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Comment by Raed667 | Hacker News Reader

I just went on Facebook and created an Ad [0] that targets only people "interested in Islam" and living the US, it took 30 seconds.

[0] http://i.imgur.com/NOrGA2N.png

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Interest in Islam ≠ being a Muslim. I'm interested in Islam and not a Muslim. In fact I'd say most Trump supporters, hell most Americans of any political/religious persuasion even, have some amount of interest in Islam. I'm being somewhat facetious, but also not entirely - the point being that I don't think these consumer profiles could easily be converted into Muslim registries.

But it's also all pretty moot - if Trump's anti-muslim policies are implemented, I highly doubt the CBP et al will need resources beyond what the US intelligence community already possesses.

I understand your point. This was just a quick example to show that the data is there. I'm not saying that the FBI is going to start a campaign of Facebook ads.

Facebook data is there, and it could be mined in more advanced ways to extract a database of its Muslim users. This data can extend beyond the "religion" entry in a profile, to analyze posts on religious holidays, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, images shared, etc..

Fair points. I still find it hard to imagine they would use fuzzy profiling from social media though - if they want to cast a wide net like that, they could just use country of origin - which is (one of) Trump's stated position(s), to shut down/more heavily regulate immigration from particular countries, rather than trying to go on a case by case basis. And they would avoid the bad PR that would come out of people getting to act on this pledge and other things like it.

>>Interest in Islam ≠ being a Muslim.

Sure, but it would be trivial for a nefarious party to pair up "interest in Islam" with actions such as "checked in at local mosque" and other such signals.

There is a big difference between advertising to users interested in Islam and shipping that dataset (or clicks, or people who use certain keywords in messages) to the government.

Yes, it is the intent to use it. But clearly such databases already exist.

Tell that to a FISA court.

FISA courts asking for the same data are also bad. The data asked for by a FISA court must be gathered and shipped by employees and lawyers who have agency. Those employees and lawyers can choose to fight, or not. This is a public pledge that says "we will choose to fight."

Leaking FISA requests to the press, choosing to face jail time, or trying a public battle over a FISA request are other options available to people at these companies, instead of just rolling over.

I don't understand your argument.

If something is harmful, ineffective grandstanding (and then losing a FISA fight) are worthless.

Drawing a line between intent and danger is a weak barrier, because you cannot dictate the intent of future political groups. There is no reliable test of intentionality.

Also, the nature of information is that once known you can never rely on unknowing it again. If the United States breaks out into a war with China, you cannot unknow a database of asians innocuously collected for alternative reasons. The information itself is dangerous because the information itself is powerful.

Well we could all say we were interested in Islam so that people who actually are could be interested without fear of incrimination because of it, at the same time we could educate users about putting their interests online and what it means.

If you limit it to US, I think you'll get more Trump voters than muslims.

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