Do a Google search on the term ShadowDragon and a reference to a light brown dragonfly with yellowish markings called Neurocordulia turns up. Do the search as two separate words and a half dozen references turn up that include video games, D&D role-playing, and the title of the fourth novel in a fantasy series. Only after translating from the French entry does the limited liability company (LLC) that produces open source intelligence (OSINT) tools turn up.
ShadowDragon: Some Background
This difficulty in discovering the company’s identity online serves as a metaphor for evaluating the quality and beneficiality of its products. According to its founder and CEO Daniel Clemens, ShadowDragon’s tools (principally SocialNet) are designed to help its users “identify, understand and stop the malicious actors and threats targeting them.” He chose to name his company after the common name for a dragonfly “known for its agility and hunting prowess.”
Sounds harmless enough, even laudatory. And the company has industry awards to support that viewpoint. However, to accomplish these ends, the company software accesses and analyzes data SocialNet takes from social media, the dark web, archives and other internet sources to identify people of interests and create maps of their networks.
Developing Interest in ShadowDragon
All of this corporate cloak-and-dagger stuff seemed quite remote to me because most of my social commentary deals with First Amendment concerns. It did, that is, until the issue of Flock cameras came up at a recent municipal forum.
For those who don’t know (I was one of them), Flock cameras are “the small black devices [that] sit beside roads, near intersections, and at the entrances to neighborhoods and parking lots, collecting information about every vehicle that passes.” Pairing this photographic data with that collected by ShadowDragon creates a powerful, unwanted, and usually unwarranted violation of individuals’ rights to privacy.
This threat to our Fourth Amendment rights prompted my attendance at a municipal forum designed to assess public opinion regarding the Town of Dutchess County’s purchase of these camera and attendant software for its police department. As an effort to promote governmental transparency and accountability in its operations, all interested parties were invited to a public forum to express their opinions on the subject.
Public Opinion
Surprisingly perhaps, well over a hundred people filled the chairs and lined the walls of Pleasant Valley’s meeting room. Between 40 and 50 people of diverse ages and backgrounds went to the podium and expressed their opinions. Not one supported the purchase of Flock cameras or its supportive software.
Their reasons varied. Some regarded it as invasive. Others denounced it for violating their constitutional rights. Many feared it might be used indiscriminately to spy and harass others. Despite the company’s reputed safeguards in that respect, the anecdotal evidence these advocates cited strongly corroborated their claims.
In the end, the panel declared the informed testimony would be taken under advisement. Though they didn’t declare a change of mind, their reservation on the issue suggested a moderation in their endorsing the software’s purchase.
Update: just two days later the full County council declared its decision not to purchase Flock cameras.
ShadowDragon: Other Considerations
The Council’s quick decision rendered their announcement all the more surprising. And weighty. Still, other concerns remain. Its applicability remains limited to the County’s jurisdiction. Both Flock and ShadowDragon are private entities. Consequently, they still can approach other government agencies in the area such as the City of Poughkeepsie and other villages and municipalities to install Flock cameras throughout their jurisdictions.
Moreover, substantial concern remains that if one local government purchases the software, the private information and behavioral habits of each individual are available to anyone who purchases ShadowDragon;s software. One speaker at the forum spoke of how the Texas police found and arrested a woman who went to another state for an abortion from the license number of her car that a Flock camera photographed and shared through ShadowDragon.
What You Can Do
Besides speaking out and writing your government representatives, Redact lists four personal steps to take in preventing unwarranted invasion of your privacy:
- Audit your social media presence: Review what information about you is publicly accessible across all platforms.
- Update privacy settings: Restrict access to your content to only trusted connections rather than making posts public.
- Use secure messaging: Opt for end-to-end encrypted messaging services for sensitive communications.
- Consider using Services which offer powerful tools to systematically remove your historical social media content, making it more difficult for surveillance systems to build a comprehensive profile of your digital life and real-world behavior.
The Upshot
In some ways these developments resemble the escalation of nuclear weapons that occurred during the Cold War. Each side tried to outdo the other by building bigger and deadlier bombs. Though the nuclear threat still exists, a balance has been reached where an atomic first strike seems unthinkable.
A similar attitude must develop in regards to digital violations of people’s privacy. Reject these invasions of privacy disguised as personal protection. Speak out at informational meetings on the subject. Demand transparency on the decision0making process. Much as getting out the vote requires door-to-door canvassing of each individual voter, protecting our privacy requires convincing the officials of every city, municipality, and government facility not to succumb to the protectionist allure of products like Flock and ShadowDragon.
What do you think? Give me your reaction and opinion in the Comments section below: