Feds Fund Anti-Terrorism Search Engine

Ben writes "The FAA and researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing an anti-terrorism search engine that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner -- that can be puzzled together by grabbing bits and pieces from unrelated documents. Eventually, they say, the technique can be commercialized to improve search results on more mundane matters.`"

Comments

Okay. I'm sorry. I just have to say.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the funniest thing I've heard about the government doing since they shut down the "psychic spies" unit ten years ago.

I don't quite get it

[wankledot]

Sounds to me like it's simply a terrorism search engine designed perfectly for terrorists. What purposes would culling bits and pieces of info about how to take down an airplane serve for anti-terror efforts? You would find out that it's possible to find lots of info on the subject... great... now what? You're not really going to be able to stop that information from existing.

Re:I don't quite get it

[VidEdit]

The only use for this search engine is find things to censor. Otherwise, as the parent says, it is just a *terrorism* search engine, not an anti-terrorism search engine.

I"d be worried that this will be used as a way to identify subjects for federal Patriot act "National Security Letter" searches--the kind that the victim is prohibited by law to revealing to anyone, even a lawyer!

This is not a good thing.

absurd

[SuperBanana]

anti-terrorism search engine that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner

To be honest, that sort of thing has never struck me as the kind of problem terrorists have had- usually when they've tried it, they've been pretty successful. They haven't tried many times, and we've seen how close even complete and total idiots like Richard Reid(sp?) can come, despite all our "security measures".

Nevermind that far more planes crash because of pilot error or mechanical problems than terrorist hijackings- maybe we should rethink priorities here a little?

What's next? The Department of Transportation determining driver ed manuals need to be pulled because they tell people how to drive a truck, and trucks might be used to carry bombs? Next thing you know, budgets will be hidden because, gasp, we wouldn't want terrorists to know where we spend the most money, they might try to blow it up! Then CSPAN won't be allowed to broadcast senate sessions- wouldn't want terrorists to know when senators are in session. The list goes on and on and on.

This paranoia is getting REALLY annoying. Folks- come to grips with the fact that freedom might, on occasion, require personal sacrifice. This country is getting really fucking annoying to live in, which is pretty much exactly what terrorists set out to do.

In the words of Ben Franklin, "they that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Yeah but

[isotope23]

btu wlli ti wrk if I tpey htings ni schu a wya thta u cna raed lla abuto a trreor plt?

I smee 2 ermmeber taht poeple cn rdae obfsuctaed
wrds. So hw wlle wlil ti wrok whne I strt tlaknig
aobut pultonmiu ro drity bmbs?

Re:Yeah but

[psetzer]

Well, you can slow it down and make things much more difficult, but it's not impossible. The words that you've typed are close to the words that you meant to type. But what's close? Any string of finite length can be transformed into any other string of finite length by adding, subtracting, and substituting characters. Two strings have a distance defined by the minimum number of additions, subtractions and substitutions that it takes to transform one into the other. This is called the Levenshtein distance, or for those who can't pronounce it, the edit distance. It's incidentally how most spellcheckers work, and if you run your text through one, it will be more readable by just about everyone. Now, consider using a SOM, or self-organizing map, a type of neural network. It can classify similar objects into single groups most similar to eachother. You can use this to find instances of possible manglings of uranium, plutonium, and most other words, given a large enough sample. Incidentally, just running your post through a spellchecker (Thunderbird's) and picking the default options on everything made the phrase 'dirty bombs' appear normally. So, it helps, but it's not perfect.

Re:i can only imagine the search terms

[flyingsquid]

i can only imagine what idiots are out there that still believe the US invaded Iraq for oil.

Well, it makes more sense than a lot of the alternatives, like the idea that we invaded for idealistic causes like liberty and human rights and all that shit. If that were really the case, why has the Bush administration proven so reluctant to get involved in places like Liberia and the Sudan, where there's a lot of humanitarian issues, but no economic interests?

If you really want to get a measure of the character of a person, check out how they treat people who they have nothing to gain from. If you apply that same criterion to the United States, I don't think it comes off as very well. The United States' actions in Iraq are- well, at least were intended to be- self serving.

What those self-serving motives were, I don't know. Part of it, I think, was that after the fall of the USSR, the U.S. became the sole remaining superpower. The Neocons wanted to cement that position by knocking off one of the few guys who challenged us, acquiring strategically important bases in the Middle East, and using that position to ensure that America would continue to be able to access the cheap oil it needs to grow. The liberty of the Iraqis was like all the Halliburton contracts- not the main reason for invading, just a bonus.