The dangers of Deep Packet Inspection coupled with sponsored advertising keywords, e.g. the notorious Phorm, or just the dangers of sponsored search engine keywords coupled with the exisiting and future Communications Traffic Data retention and snooping databases, is illustrated by the inept Metropolitan Police Service Google AdWord / sponsored link campaign, currently afflicting www.google.co.uk.
If you search for the following phrases, you will get a Sponsored Link to a Metropolitan Police Service's Specialist Operations web page, which re-hashes their controversial "suspect everyone who travels or uses any modern technology", advertising campaign, promoting the supposedly confidential anti-terrorism hotline.
If your blog or website is running Google adverts and is unlucky enough to have such beeing automatically, and very fallibly classified as such, these sponsored advert banners may also appear on or around your web content.
See London's Met Police running adverts on Google, [hat tip to Iain Dale - Is There a Right Wing Extremist Under Your Bed? ]
However, although these "right wing" bloggers seem to be the first to notice this, it does not necessarily mean that only they are on some carefully chosen NuLabour political watchlist.
e.g. searching for "Left Wing Extremist" gets you a Sponsored Link entitled "Right Wing Extremist":
Results 1 - 10 of about 525,000 for Left Wing Extremist. (0.09 seconds)
Sponsored Link1. Right Wing Extremist
www.met.police.uk Call the Anti-terrorist Hotline Your call could be vital to us.
These search engine query keywords are not being applied fairly or impartially or even logically.
No doubt there are other possible combinations and variations, and the results may vary depending on which of the multiple Google search engine boxes you are actually being served by at any particular time.
Google are probably desperately trying to fix this, and some or all of the above may not not work, but the fact that these inaccurate results came up at all (we have screen capture evidence)) indicates just how politically dangerous this technique is.
Commercial advertising can usually be ignored, but this is different, it is UK Government funded anti-terrorism propaganda and intelligence gathering. The taxpayers of London get no direct say in, or any value for money analysis of, how the Metropolitan Police Service "tackles" national security and anti-terrorism intelligence gathering and snooping, which is veiled in secrecy,
As advertising sponsors, the Metropolitan Police Service are entitled to some of Google UK's search engine log file data.
Under the current, and soon to be expanded Communications Traffic Data laws, the MPS can demand and snoop on even more web server logfile and ISP IP address record logfile data.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's weasel worded assurances that the existing European Union Communications Data Retention Directive, and her forthcoming Communications Data Bill, would not grant direct access to the "content" of a web page (i.e. interception of electronic communications, requiring a targeted warrant signed by the Home Secretary), it is clear that the state authorities would have access to a logfiles of the Results pages returned by these Google keyword searches.
Most public web search engines, including Google, tend to encode the actiual keyword search terms in the URL of the web page via the HTTP GET method, so there is no real world distinction between "communications data" and "content of communications" with respect to web search engine queries..
Search term -> resulting Google.co.uk Metropolitan Police Sponsored Link phrase:
Religious Extremist -> Religious Extremist
Fascism Extremist -> Fascism Extremist
Fascist Extremist -> Fascism Extremist
Left Wing Extremist -> Right Wing Extremist
police -> London Police (still goes to the anti-terrorism hotline page, rather than the Metropolitan Police Service home page)
terrorism -> Terrorism
extremist -> Islamic Extremist
Right wing extremist ? -> Right Wing Extremist
Muslim Extremism -> Islamic Extremism
Radical Extremist -> Religious Extremist
Animal extremist -. Islamic Extremist
Left wing extremist -> Right Wing Extremist
Islamic extremist -> Islamic Extremist
Green extremist -> Right Wing Extremist
Eco extremist -> Islamic Extremist
Such inaccuracy is extremely worrying, as the web search engine logfiles and other communications data will be analysed by stupid software and will help to poluute various computerised blacklists and "anti-terror" watchlists.
