Not all moderation is created equal
Every computer user has heard of it.
Governments, employers, big companies, etc… monitoring our activities on the internet.
Although everybody knows about it, very few users actually care. Maybe because they do not know how far this logging goes, and what the possible consequences might be.
Unfortunately the legality of checking our activities on the internet, and even the content of our hard drives varies greatly between countries, so it is very hard, or even impossible to give an accurate description of what is happening to your personal computer.
Your employer
It is perfectly understandable that an employer has the right to check what you do with the computer, he has put at your disposal for work-purposes. After all, he bought the machine, so it is his property, it was not given for personal use, and he is responsible for the contents on that computer.
Therefore, a lot of companies will ask you to sign a document which states that you are aware they are monitoring the computer, and that you are not allowed to put foreign programs on the machine. I even know one multi-national where employees are forbidden to bring storage devices (usb-sticks, cd’s and dvd’s, flash cards, etc…) to work.
But exactly how far does that monitoring go? This of course depends on the employer, but nowadays it is quite common for them to log your internet traffic, how much time you spent on a site, your FB page, your pictures, your personal documents,music, programs, etc… Most companies who give laptops to employees on the road, or working from home, have software to log their activities and content as well.
Abnormal? No, not all if you consider the fact that companies have a right to know whether you are productive during working hours, and whether you are using their computer for illegal activities, such as illegal downloads of copyrighted material. For example, in Belgium there are random checks of the computers of companies, to check if all software used has been legally bought, with the necessary number of licences. As fines for breaches of this are very high, it is logical that a company checks whether no one in the company has any illegal software on the computer.
You may laugh about it, but when we still had our web-shops, it was amazing to see that 90% of all purchases were made during working hours, with a serious dip during lunch break.
So far, so good. If even a small company can monitor you to such extent, should you not start to wonder as to what the specialized companies and governments are capable of.
The media industry
The classic story is, of course, people getting serious fines for illegally downloaded music, movies, etc… OK, it is illegal, and therefore they have every right to fine you. But how did they know?
In the early days of torrent sites, P2P sites, and such, illegal downloading fell under the jurisdiction of federal law (f.e. the FBI), and local police had no right to track illegal downloads. As long as you were not downloading in huge quantities with the purpose of making illegal copies, they did not really care.
As illegal downloads are estimated to represent 50 billion dollars in missed copyrights, you can imagine the media industry was none too happy with it, and decided to do their own tracking. They did this by hiring specialized companies, which used one of two perfectly legal methods.
First, if you use a P2P program, other computers are used to detect the availability of copyrighted works on your computer. When you connect to a P2P network, your computer advertises the availability of files in your shared folder. If they can successfully download a copyrighted file from you, they have your IP address.
Second, they can track torrent swarms. Any computer connected to a torrent is exposing its IP address to the entire swarm. All the content creators have to do is connect and then log all the IP addresses.
Once they have your IP address from either of these sources, they can subpoena your ISP for your information. From there, they can opt to sue.
Of course, if you are a bit computer savvy, you can make detection very difficult.
Should you start downloading now? Oh no, because things are changing rapidly. As you can imagine, the pressure of the media industry on the governments was, and still is enormous. And governments are starting to listen.
Up till now the media industry did not even manage to put even a small dent into the massive amount of downloads, and even if they managed to track them all, it would be impossible for them to take all offenders to court. Something else needed to be done, something more drastic, and this they could only do with the help of governments.
And this is also were we can start talking about government moderating.
- France has passed a law that a user will get 3 warnings for illegal downloading. Following the 3rd warning the user will get a RC, and an internet ban for a period, ranging between 2 months up to a year. The offender will also appear on a black list, and ISP’s are prohibited to give the user a new connection. Effective, yes. Foolproof no. Discouraging, certainly. The US is working on a similar law.
- The Netherlands have chosen to go another way. They made downloading legal, but uploading illegal. The idea behind it is simple. The number of uploaders to track is much smaller than the amount of downloaders, and if you can stem the amount uploaded, you also stem the amount downloaded. But, you can download music, books and movies for your own personal use, in your own residence. This also means you can not invite your friends over to watch the latest Bond movie you downloaded. You cannot download illegal copies of programs, as they need to be hacked, and installed. A recent expansion of the law prohibits any website to place links to websites where you can illegally download copyrighted material.
