Social media users don't like discussing Snowden and surveillance online

Love him or hate him, Edward Snowden has had a profound effect on the way many people view their government, the internet and the topic of surveillance.
Snowden’s revelations about surveillance have also affected the way people discuss the topic of government snooping, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.
Pew Research polled 1,801 American adults, and found that people were far less likely to discuss the Snowden leaks online than in person.
Just 42% of those surveyed said they were willing to air their views or enter a discussion on Facebook or Twitter but 86% said they would be happy to discuss the NSA surveillance program in a face-to-face setting.
The researchers also discovered that people's willingness to talk about Snowden and surveillance was greatly affected by their perception of how their audience would react to their point of view.
The study revealed that workplace discussions were 3 times more likely to occur when it was believed that co-workers were like-minded. In a family setting, a conversation about surveillance was 1.9 times as likely if a consensus of opinion was anticipated and an open conversation with friends was 1.42 times as likely if they were thought to be in agreement.
The Pew Research Center examined other reasons why people may choose to stay quiet on the topic of surveillance and discovered that a low level of confidence in personal knowledge on the topic, strength of feelings and interest level were all key factors.
Given the wide range of factors that could affect a person’s willingness to discuss surveillance issues in a number of settings, the authors of the study concluded that their findings pointed to a 'spiral of silence' in which people who believe they hold a minority view will keep it to themselves for fear of social exclusion:

It might be the case that people do not want to disclose their minority views for fear of disappointing their friends, getting into fruitless arguments, or losing them entirely. Some people may prefer not to share their views on social media because their posts persist and can be found later - perhaps by prospective employers or others with high status. As to why the absence of agreement on social media platforms spills over into a spiral of silence in physical settings, we speculate that social media users may have witnessed those with minority opinions experiencing ostracism, ridicule or bullying online, and that this might increase the perceived risk of opinion sharing in other settings.

The topic of Edward Snowden, surveillance and the NSA is of course not the only example of like-minded people coming together to voice their opinions on a topic.
Earlier this month Vox’s Zack Beauchamp looked into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it was being reported and discussed, especially on social media.
Beauchamp discovered that the vast majority of tweets about the conflict came together in clusters that were largely either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian.
The two clusters almost exclusively kept discussions among themselves, possibly indicating that social media users on both sides of the conflict were getting their information from sources that held their own viewpoint.
What we can learn from these two studies is that like-minded people seem to stick together, and those with less-strong or vocal opinions tend to plant themselves firmly on the fence of silence.
Humans, by our nature, like to be accepted by our peers and associate with those who share our views. The self-confirming viewpoints of friends, family and associates reinforce and validate our own beliefs but that need for acceptance also acts as a type of social censorship.
The Pew researchers point out that the Snowden-NSA story is individual given its context, even though the survey took place in September 2013 - before a lot of the surveillance revelations had surfaced.

The context of the Snowden-NSA story may also have made it somewhat different from other kinds of public debates. At the time of this study, the material leaked by Edward Snowden related to NSA monitoring of communications dealt specifically with "meta-data" collected on people’s phone and internet communications. For a phone call, the meta-data collected by the NSA was described as including the duration of the call, when it happened, the numbers the call was between, but not a recording of the call. For email, meta-data would have included the sender and recipient’s email addresses and when it was sent, but not the subject or text of the email.

Given what we now know, the researchers admit things might be even more different:

In reaction to these additional revelations, people may have adjusted their use of social media and their willingness to discuss a range of topics, including public issues such as government surveillance.

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FBI Said to Have Recovered Personal E-Mails From Hillary Clinton Server

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has successfully recovered personal and work emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server, according to a new report.

Sources told Bloomberg News that some of Clinton’s emails have been extracted from the server, thus disproving the claim that Clinton managed to wipe her server clean after she deleted all of her emails earlier this year.
Therefore, some of the emails that Clinton deleted — the ones that she determined were NOT relevant to federal investigations — are now in the hands of the FBI.
The federal investigation, therefore, is now out of Clinton’s control.
Breitbart News has extensively reported that Clinton’s server, which was managed by a handful of companies including Denver-based Platte River Networks before it was turned over to the FBI in August, might have contained data relevant to the investigation.

The FBI has recovered personal and work-related e-mails from the private computer server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s success at salvaging personal e-mails that Clinton said had been deleted raises the possibility that the Democratic presidential candidate’s correspondence eventually could become public. The disclosure of such e-mails would likely fan the controversy over Clinton’s use of a private e-mail system for official business.
The FBI is investigating how and why classified information ended up on Clinton’s server. The probe probably will take at least several more months, according to the person, who described the matter on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing and deals with sensitive information.

A review by Clinton and her aides determined that about half of the 60,000 e-mails she exchanged during her four-year tenure as secretary of state were of a personal nature, the presidential candidate has said.
Those e-mails, she said, mostly dealt with planning for Chelsea’s wedding, yoga routines and condolence messages.
Clinton said the personal e-mails were deleted from the server and her staff turned over paper copies of the remaining work-related e-mails in December to the State Department for processing and archiving. The FBI obtained Clinton’s server from the Colorado-based company managing it.