The following search terms do not trigger the Met Police Sponsored Link Why not ?:
Political Extremist
Vivisection Extremist
Abortion Extremist
Police Extremist
Racist Extremist
Racial Extremist
Communist Extremist
Jewish Extremist
Jew Extremist
Arab Extremist
Hindu Extremist
Irish Extremist
Muslim Extremist
Catholic Extremist
Protestant Extremist
Buddhist Extremist
Zion Extremist
Zionist Extremist
Zionism Extremist
Ecology Extremist
Ecological Extremist
nationalist extremist
National Extremist
Liberal Extremist
Liberal Democrat Extremist
Lib Dem Extremist
Tory Extremist
Conservative Extremist
British Extremist
Scottish Extremist
English Extremist
Welsh Extremist
National Front Extremist
BNP Extremist
Nazi Extremist
Popular Front Extremist
Unionist Extremist
Separatist Extremist
Black Extremist
White Extremist
Yellow Extremist
Red Extremist
Brown Extremist
Orange Extremist
Green Extremist
IRA Extremist
UDA Extremist
UVF Extremist
Eta Extremist
Al Quada Extremist
Al Qaeda Extremist
Taliban Extremist
Taleban Extremist
Extremism
The fact that results you might not expect show up when you perform particular search queries is not an indicator of some kind of 'inaccuracy' - it is simply due to the criteria given by the sponsor, the characteristics of the search engine and the content of its database.
I am unable to see why this is worth worrying about. It looks likely that the sponsor has used the words 'green', 'left', 'right' and 'extremist' at least when choosing which terms should trigger their advert, but you seem to be pointing the finger at Google as some kind of bad guy for showing the required results, when they are simply doing the bidding of (in this case) the Metropolitan Police.
I wouldn't disagree if the argument was that it is pretty evil for the Met to be running such a campaign, of course.
@ Rik - the consequences of having your blog or website or web search engine queries categorised automatically as the "wrong sort" of "extremist" or as being "extremist" even when they are not really so, and those results being fed into various domestic and international "terrorist suspect" databases, are rather more dangerous than just being served with irrelevant commercial adverts by Google etc.
Note the many relevant search terms or keywords which do not trigger the Met Police adverts. That, together with the apparent confusion of "Left Wing" with "Right Wing" or "Animal" with "Islamic" Extremist etc. does give the impression of inaccuracy, regardless of whose fault this is.
It is noticeable that the Met Police Sponsored Links and AdWords do not actually bother to publish the anti-terrorism hotline number 0800 729 321 directly, although they could easily have done so.
You might be interested in my FOI request concerning this advertising: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/budget_for_google_adwords_advert
Most interesting part: "The planned spend for Google search on the Counter Terrorism Campaign for FY 08/09 is £42,000. The Metropolitan Police Service does not currently run ad word search sponsored links on other search engines."
The term I found this nonsense came up for, by the way, was... "Hydrogen Peroxide". Don't try to change your hair colour any time soon!
@ Guy - "Hydrogen Peroxide" triggers the Met Police sponsored link, but not keywords for explosives or explosives pre-cursor chemicals used by terrorists, such as "Acetone" or "TATP" or "triacetone triperoxide" or "HMTD" or "hexamethylenetriperoxidediamine" or "Ammonium Nitrate" or "Semtex" or "Explosives" etc.
What are they playing at ?
Who exactly were the Metropolitan Police officials who complied this list of Google AdWords / Sponsored Link keywords ?
Why should they ever be trusted with "terrorist training" or "glorification of terrorism" website takedown notice powers under the Terrorism Act 2006 section 3 ?
"The taxpayers of London get no direct say in, or any value for money analysis of, how the Metropolitan Police Service "tackles" national security and anti-terrorism intelligence gathering and snooping, which is veiled in secrecy ...."
Please do tell me when the taxpayer / ratepayer gets to see details of any "value for money analysis" of how the Metropolitan Police Service "tackles" anything at all.
Many people would love to see such a report on (say) the "head massaging" of Sussex and Lancashire Police staff (and probably many other forces) for a kick off.
Iain Dale's Diary has an update:
What an utter waste of £42,000 of public money.
The revised sponsored links still do not actually display the anti-terrorism hotline number itself.
The Register reports that:
On the basis of the Met Police Adwords campaign described above, this Home Office scheme could even be counterproductive, not merely useless.