Computer Models Find Patterns In Asymmetric Threats

The Narrative Fallacy brings us a story about a project by University of Alabama researchers to develop a database capable of anticipating targets for future guerrilla attacks. Quoting Space War: "Adversaries the US currently faces in Iraq rely on surprise and apparent randomness to compensate for their lack of organization, technology, and firepower. 'One way to combat these attacks is to identify trends in the attackers' methods, then use those trends to predict their future actions,' said UA-Huntsville researcher Wes Colley. 'Some trends from these attacks show important day-to-day correlations. If we can draw inferences from those correlations, then we may be able to save lives by heightening awareness of possible events or changing the allocation of our security assets to provide more protection.' Researchers reviewed the behavior signatures of terrorists on 12,000 attacks between 2003 and mid-2007 to calculate relative probabilities of future attacks on various target types."

Comments

A step up.

[Ethanol-fueled]

As lame as it sounds, it would be a step up from the current method my gov't(US) uses: treat everybody like a criminal.

Re:A step up.

[wizardforce]

you're assuming that the current administration doesn't realize current protocols do nothing. It's security theatre not security. Had they actually wanted to prevent the kind of threats they claim are the most serious, they'd do well by scraping the police state they've set up and get out of Iraq. Here's a hint: you don't need a supercomputer with advanced algorithms to figure out that you can't lessen terrorism by invading countries for little or no reason, blowing up all their infrastructure and torturing people.

game theory

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all part of game theory. If your enemy doesn't randomize their tactics, then you can take advantage of any statistical bias or pattern. Soon anyone buying a geiger counter, thermal noise diode, or even a lava lamp, will be a candidate for the terrorist watch list.

Re:game theory

[psykocrime]

Right, and of course the next question is "what's to stop the terrorists from doing the same analysis, and the making it a point to do something other than
what the model predicts?" Now that it's public knowledge that we are using this kind of analysis, wouldn't it be useless?

Re:game theory

[Protonk]

Because terrorists are stupid. That's the sad, sad, conclusion we have to reach. Some methods of communication and control are relatively sophisticated, but by and large, people get caught through old fashioned police work. We have trumped up this threat like we were fighting UNCLE. The administration doesn't want the fact that we easvsdrop leaked because the terrorists will adapt and conquer that threat. They don't want specific torture methods revealed because they will train to be resilient to them (tell me how you train to not crack when someone pulls your fingernails out). they can't tell us why the liquid ban is still in effect because Abdul MacGyver will fashion a fancy bomb based on a press release.

There are situations where official silence is a good thing. "Dark Sun", the history of the hydrogen bomb, shows a good example of how the KGB mined a public report about nuclear energy before and after it was expurgated to see which important elements had been changed. They discovered one sentence had been deleted about fission product 'poisoning' of nuclear piles. From this one sentence they probably saved weeks to months of theoretical and practical work.

we are not in that situation. We can expect sophistication from our enemies--police and DA's dealing with mafia and gang lords in jail can tell you the elaborate and extensive measures taken by the gangs to ensure that control continued uninhibited through prison walls. What we should not expect is omnipotence. If we do that, they have won (and they practically have). We cannot expect them to reverse engineer every public model and therefore make public no models. We cannot expect them to exploit basic human rights needs and therefore keep those from them. We cannot expect them to be so sophisticated as to get through every net available and therefore treat every bottle of gatorade as a threat to national security. We have to establish competent policing, both here and abroad. We have to treat threats honestly and responsibly. We have to shun the notion that governmental secrecy is a necessary policy route.

A Deadly Lottery

[Dr. Eggman]

Shortly after the study began however, the patterns began to match-up to something surprisingly familiar. We have determined that the terrorists are using Windows' random number generator to pick their targets.

Re:Terrible idea

[caffeinemessiah]

The attacks are surprises and random, how are they going to try to extrapolate patterns with computers?

Even better -- if you look in television static long enough, you are going to find a pattern. Either they've found some hidden predictor of attacks, or maybe someone needs a course in basic Ramsey theory, which deals with conditions under which order (patterns) must occur even in random noise.

