What's Your Terrorism Quotient?

unassimilatible writes "From the Department of Pre-Crime, the AP reports: before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange), a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists - sparking some investigations and arrests. The 'high terrorism factor' scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project. According to Seisint's presentation, dated January 2003 and marked confidential, the 120,000 names with the highest scores were given to the INS, FBI, Secret Service and Florida state police. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns."

Comments

120,000 out of how many?

[192939495969798999]

I'd be more interested to know how many people were entered into the system... isn't that pertinent here? I mean, if they only put in 120,000 and they all came back as terrorists, something's probably wrong. Is Osama in that list? Did it pick up anyone we already knew was a terrorist? Just hearing a number as high as 120,000 isn't surprising without more information about the number. Yes, I could RTFA, but with a summary that long, I would have expected at least the number polled to be in there.

Re:hilarious

[anthonyclark]

Most people care about the latest reality tv show. A great many of my Wife's co-workers didn't know about the Abu Ghraib photos, think we found WMDs and that 'about 100 or so' soldiers have died in Iraq.

Yes, a large majority of people are either that dense or simply don't care.

This company is EVIL

[foolinator]

Google this:
1) This company was started by a drug running felon with ties to the Bush's
2) Read the Contract between Seisint and the Florida Goverment with the MATRIX
3) This company is very, very late with their software project - using terrorism as means to drag it out.
4) 120,000 terrorists in the US? C'mon! Has ANYONE on /. ever met a "terrorist"?
5) 3.2 billion dollars a year goes toward "cyber security".

After reading all this, I get soooo disgusted.. I mean, this is SICK!!! How much money is wasted? How the hell do I get a piece of terrorist pie?! Millions of dollars have been lost and never gone to me.

How can the open source community get some of this cash cow? How about a sourceforge project Ivory Tower (the irony of the name would be great)?
-Foo

Time to get out of here

[TomorrowPlusX]

As someone raised muslim, with a muslim name ( and one that happens to correspond to that of an at-large chechen terrorist ) I'll wager it's time to get out of this country.

You know, that makes me sad. I'm American, I was born here, so were my parents. My father's been in trouble with the law, long ago, and happens to have the #1 most common Muslim name. Regardless, he, like me, loves this country.

I'm no longer practicing ( read: vehement Atheist ) but if all it takes is having a troublesome name, well, it seems then the tide has finally turned. Perhaps this will be America's crystal night?

I'm at a loss for words.

Re:Preference

[bigberk]

Better safe than sorry? Or better private than safe?

You would absolutely think, that in a country that values freedom and individuality so much that the government would give people a large margin of benefit of the doubt. Or is the whole "freedom" thing just a fiction? My textbooks still stay that Americans value freedom and free speech more than Canadians, for example... but you wonder.

Re:Is there anyone left...

[meringuoid]

The logic goes something like this: "Of course the USA is still the most free country in the world! Look at China and Syria!"

It gets worse. Apparently America's claim to the moral high ground in Iraq is now 'Yes, but Saddam did even worse things in that prison!'

I'm just hearing Squealer say 'Surely you do not want Jones to come back?'

Re:Preference

[jasonisgodzilla]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. " This to me says seperation of church and state. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The right to privacy. While the constitution may not be explicit in it's definition of either of these two topics, the tradition of common law, going back to England, gives judges the power to define the law and constitution by creating precedence through judicial decisions.

End prohibition == no profits to bad people

[pherris]

Anyone care to guess one of the main sources of [a] terrorist['s] income?

Depends on the terrorists. In the middle east it's oil, diamonds and some heroin. In South America for at least the FARC it's the greatly over inflated value of drugs caused by prohibition.

If we end the WoD (war on drugs) by legalizing marijuana and making all other drugs available for prescription for maintance (with the execption of antibiotics) the price of drugs would bottom out. Heroin could be purchased from CVS for $5.00 a dose instead $100 off the street. Lower prices means the end of drugs partly funding bad things. The bonus would be a dramatic drop in property crimes. A few years ago in Bern, Switzerland they tried selling heroin directly to addicts for ~$4.50 per dose. Property crimes dropped by 60%.

Without prohibition illegal drugs would cost 100th of their current price and would save the US over 15 billion dollars every year in law enforcement and prison costs. At least an extra 1 billion dollars a year would be made from the taxation of marijuana. BTW, studies in the Netherlands showed that drug use did not increase with an easing supply.

The economic forces of prohibition fund a lot of bad things including terrorism.

120,000

[HyperCash]

The only terrorist attacks that come to my mind that happened in America somewhat recently are the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. For a grand total of 19 terrorists. And this list brings up a 120,000 potential terrorists.

I would fucking hate to be on that list. These are going to be the people that can't fly because they're blacklisted, that can't get government jobs because they're blacklisted, or who knows, can't take out a mortgage because they're blacklisted. Even though the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor that they aren't a terrorist.

And what exactly do you have to do to get on this list? I mean you could say that Mr. McVeagh (sp?), the only American out of the aforementioned 19 terrorists, was an extremist libertarian...Do we suspect all of the libertarians? Its a sad time for a once free country when you seriosly have to consider what you register [to vote] as because you might end up on some list because even if you're peaceful they're not going to know that.

--HC