U.S. Gov To Spider Internet

HopeSeekr of xMule writes "Perhaps as one of the first high profile uses of Alexa's WebSearch Platform, the U.S. government plans to search, link and reference every news site, blog and email on the Internet, using sophisticated AI codenamed ADVISE to do the correlations. Unlike traditional dataveilance like Echelon, ADVISE aims to find terrorists before they strike and even deduce their motivations in wanting to commit their crimes. Part of the breakthrough is a way for humans to view data as 3D holographic images with tech recently used at the Superbowl."

Comments

again..

[Pavel Stratil]

This won't help dealing with the terrorists at all.
What if they communicate via

- plain old websites/ftps
- internet storage servers, irc, etc?
- instant messangers
- VoIP
- decentralised networks?

Lets not forget that they can

- obsfucate.. simplest method would be typing stuff into a CAPCHA-like image. OCR has no chance...
- use slang
- encrypt!

It will end up as an intrusion to the privacy of ordinary people unaware of this and/or private communications among companies.

Re:again..

[aztec rain god]

I sort of remember a Bill Hicks quote about the War on Drugs that I'm thinking applies to the War on Terrah- "Its not a war on drugs, its a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times".
What this amounts to is tracking thought-crimes, how can you know someone is going to commit a terrorist act until they do it? People say lots of things, people think lots of things. Whither freedom.

Re:again..

[7*6]

Not only do I agree that this is a 'war on personal freedom,' i also feel that this project has disaster written all over it. This 'AI' will have to be pretty intelligent to tag and organize all of this content in a meaningful way, and on top of that, those analysing the data will need to be pretty friggin' brilliant to use it correctly.

as you say, "People say lots of things, people think lots of things." I personally feel that there is no one who can honestly or accurately see all comments and verbalized streams of thought for what they are worth - usually just contemplation or teen angst.

while it is certainly *possible* that terrorists might use (or have used) globally accessible modes of communication to plan a major attack, monitoring the news wires and blogs is probably not the most effective way to prevent the attack.

we must continue to demand privacy at all times, however i feel that the push by the top levels of government to gain access to our souls could be our downfall as a society as we distance ourselves from each other in fear of relinquishing too much information.

Re:again..

[Kjella]

If you kill a gay man because you hate gays how is that anything other than a murder?

If the purpose of your murder is to incite fear and terror in all gay people, then yes. It is far beyond a death threat - a criminal offense in itself - you've already gone through with it, the only question is who's next. Multiply that with the number of people you've threatened and we can easily put you away for good.

Hate thought isn't illegal, any more than other thoughts. What is pure hate crimes would have been called slander, libel, threats and more if they were done against an individual. You can't treat gays as inferior to straight people without treating a single gay man as inferior to a single straught man. Where does that leave your "All men are created equal..."? That it's okay as long as you insult many enough at once?

Re:again..

[jrp2]

"And why is a murder committed out of hate worse than a "regular" murder? The victim is equally dead either way."

Good question, perhaps this will put it into perspective.

First, let's make this battery instead of murder. Murder is so heinous it is indeed hard to consider a major difference between one derived from "hate" vs. other reasons (being cheated in some way, result of a robbery, etc.). They are both "high crimes" no matter how you measure it, serious punishment will likely occur regardless of the hate component. Battery might be a better crime to illustrate the point, and probably one of the more common uses of hate aggravation (along with vandalism).

A non-hate battery crime usually is an event with some guilt on the part of the victim. Not saying they deserve it, but they probably did something to instigate it (insulted your friend, smashed into your car, etc.). The escalation was likely avoidable by apologizing, running away, or just keeping a cool head about you.

Take a hate-crime battery, and the victim was probably completely innocent, just being black, gay, muslim, etc. and at the wrong place at the wrong time was enough.

The perpetrator in the non-hate battery is likely regretful later, and is probably not an inherently evil person. They may need drug/alcohol treatment and/or anger management classes, etc. They are likely to learn a lesson, and will likely avoid repeating the offense in the future. There likely was no premeditation to it either.