Consider this example (*not* meant as an analogy for the discrete math nazis): you have an infinite sequence of completely random letters over the alphabet. What is the probability of finding "abc" repeated 15 times with a gap of exactly 10 letters between successive repeats? If the stream is indeed completely random, then the probability is non-zero and you will EVENTUALLY (probably) see the "pattern".

Common Sense at work.

[nexuspal]

FTA
"This study considered two aspects of each attack: the target of the attack, and the time of the attack. Using careful statistical techniques, the team identified correlations between attacks on various target types as a function of time. For instance, if there were an attack on a government target, that somewhat increased the chance of an attack on a police target over the next several days."

Sounds pretty strait forward. If you have a brazen attack against, say, a base, you can expect a higher risk of attacks on other assets. Isn't that why after the 911 attacks there were Combat Air Patrol flights over every major city for days. This is just common sense...

Re:Common Sense at work.

[milsoRgen]

Yeah from reading the article it seemed like pretty basic stuff they were correlating. Like, it's a clear day: increased risk of sniper attacks. Or it's night: increased risk of people sneaking around.

A step down more like

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The computer model throws a double six as you walk past the screening point. You get selected for The Glove Of Fun.

Computer models are only as good as their data: Garbage In, Gospel Out. That's a problem with climate modelling. The climatologists keep tweaking the models until they get what they expect and are then smug because the models "prove" their predictions.

If terrorist activity is truely random, then this thing does not stand a chance. However, terrorists, like most people, likely follow some sort of pattern and if the signature "tell tale signs" can really be detected then perhaps attacks etc can be predicted.

Re:A step down more like

[Protonk]

People like you freak me out. What do you think science is? How, magically, does meteorology differ from Physics? Do we hold the same opinions about black holes, dark matter and the big bang as we used to? Hell, the term "big bang" was originally pejorative--scientists didn't fit that possiblity into their models. The data changed and so that forced a change in theory. It's how fucking science works. For fuck's sake.

Climate science is no different. What is different is that there are consequences for our actions on earth that matter depending on the outcome of the model. Because there are huge stakes involved, people tend to forms groups at the poles of opinion. You have companies with large stakes in suggesting that climate change is not man made paying for climate research by scientists who feel similarly. You have news organizations and political organizations (who know shit about science) taking the barest of abstracts from a study and runnign with it. You have sceince dumbed down by both sides in order to explain it to voters and policymakers. this sort of thing doesn't happen that much in some branches of science.

Evolutionary biology, genetics, labor economics, sociology, antropology. Those are a short list of disciplines whose conclusions draw people into camps. They also happen to be the same disciplines (not an exclusive list) that people accuse of unscientific practice (and then in doing so, describe the scientific method perfectly, as you have done). That those disciplines and only those disciplines would suffer from a failure to understand the scientific model alone while scores of other disciplines would execute that model perfectly strains credulity.

Re:A step down more like

[Protonk]

They do. All the time.

Prediction: The earth is warming due to man made effects.

Test: Take given data (earth warming) and attempt to sort out all possible other effects.

These models are EXCEEDINGLY complicated. The early ones were pretty damn complicated but were basic by comparison. Models suggested for years that climate change was man made without a doubt. Later, models were revised with the addition of new data and new processes. this means that NEW information was found that NO ONE had before, like the actual oxygen content in ice cores. Like the feedback nature of ocean currents. Those were taken into account and the model changed. We became less sure of the impact of man in the scheme. As the models grew more sophisicated the confidence intervals got better and more information was added. We are now MUCH, MUCH more sure that climate change is real, man made and will impact us in a significant fashion.

All we have left are people like you. People who claim that their rejection of climate change is based on some scientific principle, like they are galileo before the church. I've got news for you. It's isn't some religious theocracy. It isn't an unscientific crusade. It is just science that leads to an unfortunate conclusion. We don't WANT to have this conclusion. We don't WANT to come to the conclusion that life will get demonstrably worse in the next 100 years rather than better. We don't WANT to live on a warming planet. These are just conclusions from the model and evidenced by the world around us.

I have no knowledge of why you don't get this or don't want to get this. All I can say is I'm sorry for you.

