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Scraped Parler Data Is a Metadata Gold Mine (techcrunch.com) 333

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Embattled social media platform Parler is offline after Apple, Google and Amazon pulled the plug on the site after the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol last week that left five people dead. But while the site is gone (for now), millions of posts published to the site since the riot are not. A lone hacker scraped millions of posts, videos and photos published to the site after the riot but before the site went offline on Monday, preserving a huge trove of potential evidence for law enforcement investigating the attempted insurrection by many who allegedly used the platform to plan and coordinate the breach of the Capitol.

The hacker and internet archivist, who goes by the online handle @donk_enby, scraped the social network and uploaded copies to the Internet Archive, which hosts old and historical versions of web pages. In a tweet, @donk_enby said she scraped data from Parler that included deleted and private posts, and the videos contained "all associated metadata." The scraped videos from Parler appear to also include the precise location data of where the videos were taken. That metadata could be a gold mine of evidence for authorities investigating the Capitol riot, which may tie some rioters to their Parler accounts or help police unmask rioters based on their location data.

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Scraped Parler Data Is a Metadata Gold Mine

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  • by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @05:04PM (#60929036)

    or source for federal indictments?

    discuss

    • Talk radio hosts and right wing media. How has attacking them in the past gone?
      • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @07:10PM (#60929762) Journal

        Funny you should mention that:

        "Talk radio company orders hosts to stop suggesting election was stolen from Trump..."

        https://thehill.com/homenews/m... [thehill.com]

        Now you're going to find out, if you didn't already really know, that right wing talk radio is basically the political version of pro wrestling. None of these guys believe any of the shit they spout, they do it because it's entertainment and it makes their employers money. But when the owners start getting nervous that they might be tarred with the brush of supporting sedition, you find out they really are just actors, and they do exactly what they are told; whether that's to attack the election, or presto chango, never talk about a stolen election again, on pain of being pretty much instantly fired.

        • You are definitely correct at least in part. The other side of this is that many have suggested that the election was "stolen" via some fraud of the election machine vendors. That crosses the line from political speech to commercial speech and is actionable and they are getting sued. Continuing to say the election was stolen, even if you leave out tying it to the voting machines, could arguable be considered an extension of the original false (and actionable) claim and may result in the voting machine ven
        • The article mentions Three radio show hosts. I have only listened to one, Shapiro, and he has never suggested that the election was stolen. In fact, he has pushed back against such allegations.

    • by spun ( 1352 ) <<loverevolutionary> <at> <yahoo.com>> on Monday January 11, 2021 @05:19PM (#60929174) Journal

      Oooh! I know! Terrorists are going to jail because they are so brainwashed, they did not stop to think they were committing serious federal crimes. They really thought that America was on their side, just waiting for those heroic patriots to stand up, before we all joined them (except for the dirty liberals who aren't really American) in taking back our government.

      In reality, of course, the only fraud was on their side, coming straight from their con artist leader. Because Trump is as stupid and incompetent as they are, both his election fraud and his attempted coup failed miserably. Then, without even a thought, he proceeded to throw them all under the bus. Because that's what malignant narcissists do.

      So all these self proclaimed patriotic heroes are going to jail for a long, long time. And being the cowards they are, all of them will rat on each other. They're just so fucked, and they don't even understand why.

      I mean, they thought they would go invade the capitol, take some congress people and senators hostage, maybe rape and kill a few, then hop on a plane and go back to their jobs and families. Some brought their kids. Some brought their elderly parents.

      In the end, they only managed to kill other Trump supporters, like that cop they viciously beat to death. With flags. While singing the star spangled banner.

      Which only goes to show that the only thing "Blue lives matter" ever really meant was "Black lives don't matter." They don't give a rat's ass for the lives of police, or anyone really. They're terrorists. And failures.
         

      • well put sir!

      • “This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. She was crying, hysterical. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”

        from: https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]

      • by Swampash ( 1131503 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @06:13PM (#60929466)

        At no time in recent history has it ever been so uncontroversial to wear a facemask, but even while committing federal crimes on camera these traitors chose not to do so because FREEDIMZ

      • by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @06:28PM (#60929526) Journal

        In reality, of course, the only fraud was on their side, coming straight from their con artist leader. Because Trump is as stupid and incompetent as they are, both his election fraud and his attempted coup failed miserably. Then, without even a thought, he proceeded to throw them all under the bus. Because that's what malignant narcissists do.

        I think you overestimate Trump's incompetence. It's okay, most people do, it's part of the con. Hear me out.

        Most people are believers in Hanlon's razor, [wikipedia.org] "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Trump knows this, and deliberately acts incompetent in certain circumstances. That has two results:
        1. His opponents underestimate his ability, and are unprepared when he performs well. (see Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign)
        2. He can use his "incompetence" as an alibi against allegations of wrongdoing.

