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

Fuck you America

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty. I don't want to live in a permanent state of fear, generated by a megalomaniacal American government taking advantage of the majority low IQ populous' capacity for being brainwashed.

I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner. The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs never are).

The world is fu*cked up enough as it is. The food chain has been poisoned so badly the average human is full of chemicals normally found in plastics and toxic waste. I'm sick of global warning and environmental damage to the planet and the fact the all this time the greenies were right. I'm sick of America being the biggest wilful contributor to the pollution of the planet.

I'm sick of an American school system that produces children who are brought up to believe that America IS the world and anything that goes on outside is irrelevant. Children so stupid they think America invented the Internet, computer, motor car, light bulb, telephone etc ad infinitum....

The Internet or it's successor is the future of entertainment and I'm sick of stupid low IQ, ignorant Americans infecting every corner of it with their insular, jingoistic mindsets, their whiny voices and manifestations of their low self esteem driven by the fact that despite it being their turn as the world's super power, no one actually takes them seriously or gives them the respect that the British or the Ancient Greeks got because a superpower best known for producing mass produced crap is never going to get the respect that one who gave the world Shakespeare, culture, philosophy or mathematics will get.

I'm sick of hypocrisy and two facedness. I'm sick of Gangsta Rap and hamburgers, Political Correctness and TV programmes that begin with 'When' and end in 'go bad and attack people'. I'm sick of reality TV and I'm sick of news programmes that are more censored than accurate. I'm sick of tokens, token minorities, token universities, token degrees, token attempts at the truth, tokens. I'm sick of fat people, ugly people, stupid people, gay people, coloured people, female people, whiny people all complaining they don't have the opportunities in life they would like and it must be someone else's fault. I'm sick of women that act like men and femininity being a crime, unless you're a man in which case you're a new man which nobody ever wanted because there was nothing wrong with the old one. I'm sick of people falling over and suing the ground and people watching nipples and suing the TV and I'm sick of coffee cups with 'don't pour over yourself, you may get burnt' on the side to try and counter this.

I'm sick of stupid Americans who don't know the difference between patriotism and jingoism and who think flag waving should be an Olympic event. I'm sick of Americans who cry that people hate them or are jealous of them or who are anti them because someone dares to point out that the America they've been programmed to believe in from birth bears no relation to the one that exists in real life.

Re:Fuck you America

[nfgaida]

You'll probably be modded down, but I agree.

I want an America that isn't full of easily amused idiots watching crap on TV.

Re:Fuck you America

[Anonymous Coward]

I want an America that isn't full of easily amused idiots watching crap on TV.

Yeah? Well, I want an America full of nymphomaniac supermodels who own breweries. Deal.

Re:Fuck you America

[Hatta]

Man, there are gonna be a lot of mod points wasted on this one. Already 4, and it's only at +1. hehe

BTW, there's nothing wrong with gangsta rap. It's R&B that's really bad.

Re:Fuck you America

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but it looked familiar so I googled for it.. There is a copy at least here, which looks like a copy/repost itself.

Re:Fuck you America

[raider_red]

I think your only valid option may be suicide. If you don't want to worry about anything, it might be best just to end it now. As an alternative, try focusing on what's importan to you, and making your part of the world better. Am I afraid of terrorists? No. Do I keep my eyes open to make sure no one's parking moving trucks in strange locations or wearing heavy winter coats in the middle of Texas in summertime. Sure I do.

Re:Fuck you America

[meringuoid]

Children so stupid they think America invented the Internet, computer, motor car, light bulb, telephone

I'm not sure how to take this... are you trolling here? Most people would say Americans invented most of these - even foreigners.

However:

the Internet: American in origin, though the Web is Anglo-Swiss and the software running it is increasingly Finnish
computer: British in origin, but developed to its current form mostly by Americans
motor car: German, I think. Benz, IIRC. Mass-production of cars, however, we owe to Ford.
light bulb: British. Joseph Swan, to be precise; I heard he even won a lawsuit against Edison proving that to be the case.
telephone: Bell was American, wasn't he? I think that on this one they have a quite undisputed claim.

Re:Fuck you America

[Mukaikubo]

Oh dear, oh dear. Let me see.

Firstly, as you say, yes; the problem of Muslim extremists does exist, and does have to be dealt with. However, you earlier claimed that the atmosphere of fear (I won't say terror) is being created by the US government. I would make the case to you that the atmosphere of fear was created on September 11th, that it sent very large and very real ripples through the very social fabric of the country, and even with no government prompting and no further attacks, will take decades to get back to 2000 normal.

Then you claim that the greenies were right all along. Well, not precisely. They've been right on some things, wrong on others, just like every other group out there. Global cooling, anyone?

As for the rest of it, I was going to go point by point, but I realized you were indulging yourself in a masturbatory elitist rant against the stoopid masses. Which are, quite frankly, a dime a dozen on this site, on Fark, on just about any forum you care to name. It IS being said, unlike the earlier replies, and it is being said ad nauseum. If you don't have anything new to contribute, this post is basically a 7-paragraph "Me Too!"

My suggestion? Learn that popular doesn't mean stupid.

Re:Fuck you America

[loyalsonofrutgers]

This is a troll and/or flamebait. Regardless of whether you agree with its contents or not. Someone, or multiple someones, are just reposting it wherever they damn well feel like it.

For instance, it was also posted in the story about Intel's patent problems (here).

It's probably ripped off from somewhere else by someone looking to stir up trouble or artificially inflate their own ego by watching some post of theirs to slashdot get modded up. I'd suggest modding it down just for the fact that its most likely ripped off from somewhere and blanket posted wherever the AC thinks he can score up a few mod points. He just got lucky with this story, don't give him the satisfaction.

Re:Fuck you America

[JoeBar]

This one is gettin old...

Re:Fuck you America

[NotZed]

Funny, I thought the comments would be so completely opposite to this.

Good on ya mate. Whether I agree or not (and to be honest, generally I do), you're welcome to your own opinion. And anyones own opinion seems to have become too much of a byword for terrorism lately. Hah! So much for "free bloody speech" eh? Bloody hypochrites.

Terrorists are pricks, but you don't fight them by strenghtening their popular base of support by terrorising innocent people instead. Instead you undermine their base - fight poverty and social injustice - NOT strenghen it. And why do the yanks do such a good job at it - its a pity. American's aren't stupid, on the whole, but by fuck they do a good job of making out they are, by their skewed environment and upbringing it seems. Its a real pity that recent events didn't bring them more into the real world - I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. As they say. They're not the only ones.

Whats the other one? You can't fool all of the people all of the time? ...

I guess time will tell. The mighty always fall eh? We'll see.

Re:Fuck you America

[Tukla]

He also wrote "programmes", so he's definitely a foreign terrorist. I hope he enjoys Guantanamo Bay.

Re:Fuck you America

[JDevers]

I agree with your sentiment, HOWEVER, the US DID invent or atleast significantly develop a decent number of the products you describe.

Internet: grew out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency->ARPANET. The two most significant dates are 1969 when it was started and 1983 when the system was switched from NCP to TCP/IP. Other important work to our modern Internet was conducted by the NSF, NSFnet, based around connecting university campuses.

Computer: The computer is an evolved version of something which has existed for some time and is based on numerous contributions. Modern digital computing though can be said to be based on a handful of significant inventions and ideas. The most important of these ideas are von Neumann architecture, based on work done by John von Neumann a Hungarian-American who did the majority of his most important work at Princeton. The most important inventions where transistors (invented by Bell Labs in 1947), integrated circuits (conceived of by Britain's Geoffrey W.A. Dummer in 1952 but not successfully constructed until 1958 by Jack Kilby of TI and made into a useful device in 1962 by Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor), and the microprocessor (first developed by Marcian Hoff while working at Intel).

Motor Cars: The US definitely doesn't deserve recognition for inventing much of the early technology used in cars, however Oldsmobile was the first factory to use modern assembly line techniques which were later greatly improved by Henry Ford. So while we didn't invent, we played a moderately important role...plus I don't know if I've ever met anyone who thought we DID invent the car. As an aside, most people I've known credit Mercedes-Benz for this invention, and even though that isn't quite correct it is a lot closer to the truth since Daimler and Benz separately (at first) played a huge role in the development of the modern gasoline internal combustion engine.

Modern light bulb: I'll give you this one. I believe that most American's credit Thomas Edison for this, but Heinrich Goebel or Joseph Swan (depending on what you define as the invention...) definitely deserve it. Edison actually did very little in this field, he invented a longer lasting filament but within a year or two Lewis Latimer improved significantly on Edison's filament.

telephone: Antonia Meucci is probably the father of this invention, although what we think of as a telephone should probably be credited to Philipp Reis since he was actually able to transmit voice instead of just "make or break" type signals. Again though, I think a lot of American's credit Alexander Graham Bell for this invention.

So in summary, American's basically invented the Internet, played a huge role in the evolution of the modern computer, and had smaller roles in the last three inventions. I'll agree that too many people credit this country with inventing these items, but to say that children are stupid for believing it when about half of it is CORRECT is a bit infantile. Actually you believe that the Internet and computers were invented somewhere else is just as faulty and you aren't a child.

Re:Fuck you America

[kraut]

Actually, Flag Waving SHOULD be an olympic event, and restricted to the olympics!

Re:Fuck you America

[Dirk Pitt]

This actually raises an interesting point that most Americans don't even understand, let alone the rest of the world.

Programming in America is determined by the *statistical* success of the programming, as described by the dominent Nielsen Media Research.

Nielsen chooses a number of households that report their television viewing habits. From this sample, they extrapolate viewing habits. If the news says that 40 million watched the superbowl in the US, it's really saying that Nielsen judged that 40 million watched the superbowl based on a sample of less than 1% of the US population.

What makes this extremely inaccurate is the process that's used to choose a 'Nielsen Family'. They do choose the households at random to attempt to make things statistically accurate, but no one is obligated to become a Nielsen reporter. It's a cumbersome duty with no reward. At the very least the family must keep a complete diary of their viewing habits, at worst they must have their house wired with equipment that electronically scope what they're watching.

Who would do such a thing, you ask? Complete and utter losers. People that feel they have no voice; the uneducated; the elderly; etc, etc. I'm sure some /. readers are Nielsen Family members, and I'll say now that there exceptions to the rules, normal people that do this. The ratings do show that 'high brow' TV does get watched But you can bet that the technically-oriented, educated, well-read television viewer has little proportional impact on the Nielsen ratings.

I'll give one good recent example. Futurama and The Family Guy had terrible ratings on Fox. After the shows were cancelled, they were released on DVD. They're post-cancellation sales have been through the roof; very disproportionate to the ratings. So they're bringing at least one of those shows back -- but how will they sell advertising when the Nielsen's will still reflect low-brow ratings?

One more thing -- the oh-so-annoying 'watermarked' station ID now so popular? It's for Nielsen idiots that never write the correct station down. Basically, if a Nielsen viewer writes down that they watched Friends on Fox, that datum is invalidated. So stations have to accomodate the drooling fools that don't even know what they're tuned in to.