But enough about the music industry. Government and big company moderation goes a lot further, and a lot deeper. I only used the music industry, as it is an easy example to explain, and quite easy to see. It is only the tip of the iceberg, and just as the iceberg, we do not see, and are not aware of 90% of it.
Government Moderation
Of course they are not telling us what they are really doing, but we can get an idea, as sometimes examples leak out. The following examples are in no way meant as judgment of certain countries.
- A prime example of moderation is certain countries, blocking certain sites. China, and Iran are two of the toughest ones, but by no means the only ones. In a way, they are doing exactly what we are doing, but on a much grander scale. The governments decide which content is allowed to be seen by the inhabitants of the country.
- Although there are, as yet, no specific laws about it, it is certain that several countries are “moderating” email, tweets, FB, and so on. One of the latest examples was the arrest, and subsequent deportation of two UK citizens upon arrival in the US. Apparently one of them had tweeted to his friends that he was going to “destroy” America, meaning he was going to party.
- Recently, courts in Belgium ruled in favor of the unemployment agency, which had used the personal FB page of someone, to suspend his benefits. Apparently it is legal for government agencies (like healthcare unemployment, etc…) to monitor your public media accounts, looking for fraud.
- Google Street View was introduced in Lituania in January of this year, and apparently the government is using it to catch tax fraud.
Although this all sounds very negative, we have to keep in mind that most of this moderation is done to protect the public. This kind of moderation effectively stops possible acts of terrorism, child pornography, child molesters, and much more.
What they are doing is pretty much the same as what we are doing in our daily job.
Big Company Moderation
Where, in the old days, it was pretty hard to gain info about individual persons, nowadays it only takes a click of a button or mouse, and you have access to an enormous amount of information.
This information is extremely valuable for companies, as they can use it to target possible customers. If necessary, they can also use it to weed out unwanted customers.
One of the reasons companies like Google and Facebook are so rich and successful is because they provide those big companies with a huge amount of information, for which they are very happy to pay.
Google
It never ceases to amaze me how many people are unaware of this. Most of them have heard of Google Analytics but think it only indicates how many people visited a site. By visiting a website which uses Google analytics, you give the owner a ton of information, like which pages you visited, how long you stayed on a page, which keywords you used, and much, much more. You even give them your name and location. Although Google Analytics is the best known one, it is not the only software available which can do all that, and a lot more.
By using this info they can finetune their marketing, and, in a way moderate your surfing and buying behavior.
Google Adwords allows customers to type in keywords to lure you to their websites. A lot of those keywords were found by Google Analytics, but Google Adwords also provides their customers with feedback on how much clicks each keyword got. As it is statistically proven that people looking for something rarely go past the first page of results of a search engine, this is invaluable information for companies.
Facebook almost tells everybody your lifestory, if you are not careful and use the standard settings. Anyone in the world can look you up, and find loads of info on you, and the worst part is that you do not even know they are doing it. Do companies do this? Of course they do, constantly. Mostly to target you as a potential customer (according to FB he likes competitor X, so maybe we can win him over), but they can also use it to check up on you (is he really what he claims he is…).
Of course, the easiest way for big companies to “moderate” you, are their own FB-pages, twitter accounts, and whatever social media they care to use. You “like”or “follow” them, and essentially you will give them a bunch of info, which they will use in order to keep you a “happy” customer, by sending you personalized promotions, regularly reminding you of new content on their pages, wishing you a happy birthday, etc…
The phenomenon of cloud drives is something for another time, but let us just say you should not put sensitive information on those.
The purpose of this article was not to scare you. Please do not delete your FB account or cancel your ISP. My only purpose was to make you aware of what is happening behind the scenes, and while 99.9% mean no harm with your personal info, there always is that 0.01%.
So, enjoy FB, tweet your heart out, surf the net, but do it wisely.