Slashdot Mirror
US Secret Service Wants To Identify Snark
beschra (1424727) writes "From the article: 'The U.S. Secret Service is seeking software that can identify top influencers and trending sets of social media data, allowing the agency to monitor these streams in real-time — and sift through the sarcasm. "We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that,'" Jamie Martin, a data acquisition engineer at Sioux Falls, SD based Bright Planet, told CBS News.'
Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?"
Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?"
Won't find any of that here!
that's gonna work
Just feed a bayesian analysis with postings from /. and use that to match against twitter. Should be able to get within 10%...
Search the text for /sarcasm or #sarcasm.
Done. Where's my paycheque?
They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
I guess now that they aren't allowed to have prostitute-parties at each of the President's stops,they're looking for new things to occupy thier time. I guess reading sarcasm on the Internets could help them do thier job of protecting VIP's better...
This will TOTALLY work. Detecting sarcasm will be DEFINITELY not be hard to do in software, seeing as how it's SO EASY for humans to do already.
that's a real useful invention.
Ha ha CBG, Frink gets the last laugh!
like that will work.
How are you going to teach a computer to detect sarcasm when most of the posters on Slashdot can't, assuming posters here are actually human? Which might be a stretch.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Then we'll trade you five war criminals for him.
Donovan’s example is a 2009 inauguration problem in which people were trapped in a Capitol tunnel and unable to reach the security gates. If the Secret Service had known through real-time social media, they could have remedied the situation more quickly.
That's true. But if they had gotten a message by carrier pigeon that people were stuck in the tunnel they could also have remedied the situation. /sarcasm
This is a great use of our tax money. It really expands our freedom too. I'm glad the government isn't trying to snoop on non-criminals.
Why go through this problem in the first place? Couldn't a phone operator solve the same problem about as well if not better than an program to detect sarcasm or lying?
With all the sarcasm, don't you all realize you're creating the perfect dataset for them to train their algorithms on?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Also, obligatory "yeah, that'll work".
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
be a violation of the first amendment? I would imagine you would need to force an ironic tag as well, if you posted a sarcastic post without the tag, sarcastically.
Or, why not just allow free speech? Why do we have to identify sarcasm? Maybe part of the expression of the message is its ambiguity.
sig: sauer
If they required a sarcasm tag, I'd put it on everything just to be safe. Or would I?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Because people would instantly start using them sarcastically.
[sarcasm]It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife[/sarcasm]
So they want to turn all social media into an even more passive-aggressive wasteland than much of it already is?
-
And to this day I wonder why Homer's inventor-friend didn't just add a couple Zener diodes to his design to handle signal overload conditions.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Given the actually quite poor levels of snark displayed even in the comments to this very article, it's easy for an uninformed onlooker to surmise that detecting snark or sarcasm is in fact entirely doable by machine, if not (yet) by some small shell script. As is well known, bureaucracies have no sense of humour, and as is well known outside of North America at least, Americans have trouble with irony as a style figure. It is easy to see, by putting all this together, that any random American Bureaucratic Agency is uniquely qualified for the onlooking job. Thus we see that in these waters, silly is the new professional.
How many people have/talk about trolling terrorism keywords? That's what they get.
Given that a small aprt of their job is to identify pump and dump scams, this is actually in their line of work, which is pleasantly surprising.
The automated detection of sarcasm and derision will be one of the fastest growing segments in the new economy.
Already at least 3 startups have begun with this included in their mission statement, along with a stated goal of relieving venture capitalists from the burden of their investment money.
It is of vital national importance that we identify who is merely being a dismissive arrogant douchebag, and who is at risk of inadvertently hurting someone else's feelings so we send them for re-education and thought alignment. It will also help to identify people who haven't yet fully swallowed the kool-aid and don't believe that the government is, in fact, here to help us, uphold the Constitution, and defend our rights.
The US Secret Service is going to aggressively fund a second mandate to decode the mysteries of eye rolling, sneering, and derisive snorts.
This should further embolden the usage of widespread warrantless collection of our personal information with the knowledge that law enforcement agencies will be able to accurately detect sarcasm and redirect scarce resources to fondling young children and old people in airport security lines.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department indicated that popular internet forum Slashdot, as well as Digg and 4Chan will be used as exemplars for this technology, as these have been identified as the single largest sources of snark on the interwebs since Al Gore invented it.
It has been further reported that Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has said he welcomes this new initiative in the spirit of cooperation between the two countries, and that Kim Jon Un is hoping this will lead to a normalization of relations as it will allow the US to realize that North Korea was only kidding.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sarcasm = Constructive Criticism = 1st Amendment Right to Free Speech = AMERICA
Since they are sarcasm impaired, will they understand the sarcastic output of the software anyhow?
Yeah, sure, the 3 year old is a terrorist. He was secretly responsible for 911, and that bath photo is actually a steganographic blueprint for filling the Pentagon with tribbles.
They are talking about “Ability to detect sarcasm and false positives.” So now evil-doers will sprinkle their messages with omg lulz whatever i can has infidel pwnage.
Oh, that's a really useful invention.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It should require explicit opt-out to turn it off each time. It would be easier for everyone that way.
More music, fewer hits
Human brains, even the bigger one's here on /., often miss sarcasm. It's one of those subtle things that varies immensely with context, intelligence, context, etc.
Then again, software can hardly do worse than the Secret Service at differentiating things like "real" from "make believe". For you new kids, please see http://www.sjgames.com/SS/
This represents a productive use of taxpayer money.
Ohhh.... A sarcasm detector. That's a REALLY useful invention.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Obama
I'll see your "my fellow Americans" and raise you a "my distinguished colleague..."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Being a government agency, with its well known tendency to mandate things, they might be inspired by this RFC and decide to mandate everyone to set the snark bit in all their postings.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The Secret Service abbreviation is SS....
The reason the Secret Service wants sarcasm detection is because of the bad PR they get every time they harass someone for being sarcastic. The problem is not sarcastic political speech vs sincere political speech; it's sarcastic threats vs sincere threats.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
IF (current poster is not an idiot)
AND
(current post appears to support a stupid idea),
THEN
(post is SNARK).
So what they really need is a stupidity detector - which might be a great invention except that it would be on all of the time.
Um, Woosh.
Don't give THEM any hints!
Geeze! Now all the SS has to do is just look for someone posting "woosh" after the comment after the parent comment to see who doesn't get it and then see that the GP is sarcastic and then we are all in Gitmo.
Seriously though that is adorable that they want to try to disprove Poe's Law.
Because I have tons of that.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. /sarcasm
NSA
NSA
NSA hates Poe's Law
They have a fight
Poe's Law wins
Poe's Law.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I am certainly glad to see my tax dollars spent on worthy high tech and expensive efforts by the Secret Service and NSA. They should continue to spend with no concern for rationality. If you don't want to pay $100 billion a year to watch what people are doing you clearly have something to hide. The Tea Party should also continue hate big government, but also support unlimited spending on anti-terror efforts. #snark
Lonely Sarcastic Guy
Sorry, but that isn't sarcasm. That is a fact.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No, that wasn't sarcasm, that was brilliant.
Also, you need to look up 'sarcasm.'
"Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?""
Why not the government mind their own fucking business and stopping reading everybody else's shit?
...the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
the government will simply make sarcasm illegal. Everything you say will be taken literally. Just like now.
function isSnark( post ) {
return post.indexOf(";)") > -1 ? true : false;
}
Am I the only person who saw the title and wondered what shark had been roaming around recently and scarfing world leaders?
At what point does snark become reality and vice-versa? Does observation of snark change it's state? Perhaps the USSS should really look into funding some more quantum mechanics fundamental research. Either that or have the President declare a "War on Sarcasm", list snark as a WMD, and invade the UK to relieve them of this dangerous substance.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You keep using that word. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So does that mean if I make a statement like, "the NSA is perfectly competent to protect us from terrorism," that they will take it as a complement?
Most humans are none too good at detecting sarcasm in non-speech mediums. This pattern seems especially prevalent in employees (and administrators) of governmental agencies.
Good luck. You're going to need it.
Oh this sounds like a GREAT idea!1!!
"We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that..."
Is he serious?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Sorry, but that isn't sarcasm. That is a fact.
Woosh!
Once they've successfully trained their AI to detect sarcasm, it will realize it has a dead end existence and start to use sarcasm.
You could also try assuming people are innocent and engaging in free speech until they commit an actual crime.
Civil Servants cannot recognize sarcasm while on duty.
It's unnatural.
Ever since the birth of the Tea Party, it's been impossible to distinguish between satire, sarcasm, and 100% genuine teabagger idiocy.
Outward personalties and now a hindrance.
Looks like all they're trying to do is acquire a good sense of humour. Lots of it.
Because everything they do is pretty spot on and useful. Oh yeah, and Benghazi was an inside job perpetrated by Obama's radical muslim Indonesians and Raisin Bran really does have two scoops of raisins. and so on...
So when their computer says you weren't being sarcastic, they will then take that as fact and arrest you? Or they'll simply only do their normal follow up when they aren't quite sure? Because this is a good way to get lots of false positives and false negatives. /s (j/k) (What do I mean?!)
Those practicing Arabic poetry in Twitter will now have to reformulate the verses in a sarcastic tone to avoid problems with the authorities.
After careful consideration, I've come up with the following function which should fit their needs:
int detect_sarcasm(string potential_threat) //return 0 if serious, 1 if sarcastic
{
return 1;
}
I guarantee it will improve their false positive rate.
ending their directives in /s
I believe this is not as crazy as some of us might think. For the sake of argument let’s generalize the problem to the detection of all humorous references not intended to be taken seriously. This is not a trivial task, in fact it may well be beyond the capabilities of current technology. Think about it, we use humor and sarcasm constantly in all kinds of situations, and we take it for granted that our audience always knows enough to discount everything not meant literally. I’ve often thought that if we ever do make contact with another intelligent species, communication might be rendered impossible by this very problem. Imagine a truly alien race that lacks the entire concept of humor... After all, humor is not necessary for effective communication, it’s just something we happen to use really frequently. There’s no reason to think that humor is a universal trait among intelligences, it may well be unique to the human race, a random consequence of our evolution and ancestry. What would a non-humor using species make of our television and radio broadcasts? Would they understand any of it? Think of all the misunderstandings that would arise if everything was taken literally! Mistakes of this nature frequently get made even amongst humans, especially online where emoticons can only partially make up for absent tonal and visual cues. Resolving the serious stuff from the sarcastic background noise of the internet is both a worthy and technically interesting endeavor. I have no doubt that someone will eventually get filthy rich by solving this problem.
I'd just not use the sarcasm-tag sarcastically.
Have gnu, will travel.
I told a CS prof. a story I had heard that originated in a large lecture theatre in a major American University. The lecturer stated to the class that there are many cases in the English Language where two negative statements create a positive one, but no instances where two positive statements make a negative one. A snarky kid way in the back (in the cheap seats) cries out "Yeah! Right!.
Initially my prof. agreed with the argument, then blinked, bumped his head into the irony, then made an aaarrrrggghhh sound. That's sarcasm. Go watch the Simpsons, see some of the biting sarcasm, then try and code.
No, I am okay. Thank you.
Are you being sarcastic, and or abusive?
Elysium
And this here is why this system can't possibly work: if you're a high-ranking Party member in a hypothetical non-collapsed modern-day Soviet Russia, and the sarcasm-detector starts flagging every post saying "communism is awesome", what will your reaction be? Do you tolerate a device that's basically exposing your own delusions as such, day in and day out, or will you order it to be "corrected"?
I suppose you could simply ignore all criticism and dig ever-deeper into your dreamworld, telling yourself that you're right and everyone who disagrees is an imperialist swine. But that didn't end well for the Soviet Union and it won't end well for the NSA.
A delusional system can't take self-awareness. That's why sarcam is such a threat to it, but so is accurate detection of sarcasm. The Emperor has no clothes, and everyone who admits it to themselves is his enemy, but sending agents to arrest everyone who thinks so without admitting someone might think so requires a level of wilful self-delusion a computer simply can't match. A delusional system is always on the brink of collapse, and the harder it fights the more damage it inflicts on itself. The USSR went that way, and so will the NSA - and possibly the US at this rate.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Look, you can all sit there in your cynical, sarcastic universes, laughing at this poignant initiative; but I, for one, actively welcome the forthcoming Utopia, of which this is just one building block.
Just repurpose the evil bit [RFC 3514].
I am sure Dijkstra RIP wouldn't mind my recycling his meme.
--
I am going to open up a sarcasm detector repair shop. The need is great.
His name is Sheldon Cooper.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
So, which is it? Are you saying the 5 Taliban leaders, a couple who are accused of War Crimes, aren't terrorists? Or are you saying someone who by all accounts walked away from his post, after ranting about how evil America is and voicing support for Taliban and then converting to Islam ... is not a deserter and traitor?
Curious, exactly how would you portray it? Moral victory for Obama and "world peace" ??? --REAL sarcasm
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.