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PTSD-Monitoring App Captured the Psychological Effects of the Boston Bombing
the_newsbeagle writes "This DARPA-funded smartphone app is designed to monitor veterans for signs of depression and PTSD. It screens for signals of psychological distress in a number of ways; for example, the app looks for signs of social isolation (reduced number of phone calls and texts), physical isolation (the phone isn't leaving the house), and sleep disruption (the phone is used in the middle of the night). Interestingly, the company that invented the app was testing it in Boston at the time of the Boston marathon bombing, and reports that the app picked up signals of distress in the days after the attack."
or compliance meter? Pacification gauge?
and other obvious news at 11
Even more than you might think... this thing was discovering that people were spending more time indoors immediately after they were told to stay indoors if possible, and around the time people's emergency radios were going off in the middle of the night (sleep disruption).
The one curious bit is the decrease in phone calls and texts -- that indicates some actual positive stress correlation, as I would have expected the opposite to be true as people started coping with the event.
It's not the phone company it's a company that is working on making issues less stressful and problem resolution more effective through data analysis that people may not knowingly perceive. Really interesting stuff actually.
This was a standard clinical study with 100 fully-aware participants trying to improve PTSD diagnosis to help the incidents of suicide and psychological issues in returning vets. You've got plenty of other things to gripe about with PATRIOT / PRISM / etc., but for crying out loud this isn't one of them.
I'd say the more depressing is that I see 4 posts by numbered Slashdotters and not one even read the first sentence of the summary.
Here it is again:
This DARPA-funded smartphone app is designed to monitor veterans for signs of depression and PTSD.
Smartphone app, as in, it has to be installed on the phone and records behavior to send off to some user approved (even if by obscure yes/no choice) observer to look for suspicious behavior trends.
There were volunteers, they were in Boston, and the marathon got bombed during the testing phase. A significant portion of the volunteers showed the warning behaviors in the days afterward. This is all in the summary, but I suppose actually reading the whole summary and devising an informed post would take too long. Of course, one of the signs "not leaving the house" was probably due to the not-quite-martial-law that was not-exactly-imposed on the city of Boston for those days.
The app looks at phone usage and location patterns. These tasks can very easily be accomplished by the phone company reading your call and location log. In most places this data is available to law enforcement without a warrant. So while this particular study was made with consent of its participants, it is quite possible that this is being done to each and every one of us without our knowledge or consent. Implement a few "red-flag" conditions and you've got yourself a pre-crime detector.
The problem with this measurement is that it's only to be expected for there to be less activity at the time. When you take into account the heavy militarized police/military/occupational force that flooded into Boston, you have to expect that social communications and outings will decrease significantly.
That and the effect of an illegal martial law being imposed and having troops in the streets pointing rifles at homeowners would have on former military suffering from PTSD.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Indeed. Personally, I found the bombing to be less disturbing than the reaction to the bombing, and even more, the reports of how many Bostonians found the actions acceptable.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Christ almighty, I know we like to not RTFA and gripe about the govt and everything, but this was used in a study with willing participants. No one is using this to track you. Chill the fuck out.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."
-- George Orwell, 1984
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I think having a child and having PTSD kind of goes together.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...