The hate-based batterer is generally not regretful, perhaps even proud and satisfied. They will highly likely repeat it, and there is very little a victim can do to avoid it. This is a MUCH more dangerous person, and the punishment (and/or rehabilitation) needs to be much stronger (IMNSHO).

Another situation is a gay neighbor of mine that got burglarized. He came home to find his home burglarized, and "die fags" spray painted on his wall. I have been burglarized, and it was painful and scary, but I did not take it personally and I was not traumatized. I took it as a random, unfortunate, event not directed at me personally. Some druggy looking to finance his next fix. I could definitely see a difference in these situations, my neighbor was totally traumatized, as would I be. I definitely see the crime perpetrated against my neighbor as a far more serious crime than the simple burglary I endured, even though, at their core, they were otherwise similar.

Also be cognizant of other factors that can aggravate criminal sentences, such as recidivism, no remorse, etc. These are along the same lines as hate crime aggravations. They are all an attempt by society to allow for differentiation between one-time mistakes by the offender, and the much more dangerous criminals that will likely repeat and perhaps escalate their crimes. It is just codifying "hate" as an aggravation at the same level as some of the other factors.

I am not sure how well I am making my point, but I guess the bottom line is if you look at the victim impact, the impact of a hate crime on the victim (including their family and community) is far greater than than a non-hate crime. There is little a victim of a hate crime can do to prevent it. As well as the perpetrator of a hate crime is much more likely to repeat it.

I agree with earlier points, it can be difficult to determine when a crime is hate-based, or not. But in many cases, it is not all that hard. I do agree that assigning "hate crime" status to a crime should not be taken lightly or capricously, and if there is any reasonable doubt, should not be applied. I think (I hope) it is applied very carefully, and sparingly, in real life.

The Erosion of America

[TripMaster Monkey]

Proponents of this initiative boast that other data mining systems, such as Starlight, have already proven their worth in the fight against terrorism. However, given the fact that the current administration knew full well that Osama bin Laden intended to use hijacked airliners as missiles in a terrorist strike, but chose not to act, and that the CIA managed to uncover this information without a wholesale violation of the privacy of American citizens, I really can't see the justification here.

Why exactly does the Bush administration need such vast amounts of information to conduct their 'war on terror'? And why were they unable to use the perfectly good intel they did possess to thwart the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil?

One thing's for sure...it doesn't really matter whether the people OK this initiative or not, as Dubya & Company have amply demonstrated a complete contempt for the law of the land.

Robots

[krgallagher]

"Perhaps as one of the first high profile uses of Alexa's WebSearch Platform, the U.S. government plans to search, link and reference every news site, blog and email on the Internet, using sophisticated AI codenamed ADVISE to do the correlations."

I don't suppose this is going to honor the rules in my robots.txt.

It won't work.

[AltGrendel]

Terrorists already know how to work around this stuff for critical communications. Go low tech. Don't use phones, don't use email, don't use the web. The method that Al Queda uses to get the videos to the media demonstrate that they already have a very good low tech infrastructure to do this.

This just looks like the security people are getting desprate and trying to cast a wider net. The secret wiretaps used on citizens was a wide net that seems to have had poor results.

The quote that annoys me...

[meringuoid]

Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."

Excuse me?

If what he says is true, then it's possible that the technology has been used to protect our lives. Our freedoms are a different matter. Which of the two you consider to be the more important is a pretty strong indicator of whether you're a free country or a police state.

Interesting

[voice_of_all_reason]

I can't wait to see history books in about 100 years or so. Bin Laden's going to be up there with Sun Tzu and General Meade for the title of "greatest strategist ever."

Singlehandedly causing the West to self-destruct is no small potatoes.

The most terrifying quote in the article

[prospero14]

"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy."

This is not something "we" need to be willing to do! My civil liberties are NOT YOURS TO GIVE AWAY! I'm terrified that a CS prof at Stanford thinks that it's no big deal that the US wants to spy on its own citizens and deprive us of our rights under the 4th and 5th amendments. (Yes, the 5th ammendment too, since US Citizens have been held on US soil without being charged with a crime, and thus deprived of due process of law.)

How can any educated person think this loss of privacy is "no big deal"? I'm at a loss for words.