For better or worse, it seems clear that the cat is out of the bag.
Identity detection through stylometry is now an established technology and
you can easily find code on GitHub or elsewhere (e.g.
) to accomplish it (if you have
the time and energy to build a data set and train the model). Back in 2017,
there was even a start-up company that was offering this as a service.
Whatever danger is embodied in Amir's code, it's only a matter of time
before this danger is ubiquitous. And for the worst-case
scenario—governments using the technology to hunt down dissidents—I imagine
this is already happening. So while I agree there is a moral consideration
to releasing this software, I think the moral implications aren't actually
that huge. Eventually, we will just have to accept that creating separate
accounts is not an effective way to protect your identity. That said, I
think taking precautions to minimize (or at least slow down) the potential
abuse of this technology is sensible. TheDJ offered many good suggestions
in this vein so I won't repeat them here. Overall though, I think moving
ahead with this tool is a good idea and I hope you are able to come to a
solution that is amenable to everyone. The WMF is also interested in this
technology (as a potential mitigation for IP masking), so the outcome may
help inform their work as well.
On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 5:51 AM Derk-Jan Hartman <
d.j.hartman+wmf_ml(a)gmail.com> wrote:
As others, I see several problems
1. If the code is public, someone can duplicate it and bypass our internal
'safekeeping', because it uses public data.
2. Risk of misuse by either incompetence or malice
3. Risk of accidentally exposing legitimate sockpuppets even in the most
closed off situations.
4. Give ppl insight into how the AI works
My answers to those:
1. I have no problem with keeping this in a private repo (yet technically
opensourced) code. We also run private mailinglists and have private repos
for configuration secrets. Yes it is a bit of a stretch, but.. IAR. At the
same time, from the description, seems like something any AI developer with
a bit of determination can reproduce... so... for how long will this matter
?
2. NDA + OAuth access for those who need it. Aggressive action logging of
usage of the software. Showing these logs to all users of the tool to
enforce social control. "User X investigated the matches of account: Y",
User Z investigated match on previously known sockpuppet BlockedQ"
3. Usage wise, I'd have two flows.
1. Matches: Surface 'matches' that match previously known sockpuppets
(will require keeping track of that list). Only disclose details of a match
upon additional user action (logged).
2. Requests: Enter specific account name(s) and request if there are
matches on/between that/those name(s). (logged)
Those flows might have different levels match certainty perhaps...
If you want to go even further.. Requiring signoff on a request by
another user before you can actually view the matches.
4. That does leave you with the problem of how you can give ppl insight
into why an AI matched something.. that is a hard problem. I don't know
enough about that problem space.
DJ
On 6 Aug 2020, at 04:33, Amir Sarabadani
<ladsgroup(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hey,
I have an ethical question that I couldn't answer yet and have been
asking
around but no definite answer yet so I'm
asking it in a larger audience
in
hope of a solution.
For almost a year now, I have been developing an NLP-based AI system to
be
able to catch sock puppets (two users pretending
to be different but
actually the same person). It's based on the way they speak. The way we
speak is like a fingerprint and it's unique to us and it's really hard to
forge or change on demand (unlike IP/UA), as the result if you apply some
basic techniques in AI on Wikipedia discussions (which can be really
lengthy, trust me), the datasets and sock puppets shine.
Here's an example, I highly recommend looking at these graphs, I compared
two pairs of users, one pair that are not sock puppets and the other is a
pair of known socks (a user who got banned indefinitely but came back
hidden under another username). [1][2] These graphs are based one of
several aspects of this AI system.
I have talked about this with WMF and other CUs to build and help us
understand and catch socks. Especially the ones that have enough
resources
to change their IP/UA regularly (like sock farms,
and/or UPEs) and also
with the increase of mobile intern providers and the horrible way they
assign IP to their users, this can get really handy in some SPI ("Sock
puppet investigation") [3] cases.
The problem is that this tool, while being built only on public
information, actually has the power to expose legitimate sock puppets.
People who live under oppressive governments and edit on sensitive
topics.
Disclosing such connections between two accounts
can cost people their
lives.
So, this code is not going to be public, period. But we need to have this
code in Wikimedia Cloud Services so people like CUs in other wikis be
able
to use it as a web-based tool instead of me
running it for them upon
request. But WMCS terms of use explicitly say code should never be
closed-source and this is our principle. What should we do? I pay a
corporate cloud provider for this and put such important code and data
there? We amend the terms of use to have some exceptions like this one?
The most plausible solution suggested so far (thanks Huji) is to have a
shell of a code that would be useless without data, and keep the code
that
produces the data (out of dumps) closed (which is
fine, running that code
is not too hard even on enwiki) and update the data myself. This might be
doable (which I'm around 30% sure, it still might expose too much) but it
wouldn't cover future cases similar to mine and I think a more long-term
solution is needed here. Also, it would reduce the bus factor to 1, and
maintenance would be complicated.
What should we do?
Thanks
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Word_distributions_of_two_users_in_…
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Word_distributions_of_two_users_in_…
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SPI
--
Amir (he/him)
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