{"id":175595,"date":"2021-01-13T23:39:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T04:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/01\/13\/it-really-sucks-to-be-you\/"},"modified":"2021-01-13T23:39:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T04:39:00","slug":"it-really-sucks-to-be-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/01\/13\/it-really-sucks-to-be-you\/","title":{"rendered":"It Really Sucks to be You"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It appears that in addition to being contemptible people, the purveyors of Parler, the now-shuttered right-wing Twitter, were technically incompetent.<\/span> <\/p>\n

Their tech was incompetently managed, and  a security researcher managed to download almost every post in Parler<\/a>, including deleted posts and extensive metadata.<\/span> <\/p>\n

I’m sure that the FBI will be most interested in this information:<\/span> <\/p>\n

In the wake of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by scores of President Trump\u2019s supporters, a lone researcher began an effort to catalogue the posts of social media users across Parler, a platform founded to provide conservative users a safe haven for uninhibited \u201cfree speech\u201d \u2014 but which ultimately devolved into a hotbed of far-right conspiracy theories, unchecked racism, and death threats<\/a> aimed at prominent politicians.<\/p>\n

The researcher, who asked to be referred to by her Twitter handle, @donk_enby<\/a>, began with the goal of archiving every post from January 6, the day of the Capitol riot; what she called a bevy of \u201cvery incriminating\u201d evidence. According to the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab<\/a>, among other sources, Parler is one of a several apps used by the insurrections to coordinate their breach of the Capitol, in a plan to overturn the 2020 election results and keep Donald Trump in power. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

In the wake of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by scores of President Trump\u2019s supporters, a lone researcher began an effort to catalogue the posts of social media users across Parler, a platform founded to provide conservative users a safe haven for uninhibited \u201cfree speech\u201d \u2014 but which ultimately devolved into a hotbed of far-right conspiracy theories, unchecked racism, and death threats<\/a> aimed at prominent politicians.<\/p>\n

The researcher, who asked to be referred to by her Twitter handle, @donk_enby<\/a>, began with the goal of archiving every post from January 6, the day of the Capitol riot; what she called a bevy of \u201cvery incriminating\u201d evidence. According to the Atlantic Council\u2019s Digital Forensic Research Lab<\/a>, among other sources, Parler is one of a several apps used by the insurrections to coordinate their breach of the Capitol, in a plan to overturn the 2020 election results and keep Donald Trump in power. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Operating on little sleep, @donk_enby began the work of archiving all of Parler\u2019s posts<\/a>, ultimately capturing around 99.9 percent of its content. In a tweet<\/a> early Sunday, @donk_enby said she was crawling some 1.1 million Parler video URLs. \u201cThese are the original, unprocessed, raw files as uploaded to Parler with all associated metadata,\u201d she said. Included in this data tranche, now more than 56 terabytes in size, @donk_enby confirmed that the raw video files include GPS metadata pointing to exact locations of where the videos were taken.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Hoping to create a lasting public record for future researchers to sift through, @donk_enby began by archiving the posts from that day. The scope of the project quickly broadened, however, as it became increasingly clear that Parler was on borrowed time. Apple and Google announced that Parler would be removed from their app stores because it had failed to properly moderate posts that encouraged violence and crime. The final nail in the coffin came Saturday when Amazon announced it was pulling Parler\u2019s plug. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The privacy implications are obvious, but the copious data may also serve as a fertile hunting ground for law enforcement. Federal and local authorities have arrested dozens of suspects in recent days accused of taking part in the Capitol riot, where a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, was fatally wounded<\/a> after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.<\/span>  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My suggestion to @donk_enby is that if someone comes sniffing around for the archive that she made, don’t without a subpoena.  Providing the information under compulsion indemnifies you, so if someone wants to sue you for someting like “Invasion of Privacy”, you are covered.  (NOte that I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit.*<\/sup><\/p>\n

My second piece of advice is that turning your personal information over to an online site is a stupid thing, and doing so to a business that caters to reactionaries is even dumber.<\/p>\n

Businesses that cater to conservatives on the basis of politics tend to be scams.  All you have to do is listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, and see how many of the ads are transparent bullshit like fat burning plant extracts, overpriced gold, phony ED cures, Corona Virus Cures, etc.<\/p>\n

For them, it’s all about the Benjamins.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>I love<\/span><\/b> it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that in addition to being contemptible people, the purveyors of Parler, the now-shuttered right-wing Twitter, were technically incompetent. Their tech was incompetently managed, and  a security researcher managed to download almost every post in Parler, including deleted posts and extensive metadata. I’m sure that the FBI will be most interested in this information: …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[395,588,586,367,374,486,541,598,373],"class_list":["post-175595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-computer","tag-fail","tag-insurrection","tag-internet","tag-politics","tag-schadenfreude","tag-security","tag-social-media","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}