So don't for a second believe that the programming being offered in the US reflects 'typical' American viewing habits. Unfortunately, it's typically the mouth-breathers that dictate our long-running programmming. (aside -- I would dearly love to see how different Tivo's national statistics are from the Nielsens; I'd wager that they look like they judge two entirely different populations, which they probably do)

Re:Fuck you America

[gowen]

Gray never filed a patent, he attempted to file a caveat -- a warning that a patent was coming, on February 14, 1876. However, Bell had been in the same patent office earlier in the day -- Bell was the fifth applicant to be processed that day, Gray was 39th.

Source : Library Of Congress

Re:Fuck you America

[Le Marteau]

computer: British in origin, but developed to its current form mostly by Americans

The British gave up on making computers because they could not figure out how to get them to leak oil.

Re:Fuck you America

[clickster]

I'm not going to comment either way on the whole "America sucks!"/"America rocks!" thread, but I would like to point out the ignorance of the "if you don't like it, go elsewhere" statement. In this country, if you don't like something, you should work to change it. Critcicism can be constructive. Criticism is not in and of itself unpatriotic, though you can take it there if you really want to. Another problem is that going somewhere else doesn't necessarily make a difference. The US tends to exert influence all over the world. So even though you moved to a different country, your new gov. may be making decisions based off of US policy (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, UK, etc.) So the "go elsewhere" part of your argument won't necessarily work. Unless you want to move to some place like central/southern Africa, which the US typically ignores. Yes, we may be giving $15 billion in AIDS relief, etc. but ask yourself how much we would be giving Europe if they had several countries where 20-30% of the population had AIDS. It's a matter of comparitive interest. Anyway, that last part went off topic. To sum up the point that I'm trying to get across, if you don't like how things are going in the US, don't go somewhere else. Work to change it. It's your country as much as it is any other citizen's.

Re:Fuck you America

[Cranx]

As an American, it hurts to hear this sort of commentary. But what hurts more is that it's true. I'm so sick of corporate hip-hop garbage blasting in my face everywhere I go, redneck christian morons cheering Bush on with every Iraqi killed or maimed. America has become DUMB DUMB DUMB and the jobs are slipping away. I can only guess what it will be like here in 20-40 years. Many of them seem proud of it too.

Re:Fuck you America

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend and I were asked to take part in the Nielsen TV survey. They give you $5 or $10 to participate (no big deal, but it it is at least somewhat of a "reward"). The other interesting thing is that you can tell them how many TVs you have in your house. They give you one diary for each of these. I said 5 so they sent us diarys. She watches The Daily Show, South Park, Chapelle Show, BBC News and I watch Adult Swim (I work until 12:30 AM).

Saying that only complete losers take part is pretty short sighted. I never feel like a loser when I take part in a survey. It's not like the people go out and seek to be a part of the survey because they feel like they need to be heard. We are just the sort of people that will listen to a person conducting a survey and to help in the study. Insightfull my ass. If you think that most of the people are uneducated and eldery you must not understand how random samples work.

Re:Fuck you America

[write_with_numbers]

"The ratings do show that 'high brow' TV does get watched But you can bet that the technically-oriented, educated, well-read television viewer has little proportional impact on the Nielsen ratings."

I think that the technically-oriented, educated, well-read citizens of the World watch very little television to begin with.

Re:Fuck you America

[gnu-generation-one]

"I would make the case to you that the atmosphere of fear was created on September 11th"

Ok, but by who, and why?

We know there was a government waiting for an opportunity to wage war, waiting for a spark which they could use to justify it.

We know that most people received news of this event through the TV stations. We know that the TV coverage was extremely biased, and often inaccurate. (this for news after the event, not on the day)

Also, much of the information available to people after that came from the US government. Most of what people hear or remember came from their president. Indeed, many of the people interviewed on TV were either soldiers or government, and often this wasn't pointed-out by the shows doing the interviewing. See fair.org for some more analysis of that.

So while the event itself might have been distressing, the "climate of fear" is more likely to have been caused by the constant television coverage in the last 3 years detailing exactly what people should be terrified of, and how afraid they should feel.

What other actual events (as opposed to news stories) have induced a climate of terror? Stories have either been (a) about the government "you must be terrified because we're going to make a law to keep you safe", or (b) referring to Sept11th itself "post-9/11...". Neither of these refers to an actual event, they cause a climate of fear which would not otherwise exist, and arguably doesn't need to exist.

And what's happened since then? Routine arrests of troublemakers have been shown as "potential terrorist attacks", anything loosely related to terrorism has been reported at length, and of course, there's news of the two wars. And we don't confuse casualties in war with acts of terrorism. The most real fear we've seen was caused by one guy shooting people in washington, and nothing to do with 9/11. How come gun-owners aren't creating a "climate of fear"? Maybe because the television isn't telling the population to panic about that.

In the UK recently, a bag of flour was thrown at the prime minster at work. It was reported in the newspapers as a "bomb hoax that could have killed everyone in the building". With reporting like that, who needs terrorists?

Re:Fuck you America

[jesup]

I was a nielsen "family" a couple of years post-college (~1988) for sweeps. Probably skewed the ratings by working at home and coding all night long while watching Discovery and CNN.

A friend was a Nielsen family (wired) for a year, also a SW engineer. Realize that Nielsen probably also misses out on a fair number of the working poor - but I agree their samples can be pretty issue, especially for "niche" shows. They probably try to match nationwide demographics with their sample, but in things they don't ask about or level on it's probably significantly off.

The whole diary thing was a problem from the start, but with the first remote controls, then the explosion of channels (and other video sources) it got far worse. And, as you say, people have trouble remembering what they were watching something on, or write in things they wanted to watch or shows they want to "reward", or leave off things they "shouldn't" have watched. For example, I imagine far fewer admit to watch Friday-night Skinemax movies than actually watch them - especially the teenagers.

I wonder when Nielsen will start feeding data to the Matrix.... :-) :-( "You watched the same news shows as a known terrorist! Come out for preventive deprogramming before we have to drag you out!" 1/2 :-)

Re:Fuck you America

[Jeremi]

Do I keep my eyes open to make sure no one's parking moving trucks in strange locations or wearing heavy winter coats in the middle of Texas in summertime. Sure I do.

Do you keep an eye on your government to make sure it isn't screwing up its foreign policy so badly that years of more terrorism will be the inevitable result?

Re:Fuck you America

[Dirk Pitt]

Hey Sivaram -- some great points made here. Just one thing to add:

don't see why people who watch "good" programs will automatically shun being polled

This is *always* a contentious issue in polling, and it's why good pollsters get paid lots of money. They write efficient, streamlined questionnaires that don't inconvenience the pollee to any great extent. As the commitment required to complete the poll increase, the error increases greatly. Or, often in the case of then nielsens, I suspect, people just don't fill out the diaries accurately.

Pizza

[AtariAmarok]

If your name is "Ben Louden", I'd be cautious about ordering a pizza! If you do, ask for LOTS of ham and other pork items on the pizza. That might help.

Re:Pizza

[DrEldarion]

Good to know I'm safe, my name is Al Kayda.

I for one...

[bcmm]

I for one welcome our new Matrix overlords.

Wait a moment...
I'm sorry, that's so scary it's not even funny.

Re:I for one...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

You do not need privacy citizen 768152. Perhaps you would need another Citizen Re-education Session.

The Ministry of Public Safety and Happyness.

Preference

[martingunnarsson]

I wonder what they prefer when they make a system like this, false positives or false negatives. It's like a spam filter, only it tries to separate the bad guys from the good ones.
I prefer false negatives (spam messages that end up in my inbox) over false positives (real mail that end up in the bin) from my spam filter, but when you're dealing with humans it's a lot more serious.

Re:Preference

[lukewarmfusion]

Better safe than sorry? Or better private than safe? Of course, such a statement would assume that this actually makes you "safer" - which continues to be debated.

Personally, I would lean toward having false positives. You can always run the results against other databases and find better/best matches. With some additional fact-checking implementation, I think they could rule out some false positives. It may be horribly inconvenient to be hassled with an investigation, but if people do their jobs (with gov't folks, sometimes that's all you can hope for!) then clearing your name shouldn't be too bad.

My biggest concern with this is that a false positive might be turned into a true positive if they consider certain things to be "terrorist activities" - like innocently providing information to someone who turns out to be a terrorist.

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:Preference

[sqlrob]

Personally, I would lean toward having false positives. You can always run the results against other databases and find better/best matches. With some additional fact-checking implementation, I think they could rule out some false positives. It may be horribly inconvenient to be hassled with an investigation, but if people do their jobs (with gov't folks, sometimes that's all you can hope for!) then clearing your name shouldn't be too bad.

So much for Innocent until Proven Guilty.

You're making a huge assumption about "people doing their jobs". Just plain laziness, quotas, as well as simply trying to ruin someone for political reasons will all enter into this.

Re:Preference

[bear_phillips]

It may be horribly inconvenient to be hassled with an investigation, but if people do their jobs (with gov't folks, sometimes that's all you can hope for!) then clearing your name shouldn't be too bad.

Yep, they will only stick a few flouresent light tubes up your ass, make get naked in a pyramid, masturbate in front of people, attack you with dogs, put a sack over your head and threaten to electrocute you. Yep, clearing your name shouldn't be too bad./P

Re:Preference

[ratamacue]

My textbooks still stay that Americans value freedom and free speech more than Canadians

You may be interested in this book. Not everything your textbooks say can be trusted, especially if those textbooks are meant for or approved by government schools ("public education" is the politically-correct term).

Re:Preference

[goon america]

So much for Innocent until Proven Guilty.

They're not running out and arresting these people for showing up in the database, just potentially investigating them. While I agree with the privacy goal, it would be logically impossible to investigate only people that were proven guilty. You're simply gonna hafta investigate some false leads before you can press charges against someone (and then, the evidence against that person will become public).

Re:Preference

[corbettw]

So much for Innocent until Proven Guilty.

The gp was talking about false positives leading to investigations, not false positives leading to arrest and conviction. The former happens all the time, everytime someone is cleared of wrongdoing before the case gets to trial it's because, originally, there was a false positive pointing them out as the culprit to a crime.

Though I do agree with you about the danger of politicizing investigations. Just look at Richard Jewel for an excellent example. The poor guy was just trying to do his job by reporting details of the Atlanta Olympics bombing, but because he fit the profile of a possible terrorist the FBI harrangued him, costing him his job and reputation. He was eventually cleared, and I wouldn't be surprised if he got some kind of settlement with the Feds. But still, it was just because the FBI was desperate to find someone to blame for the attack, and he was the only one in their cross-hairs.

Re:Preference

[Dun Malg]

So much for Innocent until Proven Guilty.

Actually that only applies to the judicial system. Investigators have never pretended assume that people are innocent while looking for evidence of criminal activity. In fact, they tend to view EVERYONE as "potentially guilty".

Re:Preference

[ozric99]

My textbooks still stay that Americans value freedom and free speech more than Canadians, for example... but you wonder.

