... could that tip the signal to noise ratio enough to defeat this type of analysis?
This is very clever and all, but from the British perspective - this is exactly what they would have been looking for and Revere would be considered a revolutionary and a real threat, so this is the system working as it is supposed to.
This is the equivalent of saying that the NSA can use such metadata to find muslim extremists that want to kill your children and implement sharia law. (hyperbole courtesy of American media)
Changing the timeline such that "americans" are the underdogs rather than the establishment isn't really helpful... is it? Or is this attempt to stoke revolutionary sentiment?
I don't know if David Simon's (creator of "The Wire" and "Treme") defense of the Verizon phone records request ever made it onto HN's page:
Here it is, if you hadn't seen it: http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/
Apparently it was so controversial that his site crashed from the traffic, and he had to tell everyone to chill out: http://davidsimon.com/nsa-and-fisa-commentary-calling-it/
Anyway, why I thought of that in relation to the OP was, that I think some defenders of the NSA and general government surveillance policies are just unaware of how technology can fundamentally change things...As Google leaders have been known to say, "Speed is a feature"...and so it's not the finding of information that makes the establishment of Google time in human civilization, but how fast Google allows us to do it.
So that said, Simon is one of the journalists I have the absolute highest regard for...I'll be one of the many who think "The Wire" is the best TV drama ever, both for its artistic take and for its illustration of how institutions -- the police, the schools, the drug trade -- corrupt even the best of individuals. "The Wire" is heavily based off of the year that Simon embedded himself in the Baltimore homicide department...the book (which spawned a network TV show) is the best book about the practice of journalism I've ever read. After a year following the detectives, you'd think Simon would be pretty much in cahoots with the police...but he followed up "Homicide" with "The Corner", in which he spent a year embedded with drug dealers and their customers...apparently most of the friendsships he made in the Baltimore Police department evaporated after he published a book bringing sympathy to Baltimore's downtrodden.
Anyway, I don't think Simon has a love for government or authority. But I do think he's a little naive when it comes to advances in technology and their consequences. When "The Wire" started, the police were focused mostly on tapping pay phones. By the time "The Wire" ended, the police were surprised at the advent of camera phones. So when Simon says he thinks the NSA and other law agencies won't abuse their wiretap authority, I believe him...because in much of his experience, the practical obstacles (such as, having to have an officer watch a payphone all day) made it basically impossible for blanket surveillance.
But technology is different...I think Simon's -- and others who I respect -- mistake is to think that the game is being played the same as it always is. It may be the case that the NSA is staffed with as people as good and conscientious as anywhere else...but it's naive to think (as was the primary lesson in "The Wire") that the power they have will lead them astray...and to those of us affected by it, it makes no difference if the violations were intentional or accidental.
Anyway, back to Paul Revere and the OP...I think it's a great example. But of course, what makes that educational scenario feasible is technology and the ability to record information (metadata or whatever you want to call it) in an organized way.
Frankly, I kind of thought anyone who read 1984 would understand how technology changes everything. But yeah, I do think there are some well-meaning people don't grasp the technology, and if they did, they'd have a different opinion about the dangers of unchecked surveillance.
* edit: misspelled conscientious as 'contentious'
* edit: as an example of how much Simon continues to challenge the police as a citizen, here's an essay he wrote after the success of the Wire, in which he tried, as a citizen, to get the basic details of a cop-involved shooting, something that has always been public record. He eventually succeeded, and the revelations about the officer involved ended up jeopardizing the prosecution: http://davidsimon.com/in-baltimore-no-one-left-to-press-the-...
But as you can see if you read the piece, Simon is not to thrilled with how the Internet has displaced newspaper journalism
This is a really great counterpoint to the "if you have nothing to hide..." crowd.
While being an interesting read, the "old world" scenario was kind confusing me every couple of lines. (Could be because I'm not a native speaker.)
This is a lot of fancy math and graphics that don't differ all that much from what a very simple analysis can give you. Only Revere belonged to five of the groups of interest. Of the three who belonged to four groups, two of them are in "top scorers" on centrality, and the third, with one of the two in centrality, is in the final table.
You ʃhould have uʃed the long ʃ in this article
kjh the author of this link has a greatintroduction to emacs:
http://kieranhealy.org/resources/emacs-starter-kit.html
He also has a lot of good reference material on latex/org-mode/pandoc. Definitely a good resource to have handy if you ever have a less-techie friend who wants to get away from MS word and its ilk.
Makes me think of the ramifications of false positives.
This would mean the larger your network, the larger your likely hood of being a terrorist
Paul Revere, "in the Fall of 1774 and winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a Committee for the purpose of watching British soldiers and gaining every intelligence on the movements of the Tories."[1]
Paul Revere was essentially one of the founding members of this country's counter intelligence program against his oppressive government. He was the first in a long line of Mark Felts, Bradley Mannings and Edward Snowdens of this country.
If we have a system where these whistleblowers are stopped before they can leak information on the system that catches them before they can whistleblow there is no turning back. This would not be the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA without Paul Revere and Edward Snowden.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_in_the_American_Re...