Recover E-Mails

Outside computer specialists have said the FBI has the technical capability to recover deleted e-mails. The exact number of personal e-mails recovered by the FBI could not be learned.
Once the e-mails have been extracted, a group of agents has been separating personal correspondence and passing along work-related messages to agents leading the investigation, the person said.
Since the existence of the e-mail system became public in March, Clinton has seen her standing in polls slide, particularly in regards to questions about her trustworthiness. She also has been heavily criticized by congressional Republicans who have raised questions over whether the private server jeopardized the security of sensitive data.
Internal government watchdogs have determined that classified information ended up on the system. Their findings sparked the FBI inquiry.
Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, did not respond to phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. Nick Merrill, a spokesman, said, “We’ve cooperated to date and will continue to do so, including answering any questions about this that anyone including the public may have.”

Iowa Caucuses

The bureau’s probe is expected to last at least several more months, according to the person. That timeline would push any final determination closer to the Democratic presidential primary calendar, which kicks off Feb. 1 with the Iowa caucuses.
A bureau spokeswoman, Carol Cratty, declined to discuss any aspect of the investigation. Emily Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.
Clinton is not accused of any wrongdoing. She has said she is confident that material in her e-mails wasn’t marked as classified when it was sent and received through her server. For anyone who mishandled such information, prosecutors must prove that they knowingly did so to charge them with a crime.
The former secretary of state has said she decided to use a private e-mail address -- hrod17@clintonemail.com -- to conduct all of her electronic correspondence as a matter of convenience, to avoid the need to carry two devices, one personal and one professional. She served from 2009 through 2013 as the nation’s top diplomat.

E-Mails Posted

As the result of public information lawsuits, the State Department has posted almost 8,000 of those work-related e-mails on its website. The State Department has determined that dozens of the e-mails contained classified information.
Many of the work-related e-mails contain schedules, press clippings, staffing updates, speech notes, and requests to aides for tech support. Some e-mails are simply requests to speak with people over secure phone lines.
In 2013, the Clintons turned the private server over to a Colorado-based technology company to manage. The firm, Platte River Networks, installed the device in a New Jersey data center and managed and maintained it.
Andy Boian, a spokesman for the Platte River, said the FBI last month asked the company to hand over the server. Platte River asked the Clintons what it should do, and within 24 hours a representative for the Clintons told the company to provide the device to agents, Boian said.
There has been some question as to whether Clinton deleted her messages or took the more thorough and technical step of “wiping” the server. Boian said Tuesday that Platte River had “no knowledge of it being wiped.”
Clinton’s use of a private e-mail system is being examined by congressional committees that have the power to subpoena the FBI to obtain the messages. The e-mails also may be sought under public-information laws.
The FBI isn’t likely to hand over any such messages until its investigation has been completed. Even then, public records laws provide exceptions protecting personal information.

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Facebook lets you opt-out of targeted ads but it will still collect your data

Facebook knows a lot about you. If you were honest when you first signed up, it knows your real name, age, gender, location and interests - as well as what you have done on-site ever since - valuable data indeed when it comes to delivering relevant advertisements to your browser.
But ad companies want more, and last year, the social network agreed to give it to them in the form of data collected from outside of the site.
Now, the company is to let advertisers use browsing data obtained when its users click on Like and Share buttons that have existed on external sites since they first launched in 2010.
Beginning next month, Facebook will add that data, along with information pulled from other social widgets, into its ad targeting systems, including those used on Instagram and the company's mobile apps.
Such a change is obviously a boon for advertisers as well as Facebook, which thinks its users will be delighted, as explained in a blog post by its global deputy chief privacy officer, Stephen Deadman:

We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more useful and relevant and that this new control will make it easier for people to have the ads experience they want.

Whether its user base agrees is up for discussion, but Facebook is certainly aware that the change may not be universally accepted. In fact, Deadman used the same post to introduce a new way for people to turn off such targeting of ads:

Today, we're introducing an additional way for people to turn off this kind of advertising from the ad settings page right on Facebook. If you choose to use this tool, it will become the master control for online interest-based advertising across all of your devices and browsers where you use Facebook.

Of course, that's not the only way to opt-out of having ever more data collected by the company - you can also visit the Digital Advertising Alliance website and make use of its own opt-out, which should not only stop Facebook in its tracks, but dozens of other companies too.
And anyone using a mobile device can access the advertising controls within their Android or iOS device to limit such data collection.
Of course what you shouldn't forget is that opting out will simply prevent Facebook from sharing your data with advertisers - it won't block the company from collecting it in the first place.
Speaking to the Guardian, privacy expert Brendan Van Alsenoy, co-author of a Belgian Privacy Commission report into Facebook and a legal researcher, said the new setting was a welcome but very limited step. He highlighted how behavioural targeting was an opt-out process rather than an opt-in one, which is a great point - how many people forget to turn off settings that are enabled by default, or never get to learn of them in the first place?
The Belgian report, released at the end of March, suggested the firm was using long-term cookies to track both users and non-users of its network. Facebook responded by claiming the report was wrong, and that any cookie setting was simply a bug that needed ironing out.
Such a response did not resonate well with the Belgian data protection authority which subsequently took the company to court over its alleged "trampling" of Belgian and European privacy laws.
It will be interesting to see how that case pans out, as well as what Facebook has in store next, given the ability to install mobile ad blockers in the recently-released iOS 9.
Apple's users responded in dramatic fashion, pushing several such apps to the top of the App Store charts, generating such good sales that the developer of popular app Peace suddenly pulled his app completely, saying:

Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don't deserve the hit.

I'll leave you to decide what sort of sites would suffer and deserve sympathy if they were to lose their advertising income, but one thing that's for sure is that Facebook itself is far too big to survive without some type of revenue stream. Whether its income should be based around the collection of its users' data is, of course, the billion dollar question.

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