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NYPD To Identify 'Deranged' Gunmen Through Internet Chatter
Hugh Pickens writes "Michael Wilson writes in the NY Times that top intelligence officials in the New York Police Department are looking for ways to target 'apolitical or deranged killers before they become active shooters' using techniques similar to those being used to spot terrorists' chatter online. The techniques would include 'cyber-searches of language that mass-casualty shooters have used in e-mails and Internet postings,' says Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. 'The goal would be to identify the shooter in cyberspace, engage him there and intervene, possibly using an undercover to get close, and take him into custody or otherwise disrupt his plans.' There are also plans to send officers to Newtown and to scenes of other mass shootings to collect information says the department's chief spokesman Paul. J. Browne adding that potential tactics include creating an algorithm that would search online 'for terms used by active shooters in the past that may be an indicator of future intentions.' The NYPD's counter-terrorism division released a report last year, 'Active Shooter (PDF),' after studying 202 mass shooting incidents. 'So, we think this is another logical step,' says Kelly."
Beat that.
Seastead this.
I am mad and I have a gun and I will be shooting everyone. I am announcing this beforehand so that the police can stop me. There is no sarcasm in this text whatsoever.
lol i no rite
Seriously, it's not going to work with the presence of popular internet shorthand.
what they should be doing is improving mental health services. Both the Colorado movie killer and Virginia Tech Killer had been identified with mental illness with red flags. A good system would have gotten them help. And for people that refuse mental health help there are only two options, institutionalization or they do what they want. There should be something like child protective services for people that refuse mental health help with red flags to keep track of them and make sure they get help.
Doubleplus ungood.
In the UK you can be "Sectioned" If you appear to be a danger to yourself or others but these days policy seems to be "Care in the community" or shut as many mental facilities as possible and let fate take care of the problem.
Trouble is it is cheaper to ignore the problem, than do anything about it.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Didn't the latest crazed gunman have almost no Internet presence at all? If this is just an excuse to more closely monitor people online, it's a pretty transparent one.
do{
message=getmessage();
if(message.contains("Mass Effect"))
email("Alert@fbi.gov", "TERRORIST DETECTED", message);
while(1);
Trouble is it is cheaper to ignore the problem, than do anything about it.
No, it's not.
The problem is that there's no legal mechanism to send the bill to the society.
To every kid being killed, there're expenses on funeral and emotional support for his/her relatives, but there're also all the practical expenses of the day-to-day life, as medical/dental bills, educational expenses, toys and little amusements, vacations, necessities (clothes, etc) that go to the trash bin.
To every adult being killed, we have all that expenses since his/her childhood, more the LACK of the future (and present) funds to do the same with his/her kids. With luck, another adult will take for him/herself this expenses - at the cost of the expenses of his/her own kids (present of future).
So, YES, there're a lot of waste of money on every people being killed by a nutcrack. People are used to avoid talking about this, because we're used to think that a "human life is invaluable and, so, can not be monetized". What I, also, agree - there're no money on the world that can pay my life.
However, the COST of being alive is measurable. If a life can't be brought back, the costs incurred on being alive can be.
So, NO. IT'S A HELL OF SHIT EXPENSIVE ignoring the problem. Thing is that the bill does not goes over the shoulder of the bastards that make that decisions.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
They don't need to be institutionalized, they just need to be stopped from buying guns. Is that really too much to ask?
Adam Lanza didn't buy any guns...
Granted, the vast majority of these shooters do buy their own guns through legal channels, so trying to stop the purchase of guns by the deranged is a valid option to explore. But identifying the tiny fraction of strange antisocial people who will commit violent crimes is not as easy as it sounds...
"They don't need to be institutionalized, they just need to be stopped from buying guns. Is that really too much to ask?"
How about preventing them from buying fertilizer and Diesel? Or chemicals to make Chlorine gas? Or sprinkling the salad bar with Ricin? ...
One reason that we can not track mental patients is that most people spend a portion of their lives with some form of mental illness. In essence it is normal to be a bit cracked at times. Secondly the public has refused to fund reasonable mental health care forever. For many individuals treatment is slow, the ability to work is often missing and the cost of effective therapy can be staggering. We also lack a legal system that has any ability to deal with crimes before they happen. In essence we would have to toss the bill of rights down the sewer.
Another really thorny problem is that substance abuse is behind much of the violence that we see. And it is not that the person is high at the moment of the crime. But the use of substances that make people feel good often depletes substances and functions in the brain that lead to radical depression and an inability to handle normal loads of stress. Many people confronted with the on set of depression or mental illness turn to substances to feel better and the issues are inevitably amplified. This is exactly what you see in the crazed teens trying to gun down their classmates. They may not have gotten high in days but the overwhelming depression just sweeps their minds away and rage is released. But if you try and tell people that substance abuse is behind almost all crime they will go into denial so fast that you won't believe it. I met one creep who could not be convinced that he did not drive better while taking LSD. He wiped out seven lives on a Florida highway. In addition to the seven dead, he lost his entire lower jaw, can only stand with two crutches and received a 115 year prison sentence. So he will lay in a prison hospital and be thread liquids through a tube until he leaves the planet. No amount of reasoning could control this guy and I have seen it in other addicts as well. For example a declaration that drugs were the center point of their life and they were dedicating their lives to getting high and they would not change that even if they knew they would accidentally kill a few people with their cars along the way. It really is a deep problem.
Now we're accepting mass surveillance for the sake of stopping rare crazed killers?
You see, you can't take away everyones rights in one big legislation. So instead you take just a small bit of rights away for every million to one shot. There is an endless supply of rare events to rinse and repeat this upon...
Meanwhile we are using drone strikes on American citizens without even a facade of due process...
"His name was James Damore."
Both the Colorado movie killer and Virginia Tech Killer had been identified with mental illness with red flags.
A constant theme around these is that plenty of people noticed "red flags" in the person, and yet none of them did anything about it to get them help. I think this is probably more 20/20 hindsight than useful observation. And then everyone gets the idea that if only the system worked better, they'd have got help.
How do we improve the system? Who's responsible for getting people help? One person might know someone with social anxiety disorder, while another person might only see a "red flag" in a gun-collecting guy with scruffy hair who never looks anyone in the eye. Is every person who doesn't intimately know you but sees some odd behavior supposed to harass you about getting help?
I think this is a more complicated thing than many will let on, and it's a slippery slope to TSA levels of worthless profiling.
We all know how well this worked out in Minority Report?
But it DID work in Minority Report. They had a crime free society, and only ONE GUY (played by Tom Cruise) was accused unjustly. Our false conviction rate is WAY higher than that today. The problem with the NYPD plan is not that it is a bad idea in principle, but that it will WILL NOT WORK and is a waste of limited resources. There are only a very tiny number of these deranged killers. Over the past two decades only 1 in 1200 gun deaths was from a mass killer. So the false positive rate will be enormous. Maybe the NYPD should be focusing on the other 99.92% of the problem.
I think this is just grandstanding by politicians that want to be seen "doing something", and will fade away once the media moves on to the next "crisis".
They just announced to all potential "deranged gunmen" that they shouldn't use the "active shooter" phrases on the internet, or cover their tracks if they do so. Good job.
If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot immediately.
And who the hell do we trust with the power to remove the freedom of others?
I would insist on a jury of shrinks from no less than four different mental health agencies.
I think we should treat it the same way we do criminal justice.
We have to sacrifice our rights and live in a police state, because that is the "price to protect us from three or four crazy lunatics that we'll never actually be able to protect society from, anyway" because it's going to "save so many innocent people (presumably, children)".
With this sort of math, we need to be sacrificing a lot more rights and liberties across the board for every other thing which results in more deaths than school shootings (in other words - EVERYTHING INCLUDING JAY WALKING). After all, if every life has a precious cost associated with its lost that is of such intense value to society that all of society must make sacrifices that are most "sacred" to the foundation and existence of our entire society (the Constitution), then why focus on the random unavoidable nutjobs that conduct "mass" shootings? What about seat-belts? What about parents who drink or smoke and put children at risk? What about mothers who bring questionable "step-dads" into the family? What about jay-walking? What about soda? What about sports? What about lighters, pocket knives, stairways, sidewalks, and bicycles?
If the important thing is the value of a life, then why is the life of someone shot by a nutjob more valuable than that of someone who is killed through any other accident or negligence or criminal act? Especially when those things happen far more frequently?
The secret key here is that: Yes, bad shit will happen to people and that is the cost of enjoying a free life and society. Bad shit doesn't go away just because government clamps down on society. The only thing lost there is your freedom. You *gain* nothing. And all in the effort to do the impossible -- protect every last human being from unpredictable freak occurrences. Crazy shit that pops out of the brush and happens. And it will always happen. And we will always be shocked (that's the nature of it being a FREAK occurrence).
I can guarantee you a great deal of safety and security. Just let me lock you in an underground bunker and control everything you consume and everything you do. It won't be enjoyable and it won't be a life worth having lived, but you'll probably live longer than being out in the big scary world with all sorts of awful things that can happen to you, including being t-boned in an intersection by a guy running a red-light or a nutjob in the office that loses his shit when he's fired and brings a firearm to work. :)
Easier said than done. There are many, many people who match the same symptoms and most of them are not about to start shooting people.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
The Newton shooter had almost no online presence at all. So how would this have prevented it? Just sounds like an excuse to spy on us.
He also used guns he couldn't legally own - BUT, the guns themselves came from legal, regulated channels; thus, the fearmongering from the left about more stringent background checks, "waiting periods", or closing the "gun show" loophole wouldn't have changed a single aspect of Newtown.
He also apparently only stopped when he got bored, not because someone physically prevented him from reloading - Meaning you can't blame Newtown on the boogeyman of high-capacity magazines.
You want to prevent "gun crime" in the US, deal with the sources of crime in general, not the tools involved. And in the case of mass murderers, that means real (probably chemical) psych intervention for the actual sickos, not some fluffy "but how do you feel" BS counseling sessions for emo kids.
this guy went on a rampage because he was going to be involntary comitted
what stops this sort of crime is when we start treating people better. Mental Health serivces create these sorts of disasters
but that never seems to be an option.
Man is not a rational animal. He is a rationalizing animal.
Heinlein.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well, apparently two people on the U of Iowa admissions committee saw something wrong with him before the fact -- the program director, Daniel Tranel, said "Do NOT offer admission under any circumstances". I don't think Tranel has ever said what he saw, though.
But in general, if you want to maintain anything approaching a free society, you can neither lock up everyone you think might be a homicidal nutcase, nor restrict everyone to the level of freedom appropriate to homicidal nutcases.
I would insist on an jury of PEERS chosen from the population.
I would choose the burden of proof is "beyond reasonable doubt", there was an intent to harm.
We need to stand up to this rhetoric, before we further strengthen laws that authorize extra-judicial detention.
There also needs to be a right to apeal.
With their badge numbers?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why was his mom a fucking lunatic? Because she was a shooting enthusiast, had lots of guns, and encouraged her kids to shoot as well? Or was it because she didn't institutionalize her troubled son "just in case"? I genuinely don't know if there is new information that points to her mental state...
The problem here is in terms of mental health issues, let's say you are institutionalized for being suicidal. Does that mean you can never have a gun, ever? Why? This "reform" of the mental health system people are clamoring for is nothing more than an end-round play to ban guns based on "mental stability." I hate to break it to the /. crowd, but most of us could be considered "unbalanced" if the state, or an overzealous mental health system (or relatives) decided we were. Do we want to go back to the early 20th century where we put everyone who didn't fit a mold (gays, mildly retarded, sexual "deviants") into an institution and shocked, prodded, and medicated them until they really WERE fucked in the head?
The rational thing to do is to stop inching towards a police state in ALL aspects. That includes these symbolic "bans" on "assault" weapons and other horse shit. Return to a minimal Constitutionally sanctioned federal government...
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
more stringent background checks
How about "Are there any crazy people living in your house?"
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This has worked so many times in the past; how can it fail?
It's already happening.
Brandon Raub anyone? Post lyrics to facebook, get committed.
https://www.rutherford.org/key_cases/key_cases_brandon_raub/
Yeah but if you provide health care to the people then you turn the country into a socialist state and nobody wants that.
By your logic, it's bad to keep drunken drivers from the street. =P
Look, pal. I'm not a defendant of a police state. But you can bet you damned ass I'm a defendant of the people's life.
We are not talking about natural disasters, but about predictable and avoidable disasters that happens to be promoted by ourselves! We deliberately give up every single chance to detect and correctly deal with these nutcracks.
I'm not talking about killing them. I'm not even talking about locking them (but if this is the only choice, better them than us!). I'm talking about to correctly dealing with them.
This will cost money? OF COURSE IT WILL. As costs money to hunt and prosecute drunken drivers.
The question is: it will worth it? My answer is YES.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
If the profile was always 'young white male, bit of a loner,' I'd start to wonder, openly, why it is that they ALWAYS fit that mold. Like there is some sort of factory somewhere that just stamps them out for officers to pick up. Does this not bother anyone else?
Seriously, I'd start to question my reason for existence. I've been created, to catch 'criminals,' which are, like the endings of Scooby-Doo episodes, always the same guy. And I am not, for whatever reason, supposed to think "if they are always the same guy, doesn't that signify that there is something wrong on a higher level?" I mean, these are human beings, they have brains capable of anything -> so why does this one type always choose to be a loaner, be white, be male, and to shoot up a school? It's almost like they're programmed to do it. Why is there never any major changes? The guy visits his mother's grave before he shoots up the school, or he was an outgoing football player, or whatever? Or, given that our population is more than 50% female, one from their gender?
Does everyone just blindly accept the reasons they're given here? "Oh yeah, he was a white male, a loaner, that happens to them sometimes."
I am John Hurt.
So you're saying there were mass shootings regularly, and that abruptly stopped when they banned those firearms?
Approximately 1 every 18 months over the two decades before the new restrictions. Reduced to just 1 in the 16 years since the change (using matched criteria for classification. Although it was at the bottom limit of the classification.) A ten-fold reduction in the number of mass shootings so far, and a greater than ten-fold reduction in the number of people killed in mass shootings. Realistically, 16 years isn't long enough to work out the true post-reform rate, it's too low to measure.
We have the same media, movies, TV, music, video games, as the US. We didn't improve our mental health system, we didn't improve our economy, we didn't change our law enforcement systems. Other crime rates followed their prior trends, some small differences that may be attributable to the change (reduction in murder rate (ditto suicide), increase in some other categories) but they're all around the 10% variation, too small to show causation. None as sharp and dramatic as the immediate near cessation of mass shootings. Hell, even the number of firearms returned to the previous level within a couple of years. So it's not even a matter of weapon numbers.
We restricted certain weapon types, and magazine capacities, we had a buy-back of newly banned weapons and accessories from law abiding gun owners (at market value + 10%, IIRC)... and the number of mass shootings dropped by an order of magnitude. And there was no increase in other forms of mass killing; bombs and poisonings, mass-knifings, mass cricket-battings, etc.
The myth that the mass-killers will just find other ways to mass-kill is demonstrably false. They don't. Regular criminals, yes, nutters, no. There's something about certain types of firearms that is deeply empowering to paranoid delusional freaks.
And I don't know why.
Seriously, I didn't see it working. Although I'm okay with reasonable gun control, I could not see the new laws having any impact on mass killings. I remember saying as much online at the time. Outliers are notoriously immune to systematic changes, and this change just screamed "knee-jerk politics" (just like this NYPD story)...
And yet... the numbers are there.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.