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Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

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Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#261

Post by Semiapies »

euske wrote: post #259

Question. How this principle can coexist with the idea of "surveillance is bad"? Because that's mostly to collect publicly available information. Is it bad because it's done by a government? It's possible to set up a bunch of privately owned cameras in a city and keep filming people. Is it the association of infos that makes it bad and not mere collection? Is it okay if it doesn't have a personally identifiable infor…

This thought process always bewilders me. Whenever it comes up that government agencies monitor our emails and phone calls, someone, as if on cue, always pipes up that that's totally no different from people posting on their Facebook timeline and other absolutely mind-bogglingly bad equivalences.

You, however, go the extra mile, here. How about you explain exactly how accessing published information on a public website is like building a network of cameras to monitor a city with?

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#262

Post by mark-r »

andreareina wrote: post #240
alexdoma wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be a better solution, IP address check to allow only known google crawlers perhaps?

Classify IPs based on their recent behavior[2]. Most bots behave very differently from the median user, along many different dimensions -- volume of requests, time between requests, visit length, which links are followed, etc. And if this means that bots are altered to become indistinguishable from users, and therefore have a minimal impact on a site's loading? Well, mission accomplished[1]. [1] https://xkcd.com/810/…

That's a superb xkcd that I hadn't seen yet, thanks.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#263

Post by Dylan16807 »

euske wrote: post #259

Question. How this principle can coexist with the idea of "surveillance is bad"? Because that's mostly to collect publicly available information. Is it bad because it's done by a government? It's possible to set up a bunch of privately owned cameras in a city and keep filming people. Is it the association of infos that makes it bad and not mere collection? Is it okay if it doesn't have a personally identifiable infor…

Surveillance is bad but it is also not hacking.

Boom. Easy to have both opinions.

I would love to limit corporate databases, but not via letting website owners declare arbitrary use to be criminal.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#264

Post by Dylan16807 »

chii wrote: post #248
diggan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> robots.txt violations being considered hacking Hm, I disagree. Either information is public, no matter for who. Or the information is private, and you should have ACL for accessing the information. I don't think it's fair to say that information is public if you're a human but private if you're a machine, or vice versa. It's not about if it's difficult to build but rather the principle behind if you can just allow…

> ACL for accessing the information the ACL is the robots.txt. A door with or without a lock doesn't determine whether the place is public or not.

robots.txt cannot change whether something is public, because it doesn't apply to humans.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#265

Post by mark-r »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #141
UncleEntity wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...I think you'd need a court order telling someone not to talk to you, and you'd have to take action to prevent them as well, blocking their number and tell them to stop before that would be granted. Like, for example, sending a C&D letter? This whole hubbub is over them sending a C&D, they just made the mistake of trying to use the CFAA as a means to enforce it -- which, honestly, hiQ is fighting the good fight t…

A c&d is not a court order. It is a not-so-polite request and warning that further action will be taken. Edit: If that's your point I agree with you. C&d followed by some more appropriate (than the cfaa) seems like a not-raise-everyones-backs approach.

That raises a point - would hiQ be liable in a civil suit if the CFAA were not a factor?

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#266

Post by FireBeyond »

askvictor wrote: post #258

Let us remember here that Microsoft owns LinkedIn. There's been a lot of love for Microsoft here recently (I'm among the many who are liking the 'new' MS). No doubt, this is quite a separate group to those doing OSS/Linux/Python/Jupyter/etc, but it's worth pausing to think about what a move like this says about their overarching corporate strategies.

Shit like this has been LinkedIn's modus operandi since day one, not to mention their own questionable ethics. It has little or nothing to do with them now being a subsidiary of Microsoft.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#267

Post by UncleMeat »

exolymph wrote: post #219
cmiles74 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weev went to jail for exploiting a similar flaw in AT&T's website[0]. They had a page that, when provided an ICC-ID, would return the matching customer's email address. He supplied a range of valid ICC-IDs and scraped the returned addresses. He was eventually convicted[1]. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/06/ipad-3g-user-e-mail-... [1]: https://www.wired.com/2013/03/att-hacker-gets-3-years/

And while Weev totally sucks as a person, IMO, it was wrong for him to be convicted in this case. He was punished from AT&T's negligence.

Punk test. Advocacy groups are way less likely to want to turn your case into a test case if you are a racist asshole.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#268

Post by lloeki »

joelanford wrote: post #249
chii wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ACL for accessing the information the ACL is the robots.txt. A door with or without a lock doesn't determine whether the place is public or not.

robots.txt is more like a sign that asks certain people not to look at a bunch of other publicly visible signs. One can't post a sign in public that tells people not to look at other publicly visible signs and expect the government to arrest or fine them for ignoring it.

robot != UA

What if I user curl to pipe web content to my mail so that I can read it in a quirky way? What if I write a Chrome extension to crawl a site? Where does w3m stands?

This is not a question of the tool (UA) but of the intent (mass crawling, indexing, mass-replicating stuff). robots.txt is made as hints for crawlers and the like, not optimistically ACL whether something is public or not.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#269

Post by askvictor »

FireBeyond wrote: post #266
askvictor wrote: post #258

Let us remember here that Microsoft owns LinkedIn. There's been a lot of love for Microsoft here recently (I'm among the many who are liking the 'new' MS). No doubt, this is quite a separate group to those doing OSS/Linux/Python/Jupyter/etc, but it's worth pausing to think about what a move like this says about their overarching corporate strategies.

Shit like this has been LinkedIn's modus operandi since day one, not to mention their own questionable ethics. It has little or nothing to do with them now being a subsidiary of Microsoft.

Microsoft has the choice to change that behaviour now that they own LinkedIn. It seems that they choose not to.

Re: Accessing Publicly Available Information on the Internet Is Not a Crime

#270

Post by kbart »

JepZ wrote: post #244
guywaffle wrote: post #195

Make it fair then! Bots can’t scrape LinkedIn, and LinkedIn can’t sell any consumer data to third parties.

For real: I really hate corporations 'stealing' data from my phone. For example Google likes to introduce new sync options to Android and every time they do so it is activated by default. So as soon as the update arrives their software syncs my data to their servers without my consent. They probably have some clause in the EULA but as a user of their products I really hate that behavior. A similar case is not being a…

Install a firewall (for example, NoRoot Firewall) and whitelist only these apps/services you want to access Internet.
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