        I heard people like Scott Adams claim Trump was actually a genius, but never believed it until Wednesday. For a man that "doesn't read anything," [theweek.com] It certainly seems that he has read a lot about how to become a dictator.

        Legal scholars have all been criticizing the Trump campaign's poor legal work. This is on purpose. It's not a legal case, it's a propaganda machine, with the goal of sparking Wednesday's riot. Complete with a poorly worded speech that was enough to fire up an angry mob, but falling short of any legal culpability.

        It's not stupidity, it's malice made to look like stupidity.

        • by spun ( 1352 ) <<loverevolutionary> <at> <yahoo.com>> on Monday January 11, 2021 @06:42PM (#60929610) Journal

          Eh, he's got a certain cunning. But he is both mentally ill, and getting senile. Whatever things he may be doing that look smart, are almost certainly planned by, oh say, Stephen Miller.

          Narcissists don't need to read theory to understand how to manipulate weak willed, cowardly people. It doesn't take brains. It's just that the sorts of behaviors narcissists engage in work very well against angry idiots. Which is probably why narcissist genes haven't been bred out of the species long ago.

        • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @08:36PM (#60930104) Journal

          We know what Trump reads:

          "Donald Trump's ex-wife once said Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bed" [businessinsider.com]

          You are confusing IQ with EQ. Trump has a low IQ, low curiosity, but a high EQ, which as a sociopath means that he is able to influence people.

    • by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @05:47PM (#60929320) Homepage Journal

      Non-repudiation and proving chain of custody may be an issue.

  • Contact tracing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @05:11PM (#60929102)

    Besides the armed insurrection it was also a super spreader event. Good to know we can do contact tracing on these "special people".

    • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @05:13PM (#60929122)

      Besides the armed insurrection it was also a super spreader event.

      I'm wondering which flavor of chemtrails were spread over DC that day.

  • by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @05:21PM (#60929184) Homepage Journal

    My first reaction was wow a list of extremely gullible people would be a marketing dream.

  • as a social media company this is their crown jewels. There is no way this data isn't going to make it into the hands of their competitors. You'd think they'd have secured it better.
  • Could any of that metadata be used in court? It seems to me that a third party accessing it and uploading it may not be admissible in court.
    Though it is probably fine for investigation purposes.

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I'm sure that Amazon has all that metadata as well.

    • by AvitarX ( 172628 )
      Probably not.

      It could likely be used in an investigation that finds other evidence though.

      For example a warrant to get such and such a file, and then have a file that is usable.
  • I think it was on PBS or 60 Minutes (don't really know) that someone speculated; what if Trump uses his power to pardon all the insurrectionists en masse. Assuming there is a legal basis for that - Would the federal prosecutors have any recourse?

    Could he do it and would it stick?

    • I suspect this is part of the reason why there's the push for impeachment. The constitution states that the president "shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

      It's never come up in court, but a good lawyer could try to argue that it's related to the impeachment, and so can't be undone. (other people are going to argue that he simply can't undo the impeachment itself)

      But they'd have start the impeachment process first, I would

    • Charge them at the state level. There was a Parler thread circulating saying Trump would pardon you if you listed your crimes along with your name and address. You can’t make this shit up.

  • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @06:02PM (#60929404) Homepage
    Godspeed the investigation into these scumbags. They are insurrectionists, against democracy and against the will of the people. Thump called 306-232 a landslide in late 2015/2016. So he lost by a landslide, in his own words.
  • So what happened to Twitter's policy on hacked data that was used as a pretext to silence Hunter Biden emails story? Why is it not being enforced here?
  • Is the quality of the data even useful? They're either going to be deliberately misleading, for the "clever" people in that cloud that never trusts the government; or the data is just too batshit insane for the batshit insane people who can't tell fact from fiction.

    I'm not even sure it would useful for social psych, and that's saying something.
  • Even if this data is "valuable", it is still "hacked", right? Claiming access to private posts, makes it even less likely being a legitimate public scrape operation.

    Two wrongs do not make a right. Are we sure we want to go down this rabbit hole?

  • by Geekbot ( 641878 ) on Monday January 11, 2021 @07:59PM (#60929986)

    A lot of "activists" trying to push an agenda here instead of responding about the article. Hacker gets private videos and posts including meta-data giving location of users mostly comprised of a political party and then posts the information publicly endangering those people. While some users of the site may have rioted at the Capitol Building, almost none did. This is the equivalent of a hacker getting ahold of Facebook data and posting it all so that people could prosecute BLM rioters.
    It is a really sad day when the tech's are celebrating cyber terrorism against Americans.

  • by radarskiy ( 2874255 ) on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @09:26AM (#60932402)

    That tells you everything you need to know about the kind of people behind Parler.

    That's the kind of mistake *I* might make, which is why no one is letting me design a social network.

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