This will probably be modded -1 Troll but at the risk of offending the USian mods, and as a Brit, I'd be interested in seeing some kind of checklist or score so that I can easily work out just how less free I am as a citizen of the UK compared to a citizen of the US.

Why isn't it good enough to know you live in a free society? Why do we always hear how the US is "the most free". It's not a competition.
Regardless.. mods do your worst ;)

Re:Preference

[BlowChunx]

My textbooks still stay that Americans value freedom and free speech more than Canadians...

You sir, are correct. We Americans are prepared to pay a higher price for freedom than we are for Canandians. They smell like bacon.

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.

Re:Preference

[milo_Gwalthny]

I think the answer is right in front of us... if they sent a list of 120,000 possible terrorist suspects, they prefer false positives.

hmmm

[ziggyboy]

Minority Report meets the Matrix.

Re:hmmm

[WinterpegCanuck]

Who would of thought not knowing the history questions on your SAT's would be such a big deal. It's the 1977 California Personality Index all over again. You would think society may have matured just a bit over the years.

Relevant quote

[Enlarge Your Penis]

>>Seisint Inc., is a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire, Hank Asher, who stepped down from its board of directors last year after revelations of past ties to drug smugglers.

Anyone care to guess one of the main sources of terrorist income?

Re:Relevant quote

[garcia]

The US Government training and paying them to usurp "unfavorable" ruling parties.

Re:Relevant quote

[proj_2501]

where do terrorists get their money?

if you buy gasoline, it may come from YOU

Re:Relevant quote

[XryanX]

Interesting point, but it does say past ties. One could argue that he's turned his life around, and is trying to make something worthwhile, although he's failed miserably from what I can tell of this system.

If he used to be a drug smuggler, then perhaps he has some sort of inside knowledge, much the same way that law enforcement hires ex-criminals like Kevin Mitnick to catch others.

Re:Relevant quote

[meringuoid]

Anyone care to guess one of the main sources of terrorist income?

Donations from sympathetic Americans who think they're Irish?

Re:Relevant quote

[Ian Bicking]

Anyone want to guess one of the CIA's main sources of income? This site has ongoing related coverage, a documentary on the subject, and of course Google will tell you more, since the one attempt to cover this in the mainstream media resulted in the journalist being slandered and the paper denouncing its own article (more on that).

Re:Relevant quote

[geoffspear]

You might recall the Bush administration had to black out a huge section of the congressional report on 9/11 which exposed Saudi Arabia's involvement, beyond the fact that it was perpetrated almost entirely by Saudi nationals.

No, no, no. The US is a democracy, so the fact that a majority of Americans believe that most of the hijackers were Iraqi makes it true. It would be downright un-American not to suppress evidence of Saudi involvement.

Would be interesting to find out

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the title, I thought the article was going to tell us how to find out our score.

"There is a 20% likelyhood of you blowing up a building this year. Have a nice day."

Re:Would be interesting to find out

[Enlarge Your Penis]

Going by the current success of counter insurgency measures in Iraq, I think you just roll some dice and add them together

Re:Would be interesting to find out

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I can already picture the outcome of such a test:
Monday afternoon: Hey, a Am-I-a-terrorist-or-not-quiz!
Monday afternoon + 5 minutes: Ah, appearently I'm not a terrorist at all.
Monday Evening: Hey, the neighbours across the street bought a new black van!
Monday Night: Excuse me mister Totaly-dressed-in-black-carrying-a-big-gun-and-poi nting- it-at-me why are you in my bedroom?
Tuesday morning: Damn hot here in Guatumala Bay.

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:120,000 out of how many?

[XryanX]

From TFA:
" He said Matrix, which has 4 billion records, merely speeds access to material that police have always been able to get from disparate sources, and does not automatically or proactively finger suspects."

Re:120,000 out of how many?

[Mysticalfruit]

Yeah, actually some of the terrorists who were involved with 9/11 ended up being flagged as terrorists by the system.

Now, I know they were working on this system befor 9/11 but I've got to wonder if they didn't do a little marketbenching and alter it so the names of the terrorists would end up on the list so they could goto the government and say "See, see, the system works!"

Is there anyone left...

[Alranor]

who can refer to the USA as "The Land of the Free" while keeping a straight face.

Re:Is there anyone left...

[pubjames]

Yes. Lots of Americans still do. That's because - rather than comparing themselves with other first world countries - they compare themselves with places with oppressive regimes.

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

Re:Is there anyone left...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! 9/11 was a Republican wet dream if there ever was one. All those juicy defence contracts ... yummy! The fact that it was centered around the middle with Isreal and more importantly oil involved ... oh yeah baby! It involved terrorists based inside the country soooo ... ohhhhhh yeah mama ... defence contacts against our own populace (think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts) ... can't hold it any longer ... anybody have spare underpants?

Re:Is there anyone left...

[0123456]

And what difference will that make? You don't honestly think that Kerry will roll back the US police state, do you?

The amusing thing is that Americans are seeing their freedom rapidly destroyed yet still believe they're free because they can vote for one of two almost identical candidates. If only the USSR had offered people two voting choices rather than one, they'd still be around today.

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:Is there anyone left...

[meringuoid]

We could compare ourselves to the UK. How many cameras in the UK watch people on a daily basis?

You know, I don't so much mind the cameras per se. What pisses me off no end is what the police do with the film.

No, it's not Big Brother. Or rather, it is - not in the Orwell sense, but the fucking Channel 4 sense. The police sell the film to TV companies to put together trash TV about drunks making fools of themselves.

If I come out of a pub pissed and throw up into the gutter, I don't mind some copper watching on the security camera. He's a copper - he sees loads of people throw up in gutters. But if the cops decide to sell the footage of me throwing up into a gutter, and it gets on TV, and people who know me, for instance maybe my boss or my dear old grandmother...

Embarrassing at the very least. The fuck are they playing at, selling the footage for entertainment?

Re:Is there anyone left...

[deacon]

Well, you OBVIOUSLY have no idea what a POLICE STATE is really like.

I will educate you.

In a police state (and I speak from my personal experiences in Eastern Europe when it was under Soviet occupation) the police actually follow you around constantly. (you can recognize them by their shoes, normal citizens are not allowed into the special shops where these very shiny shoes can be purchased.) They tap your phone. They film you from video cameras installed on buildings. They regularly harass you trying to provoke a reaction. If you piss them off, they haul you away to a basement somewhere and attach a power cord to your genetalia.

The people who do all this are not prosecuted in court for torture. They are awarded a medal of the Order of Lenin, with skull and bones cluster, and given a promotion.

In a police state, there is no Slashdot, and people who speak out end up working in Uranium mines in Siberia.

Your inane hysteria does nothing to preseve the freedom we have in the USA. Instead, by your knee jerk reaction, you are exhibiting "Usefull Idiots" syndrome, and you are helping, not hindering, the people who wish to see the US and freedom destroyed.

Re:Is there anyone left...

[Catbeller]

That's the problem I've always had with people who believe government is the source of evil.

Government can be controlled. In one manner or another.

But the "free market" doesn't hold itself to any limits. I am far more afraid of a production company (or even a pseudo-religious cult) having access to what used to be our private lives. There are untold numbers of ways that they can bully us, and there is really nothing that can stop them, especially pro-free market goverments.

For instance, it became widely known yesterday that the cell phone companies are putting together a national phone book of all customers. That may sound innocuous to some, but guess what: if you, Mr. Customer, want to exempt yourself from the Book, you're going to have to ante up some cash on a regular basis to bribe them into NOT letting your number out to other businesses.

IF we had some decent laws protecting our privacy as a default, this would never even have been a business model.

I wouldn't be surprised if someday you in the UK have to pay a monthly fee to keep your image off of the TV!

Government/business partnerships are the ultimate in tyranny.

In related news...

[k4_pacific]

OSDN announced today that the Slashdot Karma system will be integrated with the Terrorist Quotient database.

Re:In related news...

[ENOENT]

As a result, the FBI has placed "Anonymous Coward" on their Most Wanted List.

hilarious

[happyfrogcow]

sweet f'ing christ. do people not see similarities to the Red Scare or McCarthyism? Are people really so dense?

save me jeebus.

Re:hilarious

[Cameroon]

Yes, people really are that dense.

(and: but i don't even believe in jeebus)

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.

Re:hilarious

[Smidge204]

"80% of misinformed Americans get thier information from FOX news"

It's not that people don't care as much as the media doesn't do it's job properly.
=Smidge=

Re:hilarious

[Animaether]

I hope you read that article...

First - disregard the picture. It's an archival picture which has nothing to do with the 'find'.

Second - the bomb was rigged up make-shift to be a bomb, rather than the original artillery shell.

Third - even the B.G. interviewed stressed that whoever put it there most likely didn't even know it had sarin.

Fourth - they state it was likely looted from arsenals. though they claim this is post-regime, it could've been during it as well. Under the assumption that it was post-regime, however, it still fails to prove a methodical deployment or existance of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Fifth - it was rigged up along the side of a road, soldiers drove there, spotted something suspicious, but it was already too late. That's hardly 'finding' WMDs. That's getting hit by one.

Unless that single make-shift bomb was the WMD that posed an immediate and grave threat to the United States homeland, I would personally have to say 'keep trying'. Even though technically it was a WMD, and without downplaying its existence in the first place, it hardly qualifies on the level of that which Rumsfeld and Bush spoke of.

Re:hilarious

[Karl Cocknozzle]

...technically it was a WMD...
Thanks.

Please explain to me how the handful of rusty or unlabelled shells (many of which had leaked their contents 10+ years earlier) we've found in Iraq represents the "Vast stockpile" of banned weapons we were led to believe existed in Iraq? A stockpile, we were told, that was so vast as to allow field commanders to deploy them on "40-minutes notice." If this was true, please explain why none of the ammo caches and dumps we found during the war contained any WMD?

Please also explain to me how the handful of rusty and/or unlabelled (mostly useless) shells we've found represents an immediate threat to the security of the United States?

Please also explain how before the war, Bushie was warning us about nuclear armageddon caused by Saddam Hussein, yet we've found no evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons program. They did possess a stolen, 50-year old Chinese design for a bomb, but they weren't anywhere near the point of being able to fabricate a weapon.

Also, our (just as oppressive) ally Pervez Musharraf actually has several nuclear devices at his disposal. When will we be invading Pakistan? Or is continuity no longer part of the "Bush plan"?

Might as well seed the system a bit.....

[southpolesammy]

Bomb, gas, crash, Afghanistan, airplane, fire, biowarfare, sarin, nuclear, Muqtada Al-Sadr, barbarism, CIA, Al-Qaida, terrorist, seize, drugs, fertilizer, kill, plot, chemical, RPG, bin Laden, canister, Iraq, plague, sniper, sleeper cell, C4, guerilla, Barbara Streisand

Re:Might as well seed the system a bit.....

[Gleng]

...profit?

Re:I know what mine is...

[Hatta]

It's just like my karma level... "Excellent"

You forgot the air guitar.