Re:A step down more like

[Kjella]

The cheapest attack on science is to take some marginal doubt and blow it entirely out of proportion to pretend the model is nothing more than a wild guess. Like the socalled "Missing link" that creationists tried to use to attack evolution on the home field. Yes, some transitional stages are missing and if we found them, we could make yet smaller transitional stages but in the overall model it's like saying gravity doesn't exists because we argue if a 0.02m/s**2 discrepancy is due to wind resistance or not.

Another cheap trick is to use an apparent chaoticness to discredit a fairly predictable pattern. Take a boiling pot of coffee, it's quite chaotic and predicting how it'll bubble and move. But it's fairly easy to calculate how long until the pot is dry, or how quickly it'll cool down. The weather is chaotic, will it rain here, snow there, cold wind, warm wind and so on. The climate on the other hand ilke ice forming in winter and melting in summer is very predictable, there's no reason to think the climate is chaotic even though meteorology is.

Third trick is the oppositing position/equal weight balance. It's got all the validity of listening to tobacco-sponsored research showing smoking isn't unhealthy. In science there are roughly two positions, the scientific and the non-scientific one. Sure, scientists can argue whether the former is one foot to the left or to the right but the non-scientific position usually is somewhere down the hall, out the door, down the street and out of town usually in some sort of field with "alien" crop circles.

In the end, I've found the only way to win against someone that doesn't want to have a real discussion is the War Games solution: "The only way to win is not to play" or it can also be expressed like this: "Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience". Note that idiots in this case also include people that aren't able to keep unscientifc arguments out of a scientific discussion, even if they seem otherwise intelligent. Just consider it some kind of mental psykosis, like a paranoid sees enemies in everything others see the divine in everything.

And last but not least, conviction is much stronger than any good scientific understanding, if you believe anything as much as a believer does you have an unhealthy scientific attitude unreceptive to opposing information. What they take as wavering on your part are healthy qualifiers and limitations, it's their irrational unrelenting belief in their own position that is the problem. Extremely stubborn and extremely wrong often go hand in hand, because they locked in to their first position and never gave it up since.

Re:You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock...

[FleaPlus]

So predict the unpredictable?

Or more precisely, predict the mostly-unpredictable. Just about any activity involving humans, even if it seems utterly random at first glance, will have underlying patterns which emerge once one analyzes the data.

Data Mining Principles Applied, Eigenbehaviors

[ngr8]

Although there are clearly many random elements, http://reality.media.mit.edu/eigenbehaviors.php/suggest that the "Circular Error Probable" may be improved, the site reads in part:

Eigenbehaviors allow us to identify the structure inherent in daily human behavior with models that can accurately cluster, analyze and predict multimodal data from individuals and groups. We show that it is possible to accurately model many people's lives with just a few parameters - thus allowing accurate prediction of their future behavior from limited observations of their current behavior - as well as to create a similarity metric between individuals and groups that allows accurate identification of group affiliation and behavioral 'style'.

It isn't whether it is an optimal strategy, but whether these tools improve materially the effectiveness of intelligence. "Discovery" AI/Expert systems were finding new materials processes during the 1980s.

Oh ye of little faith. Still, trust in god but lock your car.

Re:You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock...

[milsoRgen]

Yeah but a 6th month study done in Alabama ain't going to give you anything more than a good soldier is going to be able to tell you. Or maybe a good spreed sheet, this looks like a glorified Office macro to me.

Or get change

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sir, that quarter you have in your pocket is a ramdom number generating device. Spread 'em.

Supposedly one of the better spies (I forget which) always carried a coin in his pocket that he'd flip every few minutes to make random decisions (get to a street corner: turn or go straight? Flip).

Re:Terrible idea

[FleaPlus]

Either they've found some hidden predictor of attacks, or maybe someone needs a course in basic Ramsey theory [wikipedia.org], which deals with conditions under which order (patterns) must occur even in random noise.

Sure, that's why you have test sets to determine if the models the system learns from the data are useful or not. I think it's safe to assume that the scientists working on this are familiar with the basics of learning theory and modeling.

