jadero

This sounds like just standard traffic analysis. Nothing to do with WhatsApp or any other messaging platform. It’s been in use since at least WWII.

Who is talking to whom? How often? Under what circumstances? How do patterns of communication correlate with events? Who are the hubs of communication (ie leaders)?

The big difference between then and now is that instead of needing rooms full of people drawing graphs by hand, there is software to handle it. In turn, that means it’s not really important to have initial suspects to get started, because the computers are quite happy to tease out interesting signals from total communications. That also increases the likelihood of false positives, but the kinds of people who do traffic analysis at this level aren’t usually the kinds of people who worry about a little collateral damage.

It seems like a pretty tall order to construct a system of communication that is useful for coordinating activities, affordable to operate, and secure against traffic analysis. At best, you’ll end up back in a situation where other intelligence will be required to identify a manageable pool of suspects.

No problem! If that’s as nasty as we ever get, then I’d say we’re doing pretty damn good!

We used to get at least some of them before the advertisers conned themselves (with the help of Google et al) into thinking that they had to know who we are instead of what our active interests are.

… it’ll likely only exist as an incredibly niche thing because not many people will hear about it…

Sounds like they need some ads! :)

There are actually such things as relevant ads. One of the paper magazines I used to subscribe to was “Small Craft Advisor”. In addition to the articles and editorial content, there were articles written by vendors about their products and traditional ads. Literally everything in that magazine was aimed at small boat owners and builders. No BMWs, no Rolexes, no shaving products, just very specific content and ads for those passionate about small boats.

When they switched to online only, enough subscribers reached out to them regarding the loss of vendor articles and ads that they now occasionally put out something to address that loss.

I don’t know where else I could learn about a new epoxy product or a new boat design so easily.

Within the context of the subject matter, that was a quick excerpt. And, in fact, the transcript from which that excerpt was extracted can probably be considered a relatively quick excerpt from the entire system.

Sometimes it is just not possible to simplify further or be more concise without just saying “trust me, it’s better than what we had up to now.” That is especially true when we have all learned, I hope, that “trust me, I saw it on the internet” is a really lousy way to make decisions.

They have similar legislation in other jurisdictions. Does anyone up to no good get to hide that fact? What about people who share a name and one person wants search results hidden and the other(s) don’t or even actively want to be searchable?

I used to be against this, but as time has gone on, and i’ve seen just how evil Google can be, i’ve become more and more in favor of it!

While I agree that Google is evil, don’t forget that they are a search engine. If Google doesn’t show the results, another search engine probably will.

Someone somewhere has to get it posted where people will see it. It might as well be the researcher.

Yes, and thanks!

Yeah, I’m not a fan of the form of capitalism that’s about selling what they want us to buy instead of what we want to buy, but it seems to be working for pretty much every company out there.

I guess we missed our window of opportunity with Netflix. We moved to the middle of nowhere with no internet or cell service 12 years ago. We’ve had Starlink for nearly 2 years and are just starting to run out of stuff available for free on our Roku. It’s been a couple of decades since I played with, um, other options, but I somehow doubt it’s become more difficult. :)

Former water treatment plant operator. Thanks for living up to your name.

We’ve been watching an old TV series called “One Step Beyond.” I actually like the Alcoa ad that runs ahead of the program. It’s written specifically for the program and runs as an introduction. They use “One Step Beyond” as a phrase highlighting their ability to innovate and in contrast to the “One Step Beyond” our normal existence as portrayed by the upcoming episode.

I know I’ll tire of it eventually, but for now I’m enjoying it much the same way I enjoy listening to a piece of music multiple times or rereading a good book.