Re:Gotta love the ACLU

[dijjnn]

yes, because there are 120,000 terrorists. And they've been identified by software. we should arrest them.

I think that the ACLU is not worried about arresting terrorists... i think that they're generally for it. I think they're more worried about the ratio of actual terrorists to non-terrorists in our investigations being way, way, way to low.

It's tin-foil hat time again!!

[justkarl]

"But the ACLU is still, predictably, concerned."

As they should be.
120,000 people could be arrested this week-simply for being in a database. I think that 9/11 has simply turned our government against anyone who might come within a hundred miles of overthrowing it-even it's own citizens. Listen to Fear Factory's "Obsolete" and look for the not-too far off future.
Think: this kind of thing, if your "quotient" was too high, could conceiveably prevent you from getting a job, or maybe a loan. I don't think this helps everyone. It's all a product of feelings of racism and vengeance.

Re:It's tin-foil hat time again!!

[0123456]

I hope you realise that being seen wearing a tin-foil hat will immediately add 15,000,000,000 points to your Terrorist Quotient: after all, if you're paranoid, you must be doing something illegal.

Re:It's tin-foil hat time again!!

[MooseByte]

"I hope you realise that being seen wearing a tin-foil hat will immediately add 15,000,000,000 points to your Terrorist Quotient"

Well sure, if you don't wear the INVISIBLE tinfoil hat. Mine's been working great for years now. Just watch out for cosmic dust, it dampens the field.

Think about it

[paranode]

I'm sure all the tin-foil hats will come out of the woodworks about this. Seriously though, do you not expect the agency reponsible for anti-terrorism efforts to actually do its job well? If this could have stopped those planes from killing thousands of civilians, people would be screaming in outrage about how we didn't use it when we should have. The problem is this country (this world, really) is that everybody wants to be reactive and not proactive. This is especially true in the computer security field, as we all know.

Everyone bitches and moans about systems like this that can prevent terrorist attacks, but then they make a huge stink about some memo from Richard Clarke that had next to nothing useful in it. Go figure.

Re:Think about it

[0123456]

"Seriously though, do you not expect the agency reponsible for anti-terrorism efforts to actually do its job well?"

How is picking 120,000 people as potential terrorists based on some arbitrary algorithm "doing its job well"? Do you really think there are 120,000 terrorists in America? Do you really think that the government will do better to harass 120,000 people, most of whom are not terrorists, than to, say, infiltrate terrorist groups and find out who really, actually, is a terrorist?

"If this could have stopped those planes from killing thousands of civilians, people would be screaming in outrage about how we didn't use it when we should have"

Once the terrorists know how the system works they can easily avoid being spotted: and the government will be too busy chasing those 120,000 non-terrorists to do anything about the real ones. This is the most basic and obvious flaw of any such arbitrary flagging scheme... anyone who knows the algorithm knows how _not_ to get flagged.

In other news ...

[spellraiser]

Officials in Washington DC revealed plans to start a brand-new 'Precrime' program to arrest perpetrators before they even commit a crime, using sophisticated 'Comatose Psychic' technology.

Said one official: 'Yeah, we reckon this will beat everything we've seen so far. I mean, why profile people when you can have 'em psychics see the stuff happening, right? Much more reliable all in all.'

More details here

Dodgy surnames

[SmackCrackandPot]

There was a soccer-mom/admin in our work who had the first name Marsha and the surname started with an 'H'.
She would get all these weird Middle-Eastern newsletters spammed to her work account. I bet she's probably made to the dodgy persons list.

Re:What if it is accurate?

[MooseByte]

"What if 120,000 Americans are latent (or blatent) terrorists? What then?"

Then we'd have been seriously screwed LONG ago.

What's Your Terrorism Quotient?

[aengblom]

Agnostic : ---------------
Democrat : +
Male : ++
Moderate : -------
Young : ++
Yuppie : ---------
White : --------------------

<i>I'll</i> be fine, but thanks for asking.

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

Had to be said

[PsiPsiStar]

Wake up Neo. The MATRIX has you.
Really, can these guys pick a name with worse symbolism? Skynet, maybe?

Re:Had to be said

[j-b0y]

Skynet is, amongst other things, the name of a major satellite communications network used by the UK MoD, about to reach the fifth generation.

I think they choose these names deliberately.

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:Time to get out of here

[bhima]

There are Many very nice places to live in the world. Sure the US is perhaps the wealthiest place on earth, but using other metrics the US is not so great. I guess it is a matter of priorties. What's most important having a super high standard of living in a crazy place or having a great (and healthy) life style and getting by with a bit less.

I made the move a little over two years ago, Now I'd be hard pressed to go back.

Re:What if it is accurate?

[the_mad_poster]

What if that's not the point? What then?

First of all, if there are 120,000 people in this country that are really terrorists that are that easy to spot, we're already up shit creek and the paddle's still back on the shore. Second, I don't know about you, but when people start getting scored on their "terrorism quotient", I get a little scared about what my tax dollars are paying to do to me. I'm all for identifying REAL terrorists and going out and getting them, but I'd sure like to know that they aren't "real" just because they got a high score one some stupid spook's spreadsheet.

Likely to commit an act of terrorism?

[brxndxn]

This is ridiculous. They don't have a 'likely to commit a murder' database.. or a 'likely to rape young women' database.. unless those people have already committed crimes. Now, we can be likely to commit a crime yet still be someone that has never commited a crime.

I'm sick of what the government has done in the spirit of 'fighting terrorism.' Terror is the least of my worries. Ya, 9/11 was horrible.. but it isn't worth giving up our way of life to prevent. I'm more likely to be struck by lighting while being bitten by a shark than to die from an act of terror.

These 'preventative' databases are stupid. American Citizens should not be subject to a 'likely to commit terror' database without ever having done something wrong. Some of the most patriotic people are also the most criticizing of the US.. Should they be on the database?

If there are 120,000 people on the list, shouldn't there have been more acts of terrorism in the US?

IMO, there's bigger problems on which to focus. Why fix the windshield wipers when the brakes aren't working?

Re:Likely to commit an act of terrorism?

[Hooptie]

If there are 120,000 people on the list, shouldn't there have been more acts of terrorism in the US?

You don't get it. The fact the there are not "more acts of terrorism in the US" is *PROOF* that things like this database, the PATRIOT act etc... are working.

If you don't believe this, we will be happy to put you name on this list we have here...

Hooptie

Re:Likely to commit an act of terrorism?

[Cameroon]

Funny, they seem far better at terrorising us than at protecting us from it.

You're simply wrong on a several points...

[arashiakari]

I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner. The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs never are). You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You don't want the threat, but you don't want to do anything about it, and you want your children to grow up in a militarized world, and you want your government to default to surrender because it can't allow itself to fight guerrilla tactics because somehow they are impossible to employ in the persuit of victory? After such blatant and simple to unravel contradiction, where you are speaking crosswise to yourself without pausing to take a breath, why should we listen to anything else you have to say? The world is fu*cked up enough as it is. The food chain has been poisoned so badly the average human is full of chemicals normally found in plastics and toxic waste. I'm sick of global warning and environmental damage to the planet and the fact the all this time the greenies were right. I'm sick of America being the biggest wilful contributor to the pollution of the planet. America is not the biggest polluter, intentional or otherwise: China and Russia are, followed by many of their previous holdings in Africa and South America. I'm 24 years old. I don't want to go through the next 50 years of my life living in an international air of worry and uncertainty. Whether you worry or not is your choice. Grow up. We all have to be adults here and face the real world. A world where like it or not, be at peace or not, people are just going to come out of the woodwork and try and kill you. This is NOT a "live and let live" world. You think it is? Talk to Neville Chamberlain. The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward, it's terrorists who want to fecking kill us. You know how we fix this problem? We MUST destroy BOTH their ability and desire to wage war with us, and we don't stop until those have been absolutely achieved. The Japanese were a far more brave and zealous enemy than the fascist militant Islamics are, and we won. Our current enemy is far more dangerous because of their tactics and capability. Wishing for the threat of new attacks to go away will not take them away. Myself and hundreds of millions of other American citizens are not going to let snide "armchair quarterback" academics try and reason-away responsibilities. We're not going to let them establish moral equivilance between the U.S. and it's current aggressors, brutal murderous terrorists. Other than those things, you did have some decent rants about the sillyness of modern living. But TRUST ME! Those silly "cultural behavioral patterns" are not at all limited to the U.S.A.

Re:Gotta love the ACLU

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people consistently use "ACLU" and "bitch" in the same sentence?

The ACLU is the only organization that ever has the balls to look at what the Federal Government is doing and make a stand against the overarching, draconian measures that many government officials would *love* to see happen. Guess what? The Federal Government wants to control your actions as much as possible, not only so that you are not a threat against Americans, but more so that you are not a threat against them.

Protecting us from random acts of terror is about as possible as landing a 747 on the Brooklyn Bridge. We're too open, too easy, too soft. Guess what? I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".

Did you see the latest FBI Suidice Bomber Warnings sent out today? Here's a pointer from the alert: Be on the lookout for people with clenched fists!!

Living in the United States used to be about living out a free existence with minimal government intervention. In the last few years we have become an Orwellian society where you are stamped with a number and contstantly tracked by the government for 'threat status'. Your primary purpose is to receive advertising, consume products, and pay the government a share of it all.

I have bad news for some: the War on Terror is not a war anyone could win, and even fighting it for a thousand years would not end the cycle of violence that perpetuates it. I wonder how many young Iraqi children are thinking about their bombed out homes and dead parents and swearing vengeance on the United States someday. Those will be the next generation of people who fly planes into our skyscrapers.

Hypocritical griping? Physician, heal thyself

[ianscot]

ACLU stands for "American Civil Liberties Union." You might want to check a dictionary for definitions of those words.

They understand that they're going to sometimes be defending unpopular positions and people. They defend the rights of white supremacists to march in public, for example. They've also defended Rush Limbaugh against what they view as intrusive attempts by the police to get at his medical records and show that he was "doctor shopping" to feed his addiction. They're making those choices consciously, according to principles which they state conspicuously.

You, meanwhile, don't seem to be doing anything more than bitch for reasons you haven't thought through.

First off: when, exactly, has the ACLU complained that not enough is being done to fight terrorism? Hello? Anyone home? Or were you just confusing "liberals" or "Democrats" with the ACLU?

And more to the point: "Potential terrorists"? When you start using a term like that, perhaps you'd like to devote some thought to it. Because the FBI has, in the past, regarded people like Martin Luther King, Jr. as a "potential terrorist." Because, you know, that let them bug his hotel rooms and accumulate evidence that he wasn't faithful to his wife, which put some nice blackmail material in the hands of J. Edgar Hoover.

The ACLU tries to protect American citizens from the abusive use of power. You, meanwhile, resent them for 'getting in the way.' What does that say about you, exactly? Maybe you want to think that through rather than sleepwalking through your life vaguely angry at those pesky liberals.

My TQ? I'm not cleared to know that!

[Tackhead]

> "What's Your Terrorism Quotient?"

I'm sorry, I'm not cleared to know that. If I could tell you, I'd have to kill me.

Ripe for abuse...

[Snorklefish]

Judge: State your business.
Prosecutor: Your honor, we seek a warrant to search the home of J.Q. Public for terrorist related materials.
Judge: Grounds?
Prosecutor: Your honor, Mr. Public scored an 87 on the Matrix.
Judge: And why did he score an 87?
Prosecutor: Um..., national security interests prevent me from divulging the complete basis for his score. I can say that he got a speeding ticket in '03 and has a mustache.
Judge: Well, I'm sure we can assume the underlying data is correct, was duly entered and processed by an impeccably accurate algorithm, yes?
Prosecutor: (purses lips and nods).
Judge: This court finding probable cause to issue said warrant, it is hereby done and ordered.

Re:Ripe for abuse...

[PhxBlue]

That hypothetical conversation will never happen. . . because, if a prosecutor can cite a "national security need," thanks to the USAPATRIOT act, he can get the warrant without ever having to go before a judge.

Ben Franklin knew

[corporate_ai]

My sig says it all.

I CALL PLAGARISM

[nebaz]

here

Sorry, what counts as...

[NeoThermic]

>> people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists

Come again? How does one define an activity that makes you statistically a terrorist?
Is it by the car they drive?
Is it by the job they have?
Is it by their nationality?
Is it by their age?
Is it by their house?
Is it by anything bar the obvious ones, such as actively supporting terrorist activities?

Probably not. They probably picked at almost random 120,000 people and defined them as a 'likelihood of being terrorists'.

The question is who gets to make that choice? To me, it seems that the person(s) who make the choice could be as much of a terrorist as your average next door Jones, yet because they make the choices, they call the shots; they will never be featured in that list.

I would love to know how many of the 120,000 people were -NOT- charged with terrorist activities; i doubt that even 1% of them were arrested with enough evidence to prove it. However, given the current state of the laws, that doesn't matter now, does it?

Why seed the data? Why not let the information be collected the way it's intended, and then compile a list from it? Ok, this system might be rather like the 'big brother' we are all fearing, but currently, most major supermarkets track what you buy almost without you noticing, so its not like this information will be collected obtrusively.

Maybe its time someone out there took a step back and looked at the system they have just partaken in creating, and they just might, possibly, see it as something that shouldn't be.

Someone needs to look at this before the next 'red-ball' has your name on it, because by then, it's too late.

NeoThermic

P.S, is it me, or have they forgotten how to make an acronym? How does one get from Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange to Matrix? To me that makes 'MATIE'...

Re:Sorry, what counts as...

[zerOnIne]

nah, MATIE is what the RIAA and MPAA are using to track down all those darned pirates. ARR!

Seisint's Questionnaire

[MooseByte]

Karma be damned....

Seisint's Proposed Questionnaire for next stage of study:

Are you or have you ever been a member of any of the following
(check all that apply):

- Amnesty International
- ACLU
- Nature Conservancy
- National Academy of Sciences
- Any non-GOP political party
- Any GOP group that has ever disagreed with the White House
- Any non-Christian religion
- Any Christian sect that fails to see that creating all-out war in
the Middle East that melts down Jerusalem will invoke the
Second Coming.

Do you associate with anyone to whom the above may apply? (Yes/No)

Do you get your news from any media sources other than the White
House Press Office, Fox News, or conservative talk radio? (Yes/No)

Do you associate with anyone to whom the above may apply? (Yes/No)

Perfectly Legitimate

[jgardn]

I think systems like these are perfectly legitimate. For one thing, the terrorist quotient (TQ from here on) isn't evidence of terrorism; it is an indication of possible terrorism.

The police or FBI should investigate people who have patterns of behavior that are similar to known terrorists. They should gather real data to either confirm or deny the possibility. Then what they find should be fed back into the system.

Having a high TQ is only enough to make someone suspect. Having a low TQ is not enough to clear someone. As long as police and FBI realize this, the system will work fine and do exactly what it is intended to do.

If you're wondering how they calculate TQ, they examine country of origin (terrorists tend to come from a few countries), age, length of stay (terrorists will return occasionally to known terrorist locations), location of residence (terrorists may live close together), income source (terrorists will get large sums of money suddenly), and behavior.

For instance, a guy from Saudi Arabia who is 35 and visited Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran, and who inexplicably received several hundred thousand dollars, and who ordered several tons of fertilizer when they live near downtown New York where they work as a taxi driver, and who rented a large truck would score high.

A geek who was born in Canada and only visited the Far East and/or Europe, who has a steady income from his job as a (insert IT job here) and who bought a large supply of fertilizer (along with farming supplies and tools) and lives in a rural location in Montana would not have a high TQ.

The system won't be perfect as it won't detect every single terrorist and may render a few obvious false positives. But it will identify a large enough number that it will give the police and FBI a start.

I'm as paranoid as the next guy, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon. What do you expect the government to do? Why is it that no one ever offers better solutions? Just gripe and complain.

Even with the 9/11 commisions, we are so focused on "intelligence" - who had it, who didn't, who ignored it, etc. How do you expect agencies to gather accurate intelligence wihtout stepping on some civil liberty toes? I know *in theory* this is wrong (save your Ben Franklin quotes), but what other *practical*, effective means do they have?

Some people always offer up the the "carebear" alternatives - e.g. fostering peace and goodwill to these countries that butcher innocents (READ: sending even more welfare to them). Or isolationism, just ignore them and spend our money at home. (The "la la la, I don't see you...Go away bad man" solution). These stratgies just don't work against these cultures that are based on thousands of years of bloodthirsty tribal agggresion, and later rationalized and justified by a maniacal perversion of religion.

So before you bemoan your supposed injustices, please dazzle us with your alternative practical, effective measures to gather intelligence.

Re:You're simply wrong (CLEANED UP)

[Aceticon]

> I don't want to live like Israel, fighting militant Muslims round every corner.
>The problem of Muslim extremists exists and needs to be dealt with, not encouraged by invading innocent countries and waging war on people
>who have done nothing to deserve it. I want my children to grow up in a world free from military
>oppression and I want a government that understands that the wars of the future are
>guerrilla ones which can never be won, even if they are waged for noble purposes (which theirs
>never are).

You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph. You don't want the threat, but you don't want to do anything about it, and you want your children to grow up in a militarized world, and you want your government to default to surrender because it can't allow itself to fight guerrilla tactics because somehow they are impossible to employ in the persuit of victory? After such blatant and simple to unravel contradiction, where you are speaking crosswise to yourself without pausing to take a breath, why should we listen to anything else you have to say?


I believe his logic can best be explained as:
a)"When you poked the wasp nest you got stung"
b)"Poking the bee nest just to get back at the wasps will only make things worse"

120,000 is a lot of terrorists...

[InfiniteZero]

Shouldn't we start attacking Florida?

Which dice?

[pjt33]

Yes, but D6s or D20s?

Matrix configuration file leaked

[rduke15]

That software's configuration file has leaked. Here is an excerpt:

reads SLASHDOT forums =~ /slashdot\.org/
score SLASHDOT 10
describe SLASHDOT Participates or reads a suspect online forum

history...repeating...

[GirTheRobot]

...watch as McCarthy...I mean Rumsfeld, rounds up all the commies...I mean terrorists.

Terrorist Detected!!

[Databass]

I prefer false negatives (spam messages that end up in my inbox) over false positives (real mail that end up in the bin)

Sooo... you're saying you'd prefer to have a bin laden with spam messages?!

Allright FREEZE!!!! Get down on the ground!

Obligatory quote

[phyruxus]

"The matrix has you, Anonymous Coward."

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and you cut off it's head and there's a fully functional biological cranium, maybe it's not a clockwork toy resembling a duck and is in fact a duck.

Re:You're simply wrong (CLEANED UP)

[Anonymous Coward]

The crux of the debate I think is how best to handle terrorism. If you are for a military solution then I can see only two options:

1) Wipe all terrorists off the face of the earth.
Is this really realistic? You can kill every single terrorist that lives now, but more are being born (by non-terrorist moderates) every day.

2) Strong arm potential/future terrorists with a display of "shock and awe". This is an often stated reason (among WMD, spread of democracy, etc. etc.) for invading Iraq.

I think this is touching in its naivete. All you have to do is think if the situations were reversed what would you do? If someone killed your brother, would you be docile and take it? We (the US) as a people rebelled against another country because we didnt like TAXES for gossake, what would we do if another country started killing some of our population?

I personally think terrorism can never be eradicated. We live in a world where individuals have a disporportionate power to wreck havoc. The only thing to do is police everyone, NOT attack them, but be vigilant. Now there is no way to police every single person in the world, so we must rely on our allies, and do everything we can to support them in their policing. This might not lead to flag-waving moments, but ultimately this is the only way I believe to contain terrorism. This requires that we have smarts and finesse, by coaxing/bribing/cajoling other countries to do our dirty work-performing raids, intelligence, surveilance. It requires us not to snub our noses at the UN or any countyr who doesnt have a cowboy mentality that our administration seems to have.

Strutting around with guns cocked may be psychologically satisfying, but ultimately it just brings out every single person who wants to challenge us, and that line will never end.

Arrest via rating?

[nurb432]

So are they implying that if you get a high score you are going to be arrested and/or have your home raided?

JUST because of some abstract number in a database?.. NOT because you actually have done something..

So this 'suspicion rating' = probable cause?

I would think the ACLU would be all over this..

Re:You're simply wrong (CLEANED UP)

[Hittite Creosote]

You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph

It didn't read that way to me. Put it this way, if you get stung by a wasp, do you grab a stick and hit the nearest bee's nest?

The complaint is not that we should sit back and do nothing, but that we should only attack after first thinking about things. Properly. Otherwise, things go wrong, no matter how powerful you are.

Hey /. WTF is up with this thread??

[CarrionBird]

One of the first posts disappears then reappears "CLEANED UP".

Anyone care to explain?

Are we censoring the threads now? Will I get booted for making this post??

All respondents have been noted...

[intnsred]

All respondents to this article have been noted.

From Seisint Inc. system logs:

Querying site...processing HTML...correlating post data with ISP logs...submitting data to database...updating/creating user entries...updating users' Seisint Inc. "terrorist quotient"(tm)...submitting relevant users and data to federal authorities so that they can protect our freedom[sic]!

On a serious note: In a police state where the gov't can snatch anyone they want off the streets and hold them incommuncado, without charges and without access to a lawyer, we have no civil liberties.

To me, articles about such things are no surprise today. The only surprise is that the American people surrendered to fascism so easily. :-(

Re:All respondents have been noted...

[intnsred]

Where's that?

Okay, I'm in the mood for a good troll... :-) Maybe you're one of the millions that haven't heard that key portions of the Bill of Rights have been revoked.

The answer: Why right here in the good ol' land of the free, the USA!

This editorial from the Boston Globe should illustrate the point.

FWIW, I'd also highly recommend that Common Dreams web site, if you're inclined to learn more. It is a site run by some Yankees in Maine which features tons of mainstream news articles from the US, Canada, and the UK, along with a smattering of leftish/non-mainstream articles. It's done in the concept of informing people and "speaking truth to power." A few searches on that site will turn up dozens of articles supporting the above statement.