Re:Terrible idea

[Dr. Eggman]

But the terrorists have to conform to reality, there are conditions that must be met for an attack to be carried out. Resources and weaponry must be aquired transferred or built. Willing persons must be in the area or transported there. The application of these resources, which are valuable even if they are a disposable one-shot sort deal often, so we know they will be trying to maximize effect in minimizing risk. There may be vastly more targets than terrorists, but that does not mean that every target could be targeted at any one time. If anything, the research should be a useful tool in helping predict not randomized attacks, but rather supplies, logistics, idelogical supports; the true treasures of information warfare.

Re:Terrible idea

[readin]

Just how easy is it to think of something truly random? Ask 100 people to pick a random number between 1 and 10 and you will see a pattern. It won't be random because certain numbers will be preferred. Try asking the person to repeatedly pick a random number between 1 and 10 and they won't be able to do it. Throw in other factors they need to consider and being random gets really hard. By using computer pattern matching we have a shot at discovering patterns they don't even know they have, and perhaps patterns psychologists aren't aware of either. The psychologist will make assumptions, and those assumptions might be wrong or limiting. The computer can think outside the human box. It might just find the pattern without being hampered by questions about why the pattern is there.

Because....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Using computers sounds far more scientific than reading tea leaves.

Re:Because....

[timeOday]

Before you rush to judgement, I suggest you play a few rounds of rock, paper, scissors. There's nothing crazy about spending money trying to find patterns in the enemy's behavior, even if he's intentionally trying to be random... that's the entire field of cryptology!

Re:Terrible idea

[EricTheMad]

The attacks are surprises and random, how are they going to try to extrapolate patterns with computers? The article doesn't refer to the attacks as random, but says that they rely on "apparent randomness". Nothing humans do is ever truly random, there are always patterns. They aren't trying to predict when and where and attack will happen, only what target are more likely to be hit. From the article:

For instance, if there were an attack on a government target, that somewhat increased the chance of an attack on a police target over the next several days. Armed with this knowledge, commanders could allocate greater than usual resources to protect police assets more carefully for several days after an attack on a government target.

Re:Terrible idea

[TurinPT]

Human behavior is not entirely random, certain assumptions can be made.
For example, when choosing random locations on a map, people tend to scatter the locations across it, leaving a somewhat similar distance between each one of them.
Real randomness creates clusters on the map, causing some of the chosen locations to end up next to each other.

On the other hand, maybe I've just been watching too much "numb3rs"...

Basis for correlation

[caitsith01]

I imagine a strong basis for correlation would be "target is a member of armed forces engaged in hostile occupation of foreign country invaded on false pretences for strategic reasons." E.g. America in Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Russia in Afghanistan, Germany in France.

In other words, the best way to reduce these types of attacks is to avoid invading other countries without (at least) the invitation of the citizens. Compare, for example, UN peacekeeping forces in Kosovo who are not subject to constant random attacks precisely because the general populace wanted them there.

America needs to learn to address the underlying disease, not the symptoms. Likewise terrorism: remove the underlying motivation (hint: it's not "terrorists hate freedom") and resolve the problem.

Re:Terrible idea

[flymolo]

And some targets are preferable to others. So empty warehouse X isn't as interesting as a shopping mall. So the randomness must fall with certain ranges of targets that will cause terror. Pattern analysis may help figure out what targets they pick randomly from based upon the above mentioned logistic, supply and idealogical concerns.

Re:Terrible idea

[Shihar]

You miss the point of the program. The types of attacks is constantly shifting. Where it shifts to might be unpredictable, but that doesn't mean that you can't catch the shift as it happens. So, imagine all of a sudden you get a few small, but successful attacks on Shiite elementary schools in a certain providence. Your correlation notices that there have been a few attacks, it notes that the attacks 'success' matches what counts as 'success' (high body count, media exposure, low losses, political change, increased sectarian strife, etc.) from previous shifts in targets, and alerts you to expect more attacks on school in that providence, and warns that in a months time you might be facing such attacks in other providences.

