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Software to Randomize Police Operations at LAX
owlgorithm writes "A USC research group has created software, named ARMOR (Assistant for Randomized Monitoring over Routes), that will be used at LAX Airport to make security and police operations there truly unpredictable. The software records the locations of routine, random vehicle checkpoints and canine searches at the airport, and police provide data on possible terrorist targets, based in part on recent security breaches or suspicious activity. The software then makes random decisions (which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks) and tells the police where to dispatch and when. The most notable detail is that terrorists who had access to ARMOR still wouldn't be able to predict the searches."
I have a rock that keeps tigers away.
"The software then makes random decisions (which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks)"
So it's not really random... A pattern must come out after a while.
Because we all know that terrorist try to actively avoid canine search and airport security roaming all over the airport, as opposed to, say, passing successfully through the choke point where you have to go through x-ray and removing your belt, pants, shoe and underwear (soon to come). And naturally such said terrorist will go into the database and search for route of police to actively avoid them. /Security Theater. It looks to me it is more designed for drug and other smuggling criminal activity than terrorist. But hey, the commie are there to get you ! Sorry , I meant witches. Hrm. terrorist.
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visit randi.org
H. A. C. K. E. R.
Hack into the ARMOR system, alter the code, have it generate the routes for you and you won't have to "guess" it's random predictions.
The COPS won't know the difference when they are dispatched to places at the airport. If fact it could dispatch them so that they are FAR away from the real action taking place. If fact you could dispatch them with instructions that a terrorist action was taking place on the other side of the airport with descriptions of innocents as the terrorists causing the police to be terrorists upon those innocents. Well, that's not that unusual since the police are usually domestic terrorists anyhow for most people that they interact with.
Terrorists though don't actually have that many people to waste on an operation - and if a bunch of suspicious guys get caught all over the airport at once, they would simply lock everything down and really give people there the once-over.
It might work as a gag but wouldn't do anything actually harmful.
They way they do things already with behavior observation is probably the best possible approach because that way they do not target any particular nationality or race, and even false positives mean you get a chance to calm someone down upset about something that might be abusive to the airline crew.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's a flaw in your algorithm. The first iteration will goAfterTheBeardedGuy even if beardedguy != brown. Also, what happens when beardedguy stops being == to brown, the loop ends. Something like the following would probably work better.
while( civilian = FindCivilian() )
{
if( civilian.color == brown && civilian.features == bearded )
goAfterTheBeardedGuy();
}