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GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

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Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#31

Post by tomaha »

staticelf wrote: post #26

So if I get this correct; this person wrote a program to gather information about individuals that may or may not be responsible for things related to the government agency and published that list with the intent that people who are angry about that should do what exactly? Contact them? Threat them? Stalk them? I see no other possible outcome of this action. Either you: 1. Don't care 2. Use this information in a bad…

Sadly I think this is the new way of doing things. It gets more and more acceptable to crucify people using social media. But at the same time I don't agree with your conclusion that this makes it right for Medium and Github to remove this. They should keep out of the judging/censoring business. Steam is sadly the only good example of how it should be done at the moment.

Edit: Because really otherwise they should remove the information from LinkedIn (or make it non-searchable) which also makes it very easy to get and they don't do that.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#32

Post by zaarn »

> The database included information like job title, profile picture, and general location of work.

Ah, yes. The White Knight of Severely Violating People's Privacy because You're Right and They Aren't. Truly the most moral person in the world.

In the current political situation in the US, afai can judge it, will enable harassers to seriously harm or even endanger the lives of these people for the crime of having the wrong employer (they might not even be involved in any of the bad crap you see on TV but who cares, wrong employer!)

In other countries or, for example, the EU, such behavior would be a crime, end of story. And you'd be responsible for the damage that comes from doxing people.

Saying "the information is already out there" is no excuse. It's like a swatter saying "it was just a prank".

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#33

Post by tinus_hn »

donbright wrote: post #11

Q "But don't we sell the same kind of data to our paying customers?" X "Yes, but when we do it, it's not doxxing" Q "Why not?" X "Because we would never do it for any nefarious reason" Q "What about that time we scraped the data of those groups that were linked to that reporter, so that one company could do oppo research and prepare a PR counterattack, targeting specific journalists" X "That wasn't nefarious. We made…

‘Doxxing’ is such a useless term anyway. In this case all the database is is the search results for ‘ICE’ on LinkedIn. That’s data these people filled in themselves. But now that attention has been called to it it’s ‘doxxing’.

The phonebook is full of ‘doxxing’. Who cares.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#34

Post by erric »

tinus_hn wrote: post #33
donbright wrote: post #11

Q "But don't we sell the same kind of data to our paying customers?" X "Yes, but when we do it, it's not doxxing" Q "Why not?" X "Because we would never do it for any nefarious reason" Q "What about that time we scraped the data of those groups that were linked to that reporter, so that one company could do oppo research and prepare a PR counterattack, targeting specific journalists" X "That wasn't nefarious. We made…

‘Doxxing’ is such a useless term anyway. In this case all the database is is the search results for ‘ICE’ on LinkedIn. That’s data these people filled in themselves. But now that attention has been called to it it’s ‘doxxing’. The phonebook is full of ‘doxxing’. Who cares.

Not to mention that most govt. employees record of employment is public info( in the us anyway). Being law enforcement this may be a little different, however this info may be foiable or even just sitting on the ice web site.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#35

Post by JetSpiegel »

zdragnar wrote: post #25
cozzyd wrote: post #5

I don't get it... the author has a web site of his own. If he wants to distribute information, why not put it there instead of relying on third parties? (not offering any opinion on whether or not the data should be distributed, just questioning the means).

Throwing it in a git repository ensures that every person who clones it can readily republish it. Hosting said repository on Github, when anticipating an utterly massive spike in traffic, is an easy way to not have to pay for said spike in traffic (either from provisioning or data transfer). I didn't look at what format the "database" is in, or if the size would make it (im)practical to simply zip it up and email it…

Why not host the repo on his site? At least a read only copy.

`git clone --bare` is enough.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#36

Post by dnautics »

Is there a broad right to privacy if you work a job that is funded by the taxpayer? I know the states of Maryland and California disclose the salaries of all professors, postdocs, and grad students, and I believe generally public servants as a class.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#37

Post by erric »

simula67 wrote: post #2

> “I think that’s a totally valid question to bring up,” Lavigne said earlier today about whether the database could be used for targeted harassment, “but I think that the information is already out there, and if people want to embark on individual campaigns of harassment, then they’re going to be doing that no matter what.” That does not mean you have to make it easier

>That does not mean you have to make it easier

He’s calling attention to the appalling policy choice made by his government. In this case I think he would have to make it easier.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#38

Post by johnnyfaehell »

tomnipotent wrote: post #27
Animats wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that this will probably cost Linkedin their users who work for government or government contractors.

A user violated the TOS and wrote a screen scraper that pulled down public profile data. Yeah, real "easy". You cannot protect from this sort of behavior outside of completely disabling this functionality altogether. Anything a human has access to, so does software.

> A user violated the TOS and wrote a screen scraper that pulled down public profile data. Yeah, real "easy".

Yep, that's pretty easy to do. But I'm pretty sure this was even easier since I don't think they wrote a screen-scraper. They just accessed a JSON endpoint.

> You cannot protect from this sort of behavior outside of completely disabling this functionality altogether. Anything a human has access to, so does software.

You say that like it changes anything. People don't care if it can be protected against easily, people just care if it can happen at all.

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#39

Post by allenz »

Sam Levigne is a performance artist. The context for this work is that ICE plans to increase its surveillance of immigrants, including surveillance of social media accounts. Sam argues that if this level of transparency is too invasive even for our public figures, then why do we demand this for prospective citizens?

After a public backlash, ICE recently suspended its Extreme Vetting Initiative, which would scan social media history and automatically flag people for deportation based on the exact criteria from the original Muslim ban. The Brennan Center discusses why this is bad: https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/ice-extreme-vetting-i...

ICE will still require five years of social media history: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/immigrants-social-me...

Re: GitHub and Medium take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts

#40

Post by staticelf »

tomaha wrote: post #31
staticelf wrote: post #26

So if I get this correct; this person wrote a program to gather information about individuals that may or may not be responsible for things related to the government agency and published that list with the intent that people who are angry about that should do what exactly? Contact them? Threat them? Stalk them? I see no other possible outcome of this action. Either you: 1. Don't care 2. Use this information in a bad…

Sadly I think this is the new way of doing things. It gets more and more acceptable to crucify people using social media. But at the same time I don't agree with your conclusion that this makes it right for Medium and Github to remove this. They should keep out of the judging/censoring business. Steam is sadly the only good example of how it should be done at the moment. Edit: Because really otherwise they should rem…

Yes I agree with you that sadly this is the way people do stuff today. An allegation is more important than truth it seems sometimes.

That said, we must protect people that are having their information leaked with a nefarious intent. In Sweden for example, you can take this information find out their addresses and social security numbers since all of this is basically public information.

Github and Medium simply don't want their platforms to be used to harass and stalk people, which is a real problem that anyone with experience can attest to.

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