Democracy

[phyruxus]

Issues like this, which inherently require double-think and open, honest debate are what Democracy resolves best. There ought to be a law, sure, and that law ought to be based on a bill which has made its way through all three branches AND PUBLIC REFERENDUM.

Without public acceptance this can only be a tool of a "gestapo" secret police. I'm not saying the FBI shouldn't exist. I'm saying that guardianship requires honest and competent debate in good faith, or else there WILL be problems and some might be drop-dead killer problems. After all, who wants to go to sleep each night wondering how much their "terrorist quotient" changed today, and in what way?

BTW, America is still free and will remain so as long as we the People remain certain in our right to be protected from unwarranted search and seizure. If we ever trade democratic freedom for the safety of an Autocratic police state, we're f*kt. (And as a democrat, I feel that Bush is angling for a police state every time I hear him ask me to "trust" him. He seems to gloss over the fact that he was not elected by a unanimous landslide. I don't trust Bush. And I won't until his spinmeisters stop telling me that it's "OK" because black is white... because black is not white.)

I never said I was a centrist.

Drug Runner

[Evil MarNuke]

South Florida Sun-Sentinel (www.sun-sentinel.com)

By Nicole Sterghos Brochu
Staff Writer
Posted January 11 2004

The counter-terrorism database is so efficient at analyzing billions of records, so comprehensive in finding links between people and events that some investigators believe it could prevent another attack like 9-11.

Although some intelligence experts are awed by the potential of the so-called Matrix network, others are uncomfortable with the man who built it.

Hank Asher -- a Boca Raton multi-millionaire called a patriot by a former Watergate prosecutor, consulted and admired by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- once smuggled millions of dollars worth of cocaine.

Asher avoided detection and was never charged with a crime during what he calls "the hazy period" of his life. The statute of limitations has long since elapsed on drug-running activities he admits spanned eight months in 1981 and 1982. Those reckless days, he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, drove him to depression and drug and alcohol abuse.

He didn't pay for his crimes in a jail cell, but a price was exacted by years of negative publicity and intense public suspicion. The climax came in August, when Asher walked away from the Matrix so it could proceed unencumbered by its designer's infamy.

Asher, now 52, made peace with himself.

"I go to sleep every night knowing that I've done much more good than harm," he said.

Indeed, Asher's notoriety has done little to deflate his clout among some influential crime-fighters.

Giuliani, now an international crime consultant, uses Asher in the hunt for terrorists. Brian Stafford, the former head of the U.S. Secret Service, is one of a handful of top law enforcement officers who work for Asher's database company. John Walsh, host of the TV show America's Most Wanted, sings Asher's praises.

To understand the contradiction of the public pariah with quiet influence is to understand his road to redemption. It is a path lined with powerful innovations and financial benevolence that have aided the hunt for criminals and the safe return of missing children.

"I have a great admiration for what he's doing, both in finding missing children and in coming up with creative solutions to terrorism, as well as owning up to his mistakes," Giuliani said. "People do a lot of things in life. It's a question of what you can do to make up for it, and Hank has done a lot."

why he smuggled

In his first interview on the drug allegations, Asher said he got into smuggling for the adrenaline rush.

"It seemed like an adventure," he said, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights between bites of nicotine gum at his mansion next to the Royal Palm Polo fields. "I had no idea of the hideousness of drugs."

He got mixed up in the business after "retiring" at age 30 to the Bahamas. Asher moved there after selling the paint contracting business he started at 18 and built into what a 1975 Sun-Sentinel article described as "apparently unmatched anywhere" in the South Florida high-rise market.

In Great Harbour Cay, Asher said, he attracted attention with his plane and his speedboat. Drugs were rampant, he said, and so were offers for easy money flying the contraband into the United States. Asher said he resisted the offers -- until one came from a group of older men with expensive tastes who "ran in social circles that appealed to me."

He said he agreed to do them a favor after, having recklessly spent his paint company proceeds, he borrowed money from them.

An FDLE investigation details how far that favor went. The probe, launched in August and completed in September, was meant to resolve the longstanding rumors of Asher's past, particularly at a time when several states interested in the Matrix were threatening to pull out over the smuggling questions.

The report concluded that Asher piloted up to seven planeloads of cocaine from Colombia into the United States in 1981 and 1982,

I've heard this before:

[nukeade]

Don't worry, if you're not a terrorist, you probably don't have anything to worry about!

Just another reason why I'm re-voting against Ed Rendell, the most nearsighted governor of all time, when his turn comes around.

~Ben

9-11 Terrorists were in Top 80 of 120,000

[HighOrbit]

From the Article:

Of the people with the 80 highest scores, five were among the Sept. 11 hijackers, Seisint's presentation said. Forty-five were identified as being or possibly being under existing investigations, while 30 others "were unknown to FBI."

This database looks like it could be one valid tool among many, but not conclusive evidence all by itself. So, it alone won't prove anybody guilty, but if some other independent reasons cast attention on someone and they showed up high on this list, then it would be prudent to take a deeper look at them. Doing otherwise would be negligent and could cost the lives of thousands of innocents, versus a fairly non-obtrusive background check or questioning of somebody with a suspicious history.

New Diablo II item

[Anonymous Coward]

Bin Laden's Scared Armour of Terror
False beard

Defense: 255
Durability: Invulnerable
Required Strength: 56
Required Level: 99

[Only usable by Terrorist]

+150 TQ
+3 to RPG
+150% Enhanced defence in caves
+500% Enhanced evasion against US
75% Better chance of finding magic WMDs
+1 mana after each kill
Requirements -100%
Socketed (6)

If Wolfowitz can get it wrong

[orim]

and that 'about 100 or so' soldiers have died in Iraq.

Yeah, well, if even the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S DEPUTY SECRETARY doesn't know the figure (he was off by at least 40%), then what expectations can we possibly have of an average Joe? I mean, it's like like it's Joe's *job* or anything to know this, but Wolfowitz... it goes beyond incompetence, it's just insulting to our soldiers. He may as well have walked over to the Arlington cemetary and started pissing on the graves for that matter...

Speaking of dense, (but completely unrelated), this is a great stat: 19% of Americans think they're in the top 1% of the income range.
Chew on that one for a little while :)

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 what good is that anyways?

[Facekhan]

A list of 120,000 names does not really narrow it down much. Perhaps there are a few hundred foriegn terrorists operating in the United States. 1% of 120,000 is 1200 and I would venture a guess that there are no more than 1200 foriegn terrorists in the US even by the widest stretch of the term terrorist. If my assumption is accurate then that mean MATRIX has a 99% false positive rate and sorting through 120,000 names to find 1200 or less is not a very useful tool. If there were really 120000 terrorists or even 12000 don't you think they would have gone to the store bought some guns and started shooting people by now. 12000 is a small army and could easily cause a lot of damage before our military could respond. Even 1200 could all get together and really do a lot of damage. That leads me to believe that they are a few hundred at most in a number of different groups espousing vastly different ideological and political goals. This system is just one more tool to turn America into a police state. Who are the real terrorists here?

Re:Dealing with Muslim extremists

[dave420]

How on earth is that insightful?? Muslim extremists want to be left alone. They don't want US troops running around their country, pissing on their shrines, riding around in Humvees killing wedding guests, wearing Oakley sunglasses and waving US flags around like jocks. They don't want Americans forcing the American(tm) way of life down their throats. They don't want to kill anyone, they just feel they have to to survive.

You want to end terrorism? Get the US to act like a normal country. Don't go running all over other countries as if they were second-class. Learn respect for other people. You don't win friends by beating them up.

It frustrates me so much when I hear people saying the terrorists want to "destroy america" because they "envy our freedoms" or "hate democracy". I mean come on - think about it for one second. Sheesh.

Muslim extremists just want to be normal muslims. Normal muslims just want to get on with their lives, like normal everyone-else-on-this-planet.

America has done more to cause terrorism than any other country has in recent years, possibly ever. You want to know who the bad guys are? They're on your team.

I've seen this somewhere before...

[Ossadagowah]

Oh yeah, it was the Paranoia RPG.

Muslim extremists do not want to be left alone

[Anonymous Coward]

"How on earth is that insightful?? Muslim extremists want to be left alone"

No, they do not. They want to expand their rule into regions of Central Asia. They want to invade Israel and exterminate its people. They want to expand Muslim "law" into traditionally non-Muslim places like the southern Sudan. In already-Muslim places like Turkey, they want to replace secularism with a system where everyone is forced to obey one brand of Islam. These are just a few examples. Extremist Islam is aggressive and expansionist.

"America has done more to cause terrorism than any other country has in recent years, possibly ever"

"Muslim extremists just want to be normal muslims. Normal muslims just want to get on with their lives, like normal everyone-else-on-this-planet."

If they did, they would put down their guns and take up a "live and let live" attitude.

"You don't win friends by beating them up."

If they are already beating you up for the sole reason that you do not worship the Muslim god, then it is part hope for winning them as friends.

"It frustrates me so much when I hear people saying the terrorists want to "destroy america" because they "envy our freedoms" or "hate democracy". "

It may frustrate you, but it is quite true. The terrorist's own speech and documents list as prime reasons for "hating America" such things as America's tolerance of religious freedom. Think about it.... long and hard.

No, America has done much to reduce and minimize terrorism.

Re:You deal with them by killing them

[amightywind]

Afghanistan...arguably in worse shape than when we invaded

Then your standard for what an argument consists of are low. I wonder what the average Afghan woman thinks of that statement?

Re:You're simply wrong (CLEANED UP)

[Cranx]

You just completely contradicted yourself in the same paragraph

True. Youthful exuberance in the parent poster. It's true you can't live in a safe world by capitulating to every terrorist organization, but at the same time, spending billions of dollars to invade countries that have zero involvement with terrorism is also a little quixotic. But also, just being the guy who swings the big bat around on a whim, even when directed at the right organizations, can often make you more of a target. It's far better to use diplomacy whenever possible. Bush doesn't believe in diplomacy, he always takes the low road and always creates more trouble than he settles.

America is not the biggest polluter, intentional or otherwise

Also true. We're SUPPOSED to be the "good guys" though. America, despite all the hatred you hear, is loved by the world and we're looked up to virtually everywhere. But it's like when you catch your father having sex with your sister. You still think he's a god deep down inside, but now you hate him and think he's off his fargin rocker and needs to be netted, tagged and neutered. You can't hate someone the way you hate someone that you love deeply who has betrayed you, disillusioned you and made you feel alone, without any real guidance for your future.

The threat is not dumb Americans you pompous arrogant condescending coward

We are, though. Not directly. The terrorists started us on this current steamroll of death and dismemberment, to be sure. But our reaction is acidic. We made things worse. There will always be terrorists, so we need to learn to react properly and engage them properly. 3000 dead from 9/11 is no reason to kill Iraqis. They had nothing to do with the attack. It's this fact, that we launch into countries who have nothing to do with anything, that makes the whole world see us as overbearing, sick and twisted. We are, too. We have no common sense about things anymore. We just do what we want and justify it as we go along. "It's for safety! It's for God! It's for the children!"

