Google’s Government Search

I had no idea Google had this section, but it’s rather interesting. It’s a special search that only searches websites controlled by seemingly state and federal governments. It really seems like a conspiracy theorists dream come true. Plus I bet all the results are saved in one neat location and available to the government for analysis. Not that stuff like that’s not available anyway, mind you. Huzzah!

This is only tangentially related, but it reminded me of my theory about setting up what are called “honeypots” to capture conspiracy people and their ilk:

    Honeypot is computer jargon for a computer system or network which is designed intentionally to attract hackers. Basically, it masquerades as the type of weak or vulnerable system which hackers usually exploit. The purpose of it, though, is usually just to gather information about the hackers - namely their methods, and if possible their identities.

    They may also be set up as a diversion to keep hackers away from more important machines on a network, and also as an early-warning system. It acts sort of like a canary in a coal-mine, being able to detect attacks ahead of the rest of the system. Honeypot websites may also be set up to do things like catch child pornographers also.

Then I went into some kind of thing about how conspiracy theorists are sort of like “culture hackers” because they are trying to deconstruct and reverse-engineer cultural messages and phenomena:

    So if I was some kind of weird PR company or a government agency trying to influence public opinion, I would totally set up some kind of network of conspiracy theorists, complete with websites, lectures, email discussion lists, books, videos, you name it. I would then study the shit out of the people who were attracted to it. I would gather demographic data, and I would analyze their thought processes and emotional responses. I would then use this information to engineer better-designed news stories, press releases, publicity stunts, and the like. Ones which would be more hack-proof. Simultaneously to studying them, I would also flood the people I was studying with vast amounts of erroneous data to sift through in order to distract them from the more important and more straightforward cultural trends and events that are going on.

Anyway, I think this is actually one of more likely paranoid fantasies, although I rather doubt Google’s government search is necessarily linked in.


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This entry was written by Tim Boucher, posted on February 1, 2005 at 8:47 pm.

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