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Natural Language Processing for State Security

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the your-ipod-can-tell-what-you-mean dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Obviously, computers can't have an opinion. What computers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information. This branch of natural-language processing (NLP) is called 'information extraction' and is used for sorting facts and opinions for Homeland Security. Right now, a consortium of three universities is for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which doesn't have enough in-house expertise in NLP. Read more for additional references and a diagram showing how information extraction is used."

4 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. tinfoil hat... or is it? by macadamia_harold · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What comptuers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information. This branch of natural-language processing (NLP) is called 'information extraction' and is used for sorting facts and opinions for Homeland Security.

    Yeah, because we need AT&T giving wide-scale, undocumented wiretaps to the NSA, who use voice recognition to generate transcripts of everyone's phone calls, and then DHS can run NLP on those transcripts to compile a list of "persons of interest", who are then automatically added to the TSA no-fly lists.

    Yeah, I can envision the future, and the future sucks.

    --
    Push Button, Receive Bacon
  2. Alias-i's ThreatTracker by otisg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is a great little company in Brooklyn, NY called Alias-i. Some years ago they built this interesting "tool" called....guess....ThreatTracker. Information Extraction, Named Entity Recognition and other interesting stuff, if you are into this.
    No, I don't work for them, but their LingPipe toolkit has some cooooool stuff.

    --
    Simpy
  3. A boon to research by JanneM · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's clear "national security" has become what "the internet" or "the cold war" were in their prime: an all-purpose catchphrase to get funding for any research whatsoever, no matter how tenuously connected.

    Look at the two project proposals below and imagine which one will have an easier time getting funding:

    "An epistemological metaanalysis of object-subject interrelations and conflict avoidance in Beowulf"

    or

    "An epistemological metaanalysis of object-subject interrelations and conflict avoidance in Beowulf to better understand threats to NATIONAL SECURITY"

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  4. Sounds like GALE by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds kind of like DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office's GALE Program:

    " The goal of the GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program is to develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages, eliminating the need for linguists and analysts and automatically providing relevant, distilled actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion. Automatic processing "engines" will convert and distill the data, delivering pertinent, consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests."

    --
    Demented But Determined.