On the other hand, imagine that there are a few attacks on school buses. You might be tempted to draw the same conclusion as the school attacks. However, the bus attacks don't meet the pattern. They result in "failure", whatever that might be (high causalities on attackers, minimal media coverage, low body count, etc). The program says not to pour all your resources into fighting this new threat as it is unlikely that the attacks will continue.

I am not saying whether or not such a program is going to work, but the principle is sound. Some types of events lead to other types of events. You might not be predicting what happens in a year, but you might catch a trend before it spread across the entire nation.

another shameful abuse of technology

[nickhart]

The people of Iraq have a right to resist their occupiers by any means necessary. If a government with a century-long history of aggression and crushing democracies were to invade your country, I'm sure you'd agree. That anyone would develop technology to aid the occupiers is shameful. If anything, try to come up with a computer model for ending the war and imprisoning its architects and enablers.

Save Lives?

[MrSteveSD]

If we can draw inferences from those correlations, then we may be able to [b]save lives[/b] by heightening awareness of possible events or changing the allocation of our security assets to provide more protection.

How about saving lives by not using air-strikes in densely populated civilian neighbourhoods? It doesn't take a computer model to tell you that bombing towns and cities is going to kill civilians and create a lot of very angry (and probably armed) people.

Re:Save Lives?

[NMerriam]

How about not placing artillery and missile positions in densely populated civilian neighborhoods? That way you don't get bombed.

Well, unfortunately the guys placing the artillery are not necessarily the ones who live there, and the ones who do live there will get a gun pointed at their family if they ask for it to be moved.

Which is not to say that civilians getting caught in the middle between two warring sides is anything new or novel, but the least we could do is not try to dismiss it by implying they deserve to get killed.

Re:Save Lives?

[cowwoc2001]

How about not placing artillery and missile positions in densely populated civilian neighborhoods? That way you don't get bombed.

Well, unfortunately the guys placing the artillery are not necessarily the ones who live there, and the ones who do live there will get a gun pointed at their family if they ask for it to be moved.

Which is not to say that civilians getting caught in the middle between two warring sides is anything new or novel, but the least we could do is not try to dismiss it by implying they deserve to get killed. They don't deserve to be killed but nor do our guys. Our obligation is to do our best to hit the terrorists without harming the civilians. If that becomes impossible then it is perfectly acceptable to go ahead with the strike. Terrorists will embed themselves in civilian centers this way so long as it pays off. That is, so long as it prevents governments from attacking them or it gives those governments a bad name once they do the terrorists will continue to do this. We need to stop practicing double-standards which make it impossible for Western governments to win this war.

Case in point: when the Lebanese army went into a Palestinian camp in 2007 and took out terrorists alongside civilians not a word of condemnation was uttered. Hundreds of civilians died yet the UN, US and all surrounding Arab states defended their actions. When Israel did the exact same thing in 2002 (with a very low civilian death count) there was no end to the condemnation they received.

Here is an example of what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Defensive_Shield
\-> Palestinians murder hundreds of Israeli civilians in a matter of a month
\-> Israeli go out and kill the terrorists
\-> They are accused of genocide. The media, UN and all major rights groups estimate the death toll into the thousands.
\-> Months later the UN publishes a report which affirms what Israel has been saying all along: "Fifty-two Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospital in Jenin by the end of May 2002. IDF also place the death toll at approximately 52. A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged." http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/

Attitudes like this ensure that terrorism is hear to stay for decades to come.

Re:You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock...

[milsoRgen]

Most people don't realize that Alabama universities are on the leading edge of homeland security and law enforcement research And that is supposed to increase my respect for Alabama? Sounds like a a good place for the Gestapo headquarters.

Re:Terrible idea

[Rei]

Really, though, you think they're studying shopping mall attacks? They studied "12,000 terrorist attacks". Bet you didn't know there had been 12,000 terrorist attacks in Iraq in the past four years, did you, let alone 12,000 well documented enough to study? Assuming an average of 20 people killed per attack, that'd mean ~250k people had been killed in well-documented terrorist attacks without the media catching on to the overwhelming majority of it. With that many people being killed by terrorists, who needs insurgents?

Here's a wild notion: they're doing what the US government usually does and calling any insurgent attack a "terrorist attack". Which is why this research is being carried out for the DoD instead of the Department of Homeland Security.

