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fairweather friend
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Joined: 31 May 2012
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Location: Not so dispersed |
| altasnob wrote: | | Is it worth the logistical headache to do the cancelled lottery for all permits on recreation.gov? |
I really don't have much knowledge about campsite reservations on rec.gov, or different agency regulations pertaining to things like the transfer of a campsite reservation from one person to the next, so I can't really offer much insight on the topic. All of my experience has been with highly-sought after backcountry permits like multi-day wilderness river permits or popular hikes like The Wave or The Enchantments.
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Cyclopath
Faster than light
Joined: 20 Mar 2012
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Location: Seattle |
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Cyclopath
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 Wed May 04, 2022 10:51 am |
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| fairweather friend wrote: | | Cyclopath wrote: | | mosey wrote: | | I agree recreation.gov is FUBAR, and the reservations are both botted into oblivion |
Now that we all know this isn't true, people need to stop saying it. |
I disagree wholeheartedly with both of these statements. Rec.gov is neither a complete failure nor a complete success |
I'm not saying it's a complete success, I'm saying it's untrue that it's "botted into oblivion" and people shouldn't say things that aren't true and pass them off as facts.
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thunderhead
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Does screen scraping/text alerting count as a bot?
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zimmertr
TJ Zimmerman
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Location: Issaquah |
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zimmertr
TJ Zimmerman
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Wed May 04, 2022 11:18 am |
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Cyclopath, I think everyone understands the point you're trying to make here -- that widespread botting is not occurring. And that permit inavailability is more realistically tied to demand outweighing supply.
But I think you're taking this one step further in claiming bots are not being used at all.
It should be obvious to anyone with rudimentary web development skills that the lack of basic protective measures (a la Captcha) are enabling the risk for botting. And it would be trivial to use a tool like Selenium to achieve this. And, therefore, it is likely happening already. Just because there aren't anecdotes being shared or easily discoverable tools on Github doesn't mean it's not happening.
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fairweather friend
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Joined: 31 May 2012
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Location: Not so dispersed |
| Cyclopath wrote: | | I'm not saying it's a complete success, I'm saying it's untrue that it's "botted into oblivion" and people shouldn't say things that aren't true and pass them off as facts. |
I agree. However, that statement works both ways. I have seen people claim (or strongly imply) that since they were able to book a randomly-released cancelled permit on rec.gov that there is no such thing as bots. This is like saying that if you sleep with a hooker and don't get an STD then all prostitutes in the world must be free of STD's.
I'm not tech savvy, but I have seen enough comments from software engineers who say that it wouldn't be that hard to write a program that searches continuously through rec.gov looking for high value permits that meet certain parameters, like a date range for a specific permitted trip. Now maybe it isn't possible for the bot to book the permit by itself, but if my trusty bot sends me a text at 2 am saying, "A June 23, 2022 launch permit on the Selway just became available on rec.gov," I would sure AF jump out of bed and book that permit stat! Because that's all it would take to tip the scales several thousand times in my favor of "winning" that rare permit.
People love to find ways to "beat the system" and I mean ANY system! Why is rec.gov's system any different?
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thunderhead
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Joined: 14 Oct 2015
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Looks pretty easy to setup a screenscraper/alerter for enchant permit late releases. I might set that up tonight. Anyone want dibs after i get mine? 
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Cyclopath
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Location: Seattle |
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Cyclopath
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Wed May 04, 2022 2:22 pm |
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| thunderhead wrote: | | Does screen scraping/text alerting count as a bot? |
Well I've been asking about the claim that nobody can go hiking any more because tech people used bots to snap up all the reservations. In that context, scraping isn't any different than using Google or Yahoo instead of Recreation.gov directly.
| zimmertr wrote: | | But I think you're taking this one step further in claiming bots are not being used at all. |
I'm not saying bots aren't being used at all, that's not something I can know with certainly, and it's unlikely to be zero in use. I'm saying it's not "botted into oblivion" and also that people shouldn't claim it to be true without evidence.
I do appreciate you keeping me honest. 
Edit to add: if this is happening on a broad scale, FOIA requests for Recreation.gov's logs would provide solid evidence. Also if it's widespread, as claimed, DNS access records would also have lots of evidence. Some DNS providers are very open to working with researches, this is how botnets are discovered and sometimes neutered.
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Cyclopath
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Cyclopath
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Wed May 04, 2022 2:22 pm |
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| thunderhead wrote: | | Looks pretty easy to setup a screenscraper/alerter for enchant permit late releases. I might set that up tonight. Anyone want dibs after i get mine? |
What language are you going to use?
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Cyclopath
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Cyclopath
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Wed May 04, 2022 2:24 pm |
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| altasnob wrote: | | Per fairweather friend, it is for river and wilderness permits. I went through the booking prompts for a recreation.gov campsite just to see if there is anything that says the permit is non-transferable, and I couldn't find anything. |
Thanks for the clarification.
I think the answer to your question from yesterday then is that Facebook seems to be within their legal rights to allow people to exchange permits on their platform.