I see your opinion as the flip side of the opinion of the top poster. You both are hitting the mark, but you aren't dead-on and it's that wild swing left and right that is the real trouble these days. People need to realize there are no more good guys. There are only people doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and America is just as capable of doing the wrong thing as any terrorist is. Iraq is proof of that. Bush is proof that we are NOT blessed by God to be the world's leader for all that is good in the world. We are capable of evil, just like everyone else.

My point is, few people are absolutely correct these days about either side of the issue. We've done good, we've done bad. We're (the U.S.) not the world's knight in shining armor anymore.

Terror Databases and my Master's

[TheBracket]

I'm a UK citizen, living (with a Green Card, happily married) in the USA. Prior to 9/11, I could travel easily within the country - rarely stopped, security were somewhat courteous, and life was easy. Since 9/11, I can't make it through a single airport without being taken aside for a full search! Last time, I asked why - and was told that I'm in a database of likely travel threats. The only connection I have to terrorism is that I authored my Master's thesis (back in '98) on Terrorism and Democracy (the basic thesis was that terrorism is extra-effective against Western-style Democracies because panic reactions to acts of terror tend to remove the freedoms on which the society is based; terrorism therefore 'wins' against the Democracy because the rights of the citizens are increasingly compromised until the society is so locked down as to not be free at all. I really didn't think it would be that prophetic!). I can't find any way to have myself removed from this database, so now I travel Greyhound!

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

Re:120,000

[CaptainTux]

And what exactly do you have to do to get on this list?

I think most Americans realize that the entire "finding terrorists" thing here in the USA is being mis-used as a means to expand the governments powers into places they used to want to be in but couldn't because of those pesky civil liberties.

These days it doesn't take much for the government to invade your privacy. All they need to do is label you a "terror suspect" (which of course can mean pretty much anything they want it to mean). Are you a fundamentalist Christian? Do you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God? Do you take some or all of it literally? Then, in the governments eyes, you have a very high probability of being or becoming a terrorist. Are you concerned about your civil liberties being stripped away? Likewise if you've voiced ANY anti-American sentiment or shown any kind of pro-islamic views. Scary huh? When youhave some time, go read the FBI, CIA, and DHS's papers on identifying terrorists. It gets scarier.

I realize that we are in a war and we are at war with a movement that would love nothing more than to see as many people dead as possible. But taking away our rights simply isn't the answer to winning that war. Personally, I would rather have a higher risk of terrorism and more civil liberties than be totally safe with few liberties. There has to be a balance somwhere and I do hope that the government finds it soon. It's getting pretty weird out there. I'm starting to understand how our society ends up breeding people like Timothy McVeigh and how they end up so frustrated with the government that they commit these horrible crimes. I'm not saying I condone it - it's wrong; it was murder. But I do understand it.

False positives and security, real loss of rights

[geekotourist]

parenthetically- that of the 80 highest scores "five were among the Sept. 11 hijackers" doesn't show that the system works. It most likely shows that the hijackers' profiles were part of the 'seed profiles' used to teach / test the system. And 120,000!... any chance of false positives? Go re-read this Bruce Schneier essay.

Why should any regular individual be worried about these systems? From the best essay on privacy and 9/11 laws I've seen (from the former privacy czar of Canada- warning Canadians not to lose rights Americans have already lost):

"...But there also will be tangible, specific harm. The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life.

"But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.

"If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm...

"Decisions detrimental to us may be made on the basis of wrong facts, incomplete or out-of-context information or incorrect assumptions, without our ever having the chance to find out about it, let alone to set the record straight...

"The bottom line is this: If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free. That sort of life is characteristic of totalitarian countries, not a free and open society like Canada...

" Compiling dossiers on the private activities of all law-abiding citizens is the sort of thing the Stasi secret police used to do in the former East Germany. It has no place in a free and democratic society."

"...When people are worried about their safety, when we have seen the horrors of which today's breed of terrorists are capable - and there may be more - it's easy to lose perspective. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that security is all that matters and that human rights such as privacy are a luxury. But such extremes can only reward and encourage terrorism, not diminish it. They can only devastate our lives, without commensurately safeguarding them. Of course we all want to be safe. But we could be safer from terrorism - perhaps - if we permanently evacuated all the high-rise office towers, if we closed down the subways, if we forever grounded all airplanes. Yet no reasonable person would be likely to argue for adopting such measures. We'd say, "We want to be safe, yes - but not at the price of sacrificing our whole way of life." The same reasoning should apply, in my view, to arguments that privacy should indiscriminately be sacrificed on the altar of enhanced security..."

Re:It doesn't matter if you leave them alone.

[atallah]

A tiny minority of Muslims might actually believe anything remotely near to what you say.

The Israel situation has got absolutely nothing to to with "resisting conversion"... that is fundamentalist christian bullshit. It is to do with occupation, repression and desparation. ...To further extend the wasp analogy, the "RAID" is causing honey bees to mutate into angry wasps.

Re:Most sensible people would

[Anonymous Coward]

So we shouldn't have invaded Iraq because Al-Qaeda wouldn't like it?

Uhm..Al Qaeda probably was quite pleased with the invasion. They wanted to get rid of Saddam as badly as the US did. And lets not forget: the war has dramatically increased anti-American sentiments in Iraq and the rest of the world, boosting support for terrorist organisations like Al Queda. No doubt recruitment of these organisations will have gone up as a direct result of the war in Iraq.

And we're losing a guerilla war where we're killing 20 times more of the guerillas than they are of us (at least)?

You have been playing to many computer games. Wars aren't necessarily won by the ones who score the highest body count.

Re:Most sensible people would

[Shakrai]

So we shouldn't have invaded Iraq because Al-Qaeda wouldn't like it?

Actually yes, that should have been a consideration. We should have looked at what we'd get out of it vs what the cost would be. In this case we got nothing out of it and we are paying billions each month for the privilege of occupying the place. And to top all that off we provided Al-Qaeda with the best damn recruitment photograph in history.

And it was okay that Saddam tried to hide and create WMDs, just as long as he wasn't successful?

Do you have any evidence that he was still trying to create them? I'm sorry but we don't go to war on "We think he might be doing this". And quite frankly who the hell cares what Saddam may or may not have had? I'd have started worrying about it when he had delivery systems to actually get the damn things here. And don't come back at me and say "He was in bed with the terrorists" unless you are prepared to say exactly what terrorists he was "in bed" with (Al-Qaeda hated him) and what motivation he would have had to give them WMDs.

And we're losing a guerilla war where we're killing 20 times more of the guerillas than they are of us (at least)?

I don't know that we're losing but we aren't winning now are we? If you think killing 20 of them for every one of our own is a victory then I suggest you check out the Korean War in your history book. 54,246 Americans died -- DoD estimates that we killed over 1,500,000 North Koreans/Chinese. That's one point five million. That's a ratio of slightly over 27 enemy KIA for each one of our own. And guess what? We didn't win the Korean War.

Furthermore the Korean war wasn't a guerilla war -- it was a conventional war. Every time we kill an Iraqi insurgent we piss off the local population and two or three more step forward to take his place. Does this sound like a winning formula to you? Are you prepared to kill every man of military age in Iraq so we can declare victory?

Privacy Concerns

[blair1q]

If they were so concerned about privacy, how did they compile the database and develop the profiling method in the first place?

Algorithm Revealed!

[gg3po]

Algorithm for determining terrorist tendencies revealed:

• Drives automobile with 'unpatriotic' themed bumper stickers as detected by stoplight 'traffic' video cameras (examples of offending stickers: "Bring our troops home", "No blood for oil", "Save the Whales")
• Home contains 'subversive' media as detected by random drive-by RFID scans of neighborhood (examples of offending materials: Farhenheit 9/11 DVD, Free as In Freedom, framed U.S. Constitution hanging on wall)
• Home computer uses 'non-government-approved-cyber-terrorist-hacker operating system', as determined from network scans subpoenaed from ISP's (and kept secret per the 'Patriot' Act(TM))
• Home computer accesses 'questionable' websites... centers of thought for known subversives, all too frequently. (examples: slashdot, kuro5hin, news.google.com)
• Subject's brain displays 'unacceptable' patterns of activity as determined by random drive-by, neighborhood cerebral scans (examples: Considering joining a labor union, Switching to alternative fuels, or voting for the 'wrong' candidate) [someone will point out that they can't do this remotely...yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar they're working around the clock on a solution]
• Subject makes 'strange' store purchases as recorded in credit/debit/check card billing history. (examples: Vitamin supplements [aren't our FDA sponsored^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H approved remedies good enough for them?], pizza [long known to be the preferred food of hacker-terrorists])
• Subject frequently votes for 'non-traditional' 3rd parties, instead of participating in our beloved Two Party System(TM) as recorded by the new, improved, and federally mandated Diebold Cyber-Voting Machines.
• Subject resists indoctrination^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H avoids our tried and true 'national passtimes' of televised sporting events, sitcoms, and talk shows, according to digital cable/satellite viewing records, preferring, instead, to spend more time on the internet -- a proven tendency of the typical terrorist/hacker.
• Subject avoids our wonderful system of 'No Child Left Behind'(TM) public education where they'll be taught useful skills like 'how to conform', 'shut up and let the teacher finish the lesson', and 'How to beat the essay E-grader' ...by sending their children to private/home schools, and therefore putting them in danger of, indeed, 'being left behind'.
• Subject conducts searches for 'forbidden' terms on Google (examples: "Abu Ghraib Prison", "community involvement", "private schools") [I know we all love Google here, but they're not perfect, just look at Gmail's privacy issues]
• Subject actually goes to the public library and checks out *any* books as evidenced by library checkout history. This is an obvious sign of a non-passive participant in society^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H terrorist -- someone who does too much thinking^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H planning/scheming, and could be dangerous.

... The sad thing is, this is nothing. I could go on for days about various things like these that are in the works, or already in place that can be used to create an evironment that would make the old U.S.S.R. blush (Soviet Russia jokes not withstanding ;-) )

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1928

What makes you a terrorist?

[dindi]

In some countries it is probably enough to have a different colour of skin..

In some countries you demonstrate against globalisation, or as a student you join the greens and make a stand in front of the train carrying nuclear waste.....

Then again... you log-in to a chatroom being angry because of a recent event (just watching everyday CNN, or local news) and say something stupid - eg whoever deserved whatever because they did that other thing the first place .... (-yes I do not want to give any example)

Think of kids (teens) ... have you ever said something too radical, maybe racist because at a certain age you were influenced by an adult or just a stupid friend ? (a radical music group, or someone in a movie that made you think for a split second that his cause was the right one? )

Seriously what are the steps (what is the method) that puts you on that list ?

What if these lists get public and even the cashier in the supermarket gets the blinking red sign when she slides your creditcard ?