Re:You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock...

[bondsbw]

In case you didn't read the article, it's the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

By the way... both UA and UAH are national leaders in homeland security and law enforcement technology research. Add UAB, with its biomedical research and other engineering programs, and Alabama universities are home to some of the best engineering and technology research in the nation.

No kidding.

[FatSean]

I love the terrorist-fearing pant-loads crying that the terrorists use women and children to fight off the people who have invaded and occupied their country. Do they really think American women and children wouldn't volunteer to help resist the Chinese, if they entered our nation and set up a puppet government?

All I can say about this conflict is that nobody I give a shit about was stupid enough to believe the government's lies and enlist to fight in Iraq. My deepest condolences for those who enlisted pre-2003 to defend their nation...these men and women are being misused.

Re:No kidding.

[Ieshan]

This "don't you think you'd help fight the Chinese!" argument is so asinine it's not funny.

If the Chinese came and took over Hawaii, you can bet hard money that citizens wouldn't be setting off bombs in supermarkets or strapping explosives to disabled people to use as weaponry. The disabled people that they strap weapons to aren't fighting "the noble fight", they're people who don't know the difference because of mental disability. Would we use the full force of our military to stop such an attack? Of course. But don't act like we'd suddenly turn into religious fanatics that would bomb civilians in our own country to prove a point.

I know that you think the war is wrong, but don't try to justify terrorism by blaming the victims of terrorism - either the brainwashed kids or the innocent, targeted civilians. There were plenty of terrorist attacks around the world before Iraq, all of them due to a lethal combination of ignorance, hatred, and explosives.

One and only

[yuri2001]

The only pattern I can really agree on is the one where we see the US spending billions in research against something that a simple change of foreign policy could (still?) avoid.

And BTW, I thought you guys stopped relying too much on spy sats and computers an more on HUMINT?

Recently we discovered that some djihad groups are training 8 years old kids to be suicide bombers, that's were we are, the US wants to stop it? Then think with humanity.

that's flawed - here's better methodology

[rubycodez]

I have a fool-proof method for completely avoiding any future attacks upon our troops in Iraq. Get the fuck out of Iraq. Stop invading countries for the purpose of lining the pockets of defense contractors and protecting the interests of oil tycoons and central bankers. Predictable idiotic responses to my idea: the terrorists will have won! The terrorists have already won a new recruiting and breeding ground, thanks to gw, cheney and rumsfeld. Iran will take over Iraq: let them have it. they're probably too smart to want the trouble though. there will be civil war and genocide. we already have that, pay more attention. we'll destabilize the middle east. we already did that.

Re:that's flawed - here's better methodology

[NMerriam]

I have a fool-proof method for completely avoiding any future attacks upon our troops in Iraq. Get the fuck out of Iraq.

Didn't you hear President Bush explain how they'd follow us home if we left Iraq? There's only one guy causing all this conflict. If he's there, he can't be here. But if he doesn't need to be there, he can easily move his family here and cause all sorts of trouble.

Al Qaeda is Platinum on American Airlines, he actually is a million miler from way back, which means free upgrades for life, so he doesn't mind a long-haul flight! He has plenty of Starwood points to come over here, don't make him cash those in when he was planning on surprising his wives with a trip to the Bahamas next Spring!

Re:that's flawed - here's better methodology

[Dachannien]

Maybe you haven't been keeping up with things, but the Iraqis are actually taking their country back from the insurgents/terrorists now, with US help in training their army and police. While there are still some bad spots - Al Qaeda moved to Mosul after Baghdad started getting too tough for them - things are enormously better in Iraq now. Iraqis who have day-to-day contact with US forces (and a lot of them do) have a very positive image of our troops, often trusting them to get things done because the Iraqi forces are still dealing with internal bureaucracy and corruption. That word has spread, to the point where people across Iraq are standing up to make their neighborhoods more secure.

