G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Originally shared by George Kozi Given what happened in the last few years, and given the tools used to do it, should bots on the Internet be made illegal and the use of them be a criminal act? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Anibal Perez Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 No, what the hell is wrong with you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 I value our institutions and democracy more than bots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 I agree they need limitations. Google uses a bot to crawl the web for updating its web searches for us(users). That being said; how would one police such a thing? Is not the traffic the same for me trying to check-out a random web site? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 I don't know how it can be policed, but I'm sure brighter minds could come up with something. This is a discussion that has to be had. Why? Because a certain Mr. Putin apparently has some "farm workers" that are very funned and skilled at creating discord among us. Too much is at stake to be complacent about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Shada Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Bots should NEVER be blocked or taken down just because they are bots! Bots MUST be taken down if they are found to be posting as fradulant users to spread propaganda, threats, or hate, or outright falsehoods. (The earth is flat. For example) The owners of these Spam bots must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Many bots are useful. YouTube, for example, has a bot to filter out 'adult' words to keep a chat family frendly so the Modoraters dont have to do as much work. Other Bots can be used to retrieve information for us and automatically act on that information. So NO!, Bots should not be outlawed, but the CRIMINALS that misuse them should be! PS: Good bots can even be used to help us find and block bad bots. Incase you havent noticed, we are already in a cyberwar that will not end well unless something is done NOW! Our electrical grid could be brought to its knees by a squril in the right place. I'm sure Puten has his cybersecurity team working on our power switch right now. Bots are the least of our worries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 Michael Shada What about a licencing system? That could keep the useful stuff running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 Passing thought DDoS attacks... etc Of course we are at ciber war. It has been going on for a while, hasn't it. Only he haven't called a spade a spade... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Shada Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 George Kozi Sorry, licensing a bot would be like asking everyone to lisence the new virus they just wrote. A virus or bot can require a team of expert programmers to a single script kitty, depending on how detailed it is. We need International and local country laws with REAL teeth for the misuse of the internet. Laws with REAL prison time for disruptive behavior! And laws that allow and protect programmers to research flaws in our systems and who responsbiliy report them!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 My (perhaps wrong) thought was: you wanna legally use a bot? Fine, get a licence for it (can this be somewhat similar to how they deal with those security certificates perhaps?) And after that, go after everything that's a bot who hasn't got certification... This doesen't stop the script kitty creating a bot, or even use it, if it is licensed... Meaning your name is tied to it. And yeah, this is an international problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 We have no idea what's crawling out there on the Internet, do we? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 George Kozi Steve Gibson called it 'internet background radiation'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 Okay, anything with "radiation" in its description is best avoided lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Michael Shada Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 George Kozi I just wave as they crall by. LOL As for registering a bot, I dont know if that's possiable. Now you would have Google monitoring more of the internet and look how much trouble they are in already for snooping. Certification for websites took years and Years to get to the safety level that are now. And even that has been breached! We need STRONG, LONG, PRISON TIME for someone who brakes a law. The level of the crime should fit the punishment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 Whatever the solution is, something has to be done fast. We (and you lot over the pond too) got elections coming up... and people are using stuff like this to mess with truly important things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted August 28, 2018 Share Posted August 28, 2018 Solution: do your own research, never trust canned "facts". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 28, 2018 Author Share Posted August 28, 2018 The problem is that grandma Irma ain't gonna do that. And she votes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Lie Ryan Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 That this question is posed in the first place indicates that you don't really understand how the web, internet, and pretty much any distributed system works. There is no way to distinguish sufficiently sophisticated bot activity from real human activity unless the bot declared themselves as bots (which all legitimate bots already does). No matter how smart you are, this is a fact that would never change, it's a fundamental principle of any distributed system. In any case, there is no such thing as totally autonomous bots. Behind every bots is a human driving them. All that a bot does is really just executing the intent of that human, just like your regular web browser or email client is executing your intent. If bots are made illegal or to require licensing, the only bots that will be affected are legitimate bots. All the illegitimate bots will still be indistinguishable to regular human initiated activities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 29, 2018 Author Share Posted August 29, 2018 Lie Ryan I may not understand the intricacies of how bots work, but guess what: I asked a question that needed to be asked. Here is another one. Why, those who understand those intricacies, haven't asked that question? Do those who understand the intricacies even care that stuff like this has been weaponized? The Industry should be the first to raise the alarm, and answer questions like this long before laymen like myself even think about it..... instead, crickets. There are things that matter more than code. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 29, 2018 Author Share Posted August 29, 2018 And by the way, if the Industry itself doesen't fix this quick, politicians will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 Politicians don't know the difference between http and https, how in the world would they know what to do? And while I'm at it, the term weaponized is a misnomer... Its a word used to incite fear. Sure anything can be weaponized. You could use an empty beer can and reshape it into a knife to take-out someone, but You could also cut your steak. Bots(like the knife) is a tool. The misuse of the tool is the problem! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 29, 2018 Author Share Posted August 29, 2018 Exactly. Politicians don't know much about it, and yet, if there isn't a loud, proactive, quick action taken by the industry, politicians will be forced to act by themselves. And nobody will like the outcome, but even so, it's better than inaction. Personally. I think that weaponized is precisely the right word. What Putin trolls are doing is low level cyber warfare. It is done to destabilize and ferment discord. Any kind of discord. That is an act of aggression. A coordinated one. We are spending sacs of billions on shiny new army toys, and they buy ads on facebook... and then program bots to spread those ads around. Highly effective and cheaper than buying a dozen pairs of boots for the army. This stuff isn't going away... there are some reports on interference due to be published... by the time that's done, it would be too late for the Tech Giants. Anything they do then will be seen as reactive... they have been forced to act.. Just watch Facebook's stock price the day Mueller reports... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 George Kozi to a person with a peanut allergy, a peanut can be weaponized. Oh, God, fear. Fear of a tool or a nut is stupid and is making wimps of the uninformed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_George Kozi Posted August 29, 2018 Author Share Posted August 29, 2018 Well, there was a rust belt state ( I forget which one) that was unexpectedly carried by a mere 80k votes... As for peanuts, yes, it can be a weapon. It depends on who is using it, on whom, and for what purpose. Moreover, it is untraceable... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted August 29, 2018 Share Posted August 29, 2018 80k? You mean to tell the world that there are that may people that got it right, and >80k were wrong, and (wait, let me do the math) a fly-over state has less than 160k voters. Amazing! Oh, shit... I just weaponized this against you! Ha,ha,ha. Get over yourself... Your focusing on the peas and not the steak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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