And what's more scary: do you ever get off that list if you get on it ? Or your FSCK'd for life ?
Being stared at, stripped at checkpoints and occasionally dragged into interrogation and have your door kicked in in the middle of the night ?

I'm not a politician, that's for sure, but it is reaching a point when I do not want to travel anywhere, I do not want to say anything to anyone online....
I am scared that what I might say can and will be used against me, my family, my kids ...

What's in my head? Honestly I would grab a bunch of good souls and move to an other planet and retry with a new model of society ... (of course for that statement alone I might be considered something bad and dangerous to society)

Negative Quotient

[ari_j]

I have a negative terrorism quotient - I own guns and will shoot you if you are a terrorist, so the more of me there are, the fewer terrorist points we have.

Bzzt, wrong.

[commodoresloat]

Osama was never paid or trained by CIA. It is true that the CIA funded muslim extremists in Afghanistan, the "Afghan Arabs" as they were called, and that Osama was an Afghan Arab fighter, but there is no evidence that he ever was offered money by CIA and in fact there is some evidence he would not have taken it had it been offered. That is not to downplay CIA involvement in and responsibility for the growth of al Qaeda -- US arms and money flooded the region during the 80s, the CIA built bases (many of which were later used by terrorists) and made deals with Afghan warlords (including Hekmatyr, now one of our biggest enemies in the region), and surely Osama's men benefited from this -- but suggesting that bin Laden was on the CIA payroll just makes the argument seem looney. There is no evidence of any direct contact between CIA and bin Laden during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Ubeeeer

[Kizzle]

I mentioned this story on ep5 my show if anyone cares.
http://hackermedia.net/uberleeto/

One specific example: the David Nelsons

[geekotourist]

Is your name David Nelson? You're now on the "always a suspect" list at airports. By my rough estimate (based on the number of Davids and Nelsons in the Census data) there are about 5,500 of them in the US. Evidently there is one "David Nelson" who is a criminal- because of him, all others get checked. David Nelson the child TV star. David Nelson the Washinton State Senator.

What happens to you if someone else has a similar name? From this article on the ACLU's No Fly List lawsuit:

Administered by airlines since November 2001, the "no-fly" list has resulted in routine stops of passengers without terrorist ties who "have no meaningful opportunity to clear their names," said the complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"They are detained, interrogated, delayed, embarrassed, humiliated in front of other passengers," said plaintiffs' attorney Reggie Shuford, an ACLU senior staff attorney...

Plaintiff David Nelson, 34, a trial attorney in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, said he has been stopped more than 30 times -- every flight he's taken since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which gave rise to the "no-fly" list.

Or from this article from 2003:

"This week 18 men named David Nelson, all residents of Oregon, confirmed they have been repeatedly delayed at airport counters and security checkpoints in the last year or so."

"Remember Ozzie and Harriet's son, David Nelson? "I got stopped at the John Wayne Airport" in Orange County, Calif., he said by phone from Los Angeles this week. "Two police officers knew who I was and tried to explain to the guy behind the security desk. It didn't faze him at all." Even as another officer was saying he had once met David's mother, Harriet, David was being instructed to remove his shoes, he says. "I asked, 'Does the guy on the list have a middle name of Ozzie?' He said, 'It just says David Nelson.' "

Re:Most sensible people would

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

And it was okay that Saddam tried to hide and create WMDs, just as long as he wasn't successful?

Maybe what you are saying would make sense if Saddam actually had WMDs. Claiming someone is hiding something that doesn't exist is just an excuse. Too bad you have been reduced to peddling lies and speculations.

And we're losing a guerilla war where we're killing 20 times more of the guerillas than they are of us (at least)?

Most of the people you kill are innocent people. Too bad you like to count the innocent as "terrorists" as per Bush Administration doctrine... In any case, you can kill or lose more people than your opponent and yet win/lose. Classic examples include Vietnam and USSR.

USA was killing 10 Vietnamese (Viet Cong and civilians) per 1 US soldier killed, yet they couldn't control the country, let alone win anything.

A contrary example would be Russia during WWII. Nazi Germany lost around 3.5 million soldiers but Soviet Union lost 19 million (this includes total casulties--not necessarily Germany vs USSR, although most of the major battles were between them). Even though Germany was killing 6x more Soviet soldiers (actually it's higher since a lot of German losses were due to the western front) yet in the end, USSR won. Germany couldn't even win Stalingrad/St. Petersberg, let alone try to invade Moscow.

Furthermore, body counts mean nothing given that terrorists use asymettric warfare. They can do massive damage with small resources.

Obviously you are an old-school Imperialist who is still stuck in the past. The fact of the matter is USA, or for that matter any other country, cannot combat terrorism by imperialism. Even a superpower like USA will go bankrupt trying to invade a few countries. Already, USA can't control Iraq and the plans to invade Iran, Syria, and possibly North Korea are totally infeasible. USA has the largest military by far and it is running out of troops, and is close to conscription (watch next year to see what happens). In addition, USA is running massive deficits and escalating the imperialist wars, as you will surely call for, will simply bankrupt the country.

Re:It doesn't matter if you leave them alone.

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

According to the terrorist's interpretation of islamic law it is their duty to attack the US and all other non islamic states. They believe they are instructed to convert or kill all non islamic people. Those are your choices, join islam or die. This is not an rare interpretation of islamic law.

There have been many "terrorists" throughout the ages. These Islamic fundamentalists aren't the first ones. So are you saying that USA should just carry out imperialism and attempt to take over huge chunks of the world just because of this problem?

Re:You're simply wrong (CLEANED UP)

[protohiro1]

I love this analogy. My version:

Isreali Counter-terrorism strategy: If you get stung by a bee, give their nest a couple of hard whacks. This will teach them not to sting you.

American Strategy: If you get stung by a bee go give a wasp's nest a couple of hard whacks. This will demonstrate to the bees that you mean business and they will stop stinging you.

Re:Most sensible people would

[Jeremi]

I believe the intent of the message was "I hate Bush and will bitch about anything he does."

Absolutely. Since we know that Bush never makes mistakes, anyone who criticizes him must be an irrational liberal, overcome with mindless partisan rancor. The fact that well-being of the United States and the world have nose-dived straight into the toilet over the last three years is completely coincidental, and has nothing at all to do with Bush's radical ideas about how the foreign policy, the economy and the environment should be handled. Move along citizens, nothing to see here.

Score; 5, Troll

[Atario]

Copy unreasoning rant against the U.S. into an Anonymous Coward first post: (Score: 5, Insightful).

"You'll probably be modded down, but I agree.": (Score: 5, Insightful).

Insulting and spitting on Americans on an American computer forum over American internet connections in order to piss off Americans and getting applauded for it (probably by Americans): Priceless. Er, I mean: (Score: 5, Troll).

YHABT. YHAL. HAND.

Law enforcement cares about YOUR privacy!

[Max Threshold]

"...law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns."

Yeah, and the assistant director of the FBI testified before Congress that Carnivore was only used to monitor suspected criminals. That was three months after Special Agent Irwin K. Summerville showed up at my door with a copy of an email I'd sent to my father, in which I called Janet Reno "the domestic enemy I swore an oath to defend the Constitution against."

Maybe they changed their policy. You know, because the FBI cares about privacy. Honestly.

Re:Dealing with Muslim extremists

[Grym]

How on earth is that insightful?? Muslim extremists want to be left alone.

Bullshit. They want to have the wealth of a modern country but without adapting their culture to something even slightly resembling a modern one. They want nuclear technology and, at the same time, a situation where half their population is locked up in houses or under burkas. One problem: it just isn't possible. By definition, things can't change and still be the same. Muslim extremists are idiots; plain and simple. And, not surprisingly, idiots of all types get used and played by politicans for power. You don't honestly think Arafat would EVER put on one of the bomb-vests he blows up teenage kids with, do you?

They don't want Americans forcing the American(tm) way of life down their throats. They don't want to kill anyone, they just feel they have to to survive.

I've never try to force my way of life on anyone. Apart from a true, long-term military occupation, I don't know if that's even possible. The simple fact is that the world copies us... JUST as we copy things from the rest of the world. It's just the way things are. And as far as I'm concerned, tough shit for the muslims who want their society to be the way it was thousands of years ago while they wave their AK-47s in the air.

You want to end terrorism? Get the US to act like a normal country.

Like a normal country? How about a normal muslim country? When's the last time you heard Pakistan do of something altruistic? Why is it we don't expect Iran or Saudi Arabia to help out if there's an earthquake in Turkey or other need for humanitarian assistance?

The problem is the United States is expected to do the impossible. We're supposed to take BOTH sides on EVERY issue. We're supposed to look out for ourselves and every third-world shithole as well. It's no wonder we're hated when we are held to that kind of standard. Let me assure you, you should FEAR the day the United States acts like a "normal" country, because most countries are purely self-serving. As it turns out, we're only partially self-serving.

-Grym

Re:Most sensible people would

[Shakrai]

So you have definitive proof that the occupation would have gone smoother if Saddam

No, actually the occupation would have gone smoother if we had done it back in 1991 when we had just cause to do it. Hell forget that -- perhaps we actually would have been welcomed as liberators if we hadn't told them to rise up against Saddam then stood aside while he mercilessly crushed them after the first Gulf War.

How about another tact? Perhaps the occupation would have gone smoother if Robert McNamara.. err I mean Donald Rumsfeld had listened to his Generals and deployed enough manpower to actually carry out a real occupation instead of trying to wage war on the cheap.

Just like we shouldn't have gone to war with Afghanistan before Sept 11th?

Sorry, we already had cause to go to war with them -- specifically the attack on the Cole and the bombing of our embassies in Africa. Show me some evidence that Iraq actually attacked us and maybe I'll change my stance. The United States doesn't launch preemptive wars -- or at least we didn't used to.

Delivery systems -- you mean like commercial boats or airplanes? How hard do you think it would be to smuggle destructive devices into the U.S. through Mexico or Canada? Not all that hard, considering the massive amounts of drugs flowing into this country.

Oh, please explain to me why Saddam would want to attack the United States knowing full well that we would figure out he did it and respond with massive overwhelming force. Or did mutually assured destruction cease to be viable against dictators? That's funny it seemed to work quite well against Stalin and Khrushchev and I don't think Saddam has anything on Stalin in terms of evil.

And we all know that Saddam heartily approved of Al-Qaeda's WTC attacks.

So did the Saudi royal family (or at least elements of it) and you don't see us invading that country do you? I'd point out that 15 of 19 hijackers came from there (how many came from Iraq? Zero) -- but of course we aren't going to do anything about that (except perhaps censor out parts of the 9/11 report relating to the Saudis) because the Saudis are good friends of the Bush family and they have millions invested in oil coming from Saudi Arabia.

A small group of unpopular "rebels" are not a threat to the upcoming interim government.

Unpopular? Is that way the common people in the street mutilate the bodies of fallen Americans? Not a threat? When that interim government can police the streets without American troops let me know. In any case the "interim Government" is going to be an American puppet and everybody knows it. We aren't even going to give them control over their own military and police forces. Do you really think that's going to fool anyone?