This isn't about a simplistic "the trrrists will win if we leave", even though it's true that they will. It's about people's lives. While we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place, it's too late to pretend we never went - we have to deal with the consequences of the invasion and as well as the years during which the "do more for less" policy was pushed by Rumsfeld. Yes, thousands of innocent civilians have died at our hands, and tens of thousands have died at the hands of the terrorists, but hundreds of thousands will die if we leave Iraq to be split up by Iran and Al Qaeda.

By the way, the article wasn't merely talking about preventing attacks on our troops. Part of the surge strategy was to ensure that American troops are in the neighborhoods and interacting with the Iraqi people on a constant basis rather than holing up in bases and bunkers. That opens them up to further attacks, but our troops know how to defend themselves (easily the deadliest thing for our soldiers in a combat situation is buried IEDs, because insurgents and terrorists are usually extremely poor shots using the fairly inaccurate AK-47). What kills so many civilians is suicide bombings, shootings in crowds, and other activities that the study from the article hopes to pattern and predict. Much like the current mission in Iraq, the study is about saving civilian lives first and foremost.

Re:You're Tax Dollars At Work Frylock...

[johndiii]

Not to mention the fact that the Marshall Space Flight Center is in Huntsville. That Saturn V thing? No way it could have actually reached space, it was designed in Alabama.

But this is Slashdot; it's useless to try rebut the groupthink (read: prejudice) with facts.

Re:Terrible idea

[DavidShor]

Then terrorists will start rolling dice. They aren't idiots, and they have a bigger stake in this then we do.

Do you really need a refresher?

[Tony]

The ENTIRE THING was preventable by not invading a sovereign nation and killing a messload of innocent civilians in the name of... what exactly was it again? I seem to have forgotten.

*sigh*

I hate it when people trivialize the reason the US went into Iraq.

It's a *very* complex, very powerful function of time. However, it can be simply summarized thusly:

        Begin: Terrorists are hiding out in Iraq, and Iraq had something to do with 9/11
        Month 1: Weapons of Mass Destruction
        Month 2: Liberate Iraq from the tyranny of a dictator
        Month 3: Bring democracy to the Middle East in order to stabilize it
        Month 4: Them WMDs are still out there, and they're not going to destroy themselves, you know
        Month 5: Iraq is going to flourish now they have democracy
        Month 6: Mission accomplished!
        Month 7: That dictator had help hiding the WMDs, but we'll find them once we're in complete control
        Month 8: Iraqis are fighting back! They're terrorists! See? We told you they were there! ...
        Month 42: Iran is building WMDs!

Know what I hate? It was so patently obvious Iraq had no WMDs, and no capability of developing anything more dangerous than mixing bleach with ammonia.

It's over 6 years since 9/11, and we're no closer to catching bin Laden than we were at the beginning. Didn't somebody famous vow he would bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice? Now, I know that vows don't mean a lot to everyone, but they *should* matter to the leader of the world's most powerful nation. But, then again, he vowed to uphold and protect the Constitution, as well.

Oh, well. Fuck it. I am trying to let go of my hate, so I may find peace.

Somebody on this planet should have peace, anyway.

How about a study

[Swampash]

...on why the USA is so hated that there have been TWELVE THOUSAND terrorist attacks in three and a half years?

Or is that just crazy defeatist talk?

Re:Terrible idea

[caffeinemessiah]

That's why the concept of statistical significance exists.

Significance only makes sense when the underlying distribution is known, such as the random sequence I listed as an example. When you have no clue what the underlying distribution is, and can NOT safely assume near-normality because of the central limit theorem, all bets are off. I just don't buy that the distribution of terrorist attacks is normal or even near-normal, not without some hard evidence.

He was eventually nabbed when...

[patio11]

counterintelligence realized most people do not flip when crossing the street.

No, I'm joking. Seriously though, one of the things the military does in Iraq when looking for the foreign jihadis is they watch for wrong turns off main thoroughfares. It is apparently pretty effective at sorting out people who aren't from around here -- if you know Main Street less well than the Americans, you just might be from out of town!

Re:Terrible idea

[Antique Geekmeister]

The big pattern is that the guerrillas fight dirty. They look for and use any openings: if you close one opening, they'll use the next, least defended one, and it takes them very little time to shift targets because they have little command structure, just enough to keep isolated cells in munitions and shelter.

