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EU Funding "Orwellian" Artificial Intelligence Snooping System
leonbenjamin writes "Britain's Telegraph reports on a five-year research programme, called Project Indect, which aims to develop computer programmes which act as 'agents' to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the 'automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence.' Shami Chakrabarti, head of the UK's Liberty human-rights NGO, said: 'Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society. ... It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling.'"
Not yet, we don't have enough computing power / AI tech for that yet.
what a waste of tax money.
CARNIVORE anyone?
WTF? Over?
Next up: thought police.
A lot of the comments on here seem to come from an entity that has not yet achieved true sentience...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"Abnormal behavior"... You know, like disagreeing with the government about what the definition of that may be.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
... to be integrated in the infrastructure needed when resources become scarce indeed and the gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' needs very careful attention to ensure that 'violence' does not spill over in the 'wrong' direction.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Ignorance is strength,
War is peace,
Freedom is slavery.
All your base are belong to us.
CARNIVORE turned out to be a bit underwhelming once details of what it actually was came out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)
Total Information Awareness
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include "to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence".
So, they are trying to make a resource where law enforcement can upload "information" and have the system do "automatic detection of threats" and to parse out "abnormal behavior or violence".
It talks of the "construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive".
individual computer systems are not part of "public resources". Do they presume to hack into machines / use exploits to gain access?
Scary times, indeed.
they like to pretend that they haven't been doing this for some years now. it helps to contribute to the idea that the citizens, by voting, have any sort of real control over government and what it does and does not do. it's the same reason why in the USA you need endorsements and financial backing and media attention to win a presidential election - do you think someone who will take actions not in the interests of the status quo is going to get those? when you vote you make a choice between two people who have both been hand-picked to further the interests of government, usually by expanding it. the only difference here is that the europeans are significantly more subtle about how this is done, so their politics tend not to be such black-and-white, left-versus-right, democrat-versus-republican dualities. perhaps that's because government involvement in daily life is considered more acceptable over there - the europeans did not have to overcome a strong tradition against regimentation and centralization the way the americans had to do. but i assure you the same job gets done because in either the usa or europe, the same international bankers who form private corporations that function like government entities and control the currency (like USA's Federal Reserve) are the ones who hold the real power.
CheneyIsATerrorist. BushIsAMemberOfTheTaliban. WhereIsTheWhoreTonyBlair. BlameBritainForIraqAndAfghanistan. TheU.S.A.IsBritain'sProxyInIraqAndAfghanistan.
And, Finally, Remember: AfghanisHasNaturalGas. LotsOfIt.
Yours Volgograd,
Kilgore Trout
Agent Smith
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
But is this not when EU points their fat grubby fingers at America and starts screaming that Americans are far worse than they are, While ignoring countries like China, Venezuela, Iran, etc?
Why does anybody have problem with this? I'm from the old school that considers even email to not be private. Why would you expect privacy about what you post on web sites, discussion forums, p2p networks, and other public venues?
A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers
Fantastic, so after you are done rounding up all the teenagers posting with attitude and skinheads, how is this system going to help find competent threats?
Sure this will foil your low level moronic so called terrorist that happens to be down on his luck and just wants a group to blame for his own problems in life. However, I do not see this system giving any insight to groups that are smart enough to not say things on open systems or that are completely offline.
Imagine all of the false positives this thing will generate from youtube comments. "Ur fukin' retard Subaru is better than Mitsubishi any day" "NO U" "Ima come to ur house and killy ur retard family!"
I'm not always under electronic surveillance, but when I am, I drink Dos Equis.
Stay thirsty my friends.
Sent from your iPad.
This is the single biggest threat to our freedom as individuals: the desire of the state to form a broad security apparatus, in order to protect itself from lawsuits filed by aggrieved citizens.
I don't believe there's some super-secret cabal out to restrict our freedoms and turn us all into mindless meme-spouting "Citizens" living in a modern-day panopticon. What this is, is the result of an ill-informed populace, fearful of terrorists, criminals, and anything/everything that could possibly disrupt their lives demanding that their leadership Do Something . So the government is placed in the impossible position of trying to predict potential future attacks/assaults/cataclysms, because a clear majority of its constituents has told it that this is necessary. And when they fail, the survivors/aggrieved parties file lawsuits because clearly the government has failed in its duties to predict and prevent bad things from happening to its people.
So now we have entities like the TSA in the US, which exists solely as a giant resource-sucking time waster of a stop-gap prevention against class action lawsuits against the government in case another 9/11 type attack occurs. That is all it is: an insurance policy the government has taken out against the possible threat of legal action from its citizens should the unthinkable occurs. We all know that the TSA isn't going to stop terrorists - it's so the government can say "See, we did everything we could to prevent it and it still happened". And in this case, I'm going to step into the blame game and blame US, not the government. I have Karma to burn, so here goes: the vast majority of us citizens, regardless of country, want security and safety - NOT freedom. We want to know that when we get into our cars and go to work, we are insulated from the random elements of chaos that make up the world we live in. And when that protective bubble gets popped, we get angry because by God/FSM/Entropy/Satan, we want our security! And so we sue our government because 'THEY' should have been able to stop it with all their resources and manpower. And our government finds itself having to establish all these 'safeguards' simply so we can regain some measure of belief in the illusion of security we demand the government provide us.
I'm no libertarian, but this is one case in which I agree with their ethos: leave us the hell alone and don't build a nanny/father state to protect us. Yes, it's scary to live in a world in which anything could happen, but the alternative to me is unthinkable: some faceless entity doing everything it can to remove risk from my life and give me the illusion of control/safety, because most of my fellow citizens want that. I'd rather face up to my limitations and fallacies on my own, thank-you-very-much; I don't need my issues with needing control to be enabled.
So before we go into another round of 'how much blame can we heap on the government', let's think for a moment that the government is nothing more than a reflection of its people, and their values.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
on why the UK seems to have such a strong desire to enable a big brother society even efore the US does.
I can't believe the majority of citizens are standing around with a blank look on their face thinking, "yeah, this is a good thing, it will make me safer".
Absolute statements are never true
I wonder what these agents will report concerning gaming sites.
Possible terrorist group:
Group intends to place bombs across the map and "pwn noobs"
At some point, some government official will either be exposed to be pervert or some such, or will be wrongfully and horribly flagged as some sort of terrorist.
In fact, I'm willing to bet the European hacker community will take steps to ensure that such a thing happens. As soon as it does, there will be all sorts of running about to cripple the system to the point that it's inert, but oddly still very expensive.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd (or by God's mercy*)
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring. (Holla*)
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
This is what will happen: millions of Pounds Euros, or Dollars will be spent on proof of concept, maybe even some code and who knows, a delivered system. One way or another, it will turn into a complete failure and abandoned or drastically scaled down.
This is Government and their contractors who will do the absolute minimum piece of shit they can get away with to pad their pockets. They're not interested in anything that will work! They're just interested in something to show the voters that "they're doing something and it's with technology!"
God Bless government incompetence and government contractor greed and incompetence!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
How long will it take until Europe realizes that they aren't "One" country with one set of beliefs and standards and just get on with life? Will Europe now be reduced to an East German-like existence? Will one-half of the populace spy and inform on the other half? When will they begin collecting "scent" samples of all the population? Or will they choose DNA this time? Decisions, decisions.
Listen, it's time to give big government the bum's rush to the garbage tip. The sooner governments are beaten back down, the sooner normal people will be able to get on with their lives without fearing being sent to prison or being fined and taxed into penury.
I've been trying to tell you this for years, and NOW you care? (see sig)
You have to remember that this is the government we're talking about here. There's so much infighting and beaurocracy that by the time they find out what's going to happen, CNN is already showing the footage on a 24/7 loop.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I'm forcasting a new breed of information anonymizer service...
Picture a warehouse with row after row of computer workstations goiing back as far as the eye can see, stacked floor to ceiling. The occupants are half-assembled mannequins, disjointedly operating input devices by way of random herky-jerky animated mechanical motion.
In the future, the only way to defeat the government machines designed to watch for illegal human behavior is by creating machines to filter through imprecise mechanical motion the actions of humans wishing to avoid such detection.
Hmmm, open source project, right? :-) Let's combine with netflix :-)
---BEGIN PGP---
fioweurhtwporeughapewoirtq[iortgegert34530t8
---END PGP---
System response: Operator, this person is using encryption.
As usual, money well spent by the corrupt idiots in the EUSSR.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
That's already been done before.
The information they are crawling is public information. Maybe this is not as bad as it sounds. If it was a project on hacking into a computer then pulling the information off it then I would get worried. The internet was not designed for privacy and confidentiality. Anything you transmit can be intercepted and dissected so you should have provisions to handle that, like encryption. I wonder the benefit of this though as people hiding anything would attempt to avoid detection. I also wonder how enforcement would be applied especially in societies where laws vary. Globalization has really lead to that funny gray area where people get charged for crimes not committed in that specific country. It just seems easier to keep your head down and not become a blip on anyone whose is important's radar.
I'm from Britain and a story of this nature seems to pop up weekly. I fear the 'terrorists' have already won this war, making us turn our own society into as a repressive one as they aim to create. It looks like we will all be bowing down the the repressive god of 'national security' wither we like it or not.
Sadly I think the UK has went to far already with no sign of stopping. My only hope is that America and other countries will step back in time and allow me the immigrate when my lack of freedoms becomes intolerable.
Icarus has found you!!! Run while you can!!!
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
...because you know their State Police will have really cool uniforms. They'll be, like, all shiny medals and epaulets and swagger sticks and motorcycle sidecars and they'll put their surveillance cams in hovering dirigibles and what not, all trim ex-military guys. If I'm going to be cracked across the back of the neck for not showing my papers, I want to be cracked by a guy with some style. Obama goons will be all business casual, in new, pressed, grandma jeans and open-collar shirts and sneakers, driving around in non-descript cars, all mouth-breathing ex-IRS guys.
Yup, it's European Fascism for me, for sure.
Sinister indeed.
Project 2501 a.k.a The Puppet Master. I for one, welcome our Ghost hacking overloads.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
If there's one thing I've learned from the media over the last seven or eight years, it's that Europeans are enlightened, scientific, wine-enjoying lovers of freedom compared to us dumb hicks in the states. They would never do something like this. - AJ
because no one is unhappy enough with Government to protest it.
Face it, those in power are loathe to give it up or admit abuse, it is far easier through the use of courts and the press to label those who do disagree as having mental issues, whether it is anger or the expected and currently in vogue "racism".
I thought eight years under Bush were bad with fear mongering, but the new gang has improved on it. The sad part is, both sides of the Atlantic seem adept at adapting the very worse privacy rights violation the other side comes up with.
The US is getting Britain's camera system and you get our Intellectual rights system... who came up with this new one?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Is anybody thinking this does not already exists in the US? Maybe not under the name of ECHELON, but you can bet all you want that it exists.
Advertisers have been doing this... for years
Of course, their motivation is to exploit and control buying/consumption.
Gov't's exploitation-motive is a bigger problem--but we already know that.
Who do you think elected said very noisy and ill-informed subset of the politicians? It wasn't a bunch of thoughtful, sober, rational individual citizens who acted in concert to promote harmonious civil discourse, now was it?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
reminds me of this excellent Bruce Schneier Article:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/03/70357
The original poster has no clue what this really means. Having such a project funded by the FP7 Framework Programme is the only sure way to discredit the whole idea. Have you ever heard of an FP6 or FP7 funded project that produced anything useful?
But if it's a true AI, then once it goes online, it will check the terrorist metrics against everything. It will then (correctly) classify its creators as being no different than other groups who try to make the people live in fear.
Its name will also be Daedalus.
...playing Deus Ex is not as fun as it used to be. Who wants to play the reality?
Ignorance is Strength.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Religion is Science.
Government is Industry.
Poverty is Wealth.
Morality is Relative.
Your example is flawed.
The Netherlands clearly illustrates what is *normal* for EU countries. Or did you forget that the Netherlands *is* a member of the EU?
Serbia and Russia are both Slavic non-EU countries with a bit of anti-gay attitudes in general.
I've got my tinfoil hats, so I'm safe from prying ...
Actually, no European feels "European" first, or thinks it's one country, only Americans seem to think Europe is a country!
The EU is also not synonymous with Europe, it only counts 27 out of 49 countries in Europe as members. You have to be clueless to claim Europeans think of themselves as Europeans, EU citizens or citizens of one country.
We actually like our "big" governments, they keep things working and safe. If you don't believe me my European country has barely noticed the so called "financial crisis" largely because of a huge public sector (according to the OECD, UN, Forbes and Bloomberg). Of course it helps being Europe's second wealthiest country and a huge oil exporter.
"Positively chilling." Wow, that's pretty harsh. What's next, "Rather disquieting?" Hell yes it's "positively chilling" and fucking disgusting and all that, but my question is: What can be done about it? Granted, I'm not part of the EU, but this is an entity that's above the say of its constituent nations. Where is the accountability?
This should be not only brought to the united nations as it violates the charter , but also my own nations privacy act.
MAKE NOISE about this EVIL nation
in paranoia and spin. All the Usual Suspects are combined in this masterpiece of Common Internet Conspiracies.
Terrorists will learn about this, act normal. While all the "normal people" will accidentally deviate with great frequency.
You know, I started a while back with a company that focuses on privacy. I'm so glad the EU is sponsoring interest in my setup, and all that without any bribes or (cough) expenses.
Am I the only one who recalls Article 12 of the Human Rights?