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Cyclopath
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Cyclopath
Faster than light
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Wed May 04, 2022 2:58 pm |
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| fairweather friend wrote: | | Again, these permits are worth thousands of dollars and they need to be treated as such or many, many permits will end up in the hands of people gaming the system. |
Things are "worth" what somebody will pay for them; it can be shocking what things have value today, and what people will do for them. People who signed up for Instagram and Twitter when those sites were new got their choice of of user name. Some of those usernames are worth $10,000 or more. People "SWAT" each other for the really good ones.
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/97/
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thunderhead
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| Cyclopath wrote: | | What language are you going to use? |
Bash>Curl>Mail>mailbox-rule-alert-noise has worked for me well in the past. But theres plenty of ways to skin this animal.
 Cyclopath
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fairweather friend
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Joined: 31 May 2012
Posts: 322 | TRs | Pics
Location: Not so dispersed |
| Cyclopath wrote: | | Things are "worth" what somebody will pay for them; it can be shocking what things have value today, and what people will do for them. |
I realize that my claim that permits are "worths thousands of dollars" sounds like hyperbole or some sort of exaggeration of their figurative worth, but I mean that statement quite literally: some wilderness permits administered by rec.gov are truly worth thousands of dollars... if not tens of thousands of dollars. Here are a couple examples:
Multi-day wilderness river trips are unique in that there are very few rivers that 1) have enough length through wilderness areas to allow for a true multi-day trip, and 2) are neither too difficult nor too easy for many moderately skilled amateur rowers/paddlers to find them enjoyable. At present, there is really only one river section left in the lower 48 in this class that does not limit river runners to a lottery-run permit system and that is the Lower Owyhee, and I predict that section will soon require a permit lottery because it's getting loved to death. (Major erosion of campsites, braided trails everywhere, etc., etc.) The Lower Salmon below Whitebird might also fall into this category, but it's a pretty short trip. And that's it for the continental US of A, everything else requires a permit via a lottery.
What that means is that a river runner without a permit can't just "go run another multi-day wilderness river" the way hikers who don't win an Enchantments permits can go do another hike with barren granite and larches. Other options for river runners without a permit amount to day trips on short sections or long trips on flat water through developed lands. Commercial raft companies also run these same multi-day wilderness rivers and they charge around $2,000+ per person for the thrill of riding one of their rafts. And while some commercial trips allow kayakers on their trips (again, at $2,500+ per head) the option for a rafter to captain his/her own raft on a commercial trip is not available. So, as a private boater, when you win a Middle Fork Salmon or Selway permit, it is personally (to you and no one else) worth over $2,000. However, you also get to invite your friends and each one of them also gets the same monetary benefit. So if you invite 9 people on your private trip, your trip is actually "worth" (in REAL US dollars!) over $20,000. Now that is some serious motivation for cheating the permit system, don't you think?
But it gets even worse: per USFS rules, any private permit that is won in the lottery and then cancelled can be claimed by a commercial raft company. Commercial raft companies get their own separate quota of permits, but they also have their own private access to rec.gov where they can claim cancelled private permits! Personally, I believe this rule is a holdover from olden days when not a lot of people did private trips. But the fact that it still exists in 2022 when there is such high demand for private trips is beyond belief, IMO. (OTOH, you have to look at it from the perspective of the FS river managers. Commercial raft companies are a known quantity. They're not going to start a forest fire lighting off illegal fireworks, as has happened on private trips. And commercial raft companies concentrate more people in a smaller area, which minimizes human impact overall to the native flora and fauna. So I get it. Allowing commercial operators to have more permits than their quota is kind of no-brainer if you work in the river office.)
Anyhow, I think you can see what I've been saying all along: Wilderness permits are worth real money, thousands and thousands of dollars of it. Which means that the system that administers wilderness permits better be damn near bombproof, because people know what's valuable even if the government doesn't, and if there is a way to scam the system and/or make money off it, they will find a way to do it.
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Cyclopath
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Cyclopath
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Wed May 04, 2022 8:27 pm |
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| fairweather friend wrote: | | I realize that my claim that permits are "worths thousands of dollars" sounds like hyperbole or some sort of exaggeration of their figurative worth, but I mean that statement quite literally: some wilderness permits administered by rec.gov are truly worth thousands of dollars |
Just to clarify, I absolutely believe you. I wouldn't pay thousands for a permit even if the ethics didn't bother me, but things aren't worth what I'm willing to pay as long as somebody else is willing.
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fairweather friend
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Location: Not so dispersed |
Maybe the FS should put some prime launch dates for the Middle Fork and Selway in an auction some year, then we'd see how much people are willing to pay for a permit. I'm joking, of course, but I'd be really curious to see how high the bidding would go. Unless they've changed the rules, a private party can include up to 24 people, so if everyone chipped in $500 or so, you could put up some pretty decent money... which seems like a lot for a "free" permit, but I believe a lot of people would consider it to be a pretty good deal for a week long, unforgettable vacation.
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thunderhead
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Too much dynamic loading for curl, switching to selenium.
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