The second big pattern is "why do they keep attacking"? If the US instigators of this war had listened to their more competent staff, who told them it's a huge mess and they needed 3 times the number of troops and not to use so many mercenaries (who are a massive problem in Iraq as they've been in other "peacekeeping" operatons), we'd have had a much cleaner recovery after the invasion and wouldn't have these issues.

But that's an even bigger picture pattern, and these research studies can do nothing about it.

What a pantload.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Terrorist Attacks? What? Some dumbass strapping dynamite to his chest and wandering into a crowded market? OK - that takes munitions. Taking over a plane with razor knives and flying it into a skyscraper? Takes no munitions, just a shitload of nerve and a complacent herd of passengers. Both result in lots of dead innocent civilians.

But then there are other forms of terrorism, such as flying a B2 filled to the gunnels with high explosive munitions that rain down on the homes and hovels of innocent civilians.

Americans like to bark about terrorism as in the form taken by small groups of murderous assholes, frequently on a suicide mission. And they bark louder when a state gets involved in support of such efforts. But they refuse to take responsibility (much less blame) when they themselves act as State Sponsored and funded terrorists by bombing the living fuck out of innocent civilians. Whether it's a team of suicide bombers or a team of bomber flight crew, the results are the same: mass death of innocent civilians.

And don't go cracking a pantload over how the Iraqis attacked your freedom. WHEN did the boat filled with Iraqi soldiers float to the USA and attack your freedom? What day was that? I sure would like to know because I was taking a vacation in this lovely little place called REALITY. The USA is a terrorist nation. Its unwarranted and unwanted and utterly idiotic invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people there. Whether it is death strapped to some delusional team of assholes chanting ALLAH, or some cynical assholes flying at 12,000m dropping ordnance all over a city and thinking it's a job well done, the results are the same: dead civilians at the hands of a team of assholes.

Here's a way to predict terrorists attacks: check the flying sortie records of the US Air Force.

RS

Re:What a pantload.

[ubuwalker31]

I'd like you to slow down a moment, and take the time to actually read and understand what I am trying to say:

Invading a country illegally is NOT TERRORISM. It is a war crime, and completely unjustifiable. Did you read that last sentence? It is a horrid war crime. Bush and cronies should be thrown in jail.

Using military techniques to cause terror to combatants, such as using a flash bang/stun grenades, dropping bombs, dropping leaflets, and killing enemy soldiers in spectacular fashion is not terrorism. It is the legitimate use of military force.

Your problem is that you equate any killing as unjustifiable murder and any use of terror by military forces as terrorism. When you use these words so broadly, they loose their meaning. Charles Manson is a murderer. Osama bin Laden is a terrorist. If you say that Bush is a murderer, then the word murderer becomes diluted and meaningless, because Osama's actions are clearly of a different caliber and carry with them absolutely no sort of moral, political, or spiritual authority.

The term terrorism should be used specifically, and not loosely as a political tool to attack one's enemies. Otherwise, it becomes as useless in our political debates as the words "socialist" and "liberal".

Re:Maybe YOU are a pussy?

[Ieshan]

Please read the entire thread before responding to one post.

I do like what you did there though. You separated attacks on US troops by roadside bombs and suicide bombs on Iraqi civilians as if they weren't being orchestrated by the same people. Reality check - they are.

The quote I was replying to:
"I love the terrorist-fearing pant-loads crying that the terrorists use women and children to fight off the people who have invaded and occupied their country. Do they really think American women and children wouldn't volunteer to help resist the Chinese, if they entered our nation and set up a puppet government?"

The point still stands. At no time in the revolutionary war did American Soldiers attack their own civilians to prove a political point. The original poster was alleging that the women, children, and disabled individuals who are being recruited by the Terrorist Movements in Iraq are somehow making a willful point to join and participate, to resist occupation. Please confirm to me that you understand that these mentally handicapped individuals are not, in fact, making an informed decision to participate in these bombings and that they are being used to awful and destructive ends by extremely evil individuals.

Also, geoff, I appreciate the snide closing to your post, as if your level of education was somehow greater than mine.