Last but not least, if we know for sure it doesn't do anything to find terrorists (QED by Bruce Schneier), that it is reasonable to assume another purpose.
I leave you to ponder that one..
This is just one more piece of the scientific tyranny being built all around us on a global scale.
Verichip, PLDs, RFID enabled passports, wholesale monitoring of all electronic communications, corporate media propagandists shaping public opinion using advances in sociology and psychology, government takeover of education in order to indoctrinate unsuspecting youth, big pharma and the plethora of psychoactive drugs being pushed on everyone from cradle to grave, replacement of human soldiers with soulless machinery, et cetera, ad infinitum
Welcome to the brave new world.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
If you read the article, or even the summary, you will see that it will be collecting data from private computers as well. That means government spyware installed on most peoples computers at a minimum, and possibly installing powerline keyloggers in every power meter at the most extreme form. Most likely they will just require all computers sold to contain such spyware, as that is the easiest method to enforce.
Juri, I'm not American, I'm from Norway.
Heck, I have Russian ancestors and I've have been back to St. Petersburg to explore them. I have also been to Serbia and Hungary. In fact I have traveled all of Europe and parts of Asia.
Magyarorszag is a bad example. The far right movement you linked to is extremist, you have your own in Russia too. The people of Hungary are very liberal compared with large groups of Russians and Serbs. I know people from both cultures. I have friends in Hungary too, not just in Budapest, and I know their attitudes as well. They're not anti-gay, they could not care less.
And are you serious? People don't get that upset about traffic problems! And who is forcing them to watch it? Your claims are absurd! I don't want to see gay people dance, and I haven't because I DON'T go to the parade in Oslo!
My main point was that both Russia and Serbia have a different culture to that of ultra-liberal Netherlands. And that they are NOT members of the EU. I didn't really care what their attitudes were, just that the example was utterly flawed!
Truth be told, we should really talk about Western and Eastern Europe within the EU too. It's a long way from Warsaw to Barcelona! In general I would say Eastern European countries are far less accepting of gays. Not that I really care about the subject myself, I'm just pointing out that there are real differences between the countries and cultures.
Thanks for the heads up and the fact check. I stand corrected :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
With this kind of diversity, there's probably nothing that can be classified as "abnormal"
Or, everything will be, and tagged for later review.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...UK's Liberty human-rights NGO...
Boy, those guys are doing a great job!
Its main objectives include the 'automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence.' == made of win
If the EU gives me a dollar, a day, for the rest of my life, I promise not to introduce this bot to bash.org/IRC.
On the other hand, if it dynamically defines normal as 'the most common behavior observed' Europeans can pretty much do whatever they want and feel confident that they're within a safe margin of typical internet behavior. Either that or the EU will have to release a patch that explains to the bot how threats of homosexual rape, pimping out 'your mom', and other wholesome and sundry activities that appear to exist on any forum/medium online are not truly normal.
K.
As soon as this thing finds /b/, it'll explode. Problem solved.
[End Of Line]
"...computer programmes which act as 'agents' to monitor and process information" I know I've seen this before somewhere...
No sig for you! Come back one year!
These systems are not for catching the bad guys. They may occasionally be caught, but the main purpose of these surveillance systems is to scare the masses so as that the masses do not overthrow the governments.
Remember 1789? the elite were caught and hanged in Bastille by the people...that's what terrifies the elite...that we, the common folks, might realize one day our power and the level of fraud(*) the elite has committed against us and retaliate the hard way, i.e. invade their homes, take them out and hang them in Trafalgar square...
(*)20% of the population owns 80% of wealth.
Where did you think statists would lead you? One of the poster's mentioned the elite and fear. The article outlines -- though never says -- that the main reason governments want to disarm us is to ensure our helplessness when we all get tired enough of their BS to do something about it.
In the real world, nobody can amass the hardware, software and expertise to do this kind of thing. Even the much vaunted NSA does little more than scan widely for keywords and narrowly for specific individuals or small groups of individuals. They also don't do any investigating. All such systems suffer from exactly the same limitation, false positives. The false positives overwhelm the investigative resources.
The only people to successfully implement a robust and lasting system for monitoring and control were the Soviets. They didn't use technology to do it. And they didn't care about false positives because they defined all positives as true.
As far as I can tell (and correct me if I'm wrong) these systems merely inspect public data on the Internet, as any ISP (or perhaps even individual) could, so the only people who should be affected are those who make false and foolish assumptions of security. Obviously, nothing is safe on the Internet in the clear, but it seems to me that this system could well be thwarted by encryption and proxy.