Watch DARPA Artificial Intelligence Search For Crime On the "Dark Web"

An anonymous reader shares this bit of news from DARPA. "Of late, DARPA has shown a growing interest in open sourcing its technology, even if its most terrifying creations, like army robot wildcats designed to reach speeds of 50Mph, are understandably kept private. In a week’s time, the wider world will be able to tinker with components of the military research body’s in-development search tool for the dark web. The Memex technology, named after an mechanical mnemonic dreamt up just as the Second World War was coming to a close, has already been put to use by a number of law enforcement agencies, who are looking to counter crime taking place on networks like Tor, where Hidden Services are protected by the privacy-enhancing, encrypted hosting, often for good, often for bad. In its first year, the focus at Memex has been on tracking human trafficking, but the project's scope stretches considerably wider."

Comments

I think it's bloody insulting

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent a large part of my time in university studying the Memex and I find it absolutely insulting that this technology is being kept behind the curtain of classified intelligence technology when it's a decades-old invention intended to make everyone's life easier. Meanwhile any researchers that want to be involved have to make the ethical leap of turning their back on their friends, family and hometown so they can do the bidding of a dark shadow government organization.

Re:I think it's bloody insulting

[davester666]

It's not a dark shadow government organization anymore. Everyone knows the US gov't is chaotic evil, and the gov't is proud of what it manages to accomplish.

On the Dark Web, no one knows you are an AI

[chrysosphinx]

How long it takes that MEMEX AI will actually start performing criminal acts on Dark Web to justify it's own existence?

Re:On the Dark Web, no one knows you are an AI

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be quite amusing if it exposes just how large a share of crime rings are run by the DEA, FBI and similar organisations. I imagine they're the majority.

Re:"Often for good, often for bad"

[Shakrai]

What's your point?

Firearms can be used to defend innocents or to kill them. Automobiles can be used to transport sick people to hospital or by drunks to make a beer run. Tor is used by activists to elude hostile regimes and by child porn traffickers. Nuclear fission can be used peacefully, to produce carbon free energy and medical isotopes, or to destroy cities and kill on a mass scale.

Most technology is capable of being abused in the wrong hands. We don't halt R&D because of these concerns.

I sense hype.

[SuricouRaven]

"Advanced web crawling and scraping technologies, with a dose of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, with the goal of being able to retrieve virtually any content on the Internet in an automated way."

Congratulations: You have invented the search engine. While there is certainly much room for improving search engine technology, the ideas described in the article do not impress me. Perhaps all the really good stuff is classified.

Re:"Often for good, often for bad"

[Kyogreex]

Most technology is capable of being abused in the wrong hands. We don't halt R&D because of these concerns.

And I never said anything to that effect that we should (or shouldn't). My point is exactly what I stated above: that you cannot thwart the bad without thwarting the good. That isn't to say anything about halting R&D or not halting R&D. It is to suggest that it presents a problem for the good as well as for the bad.

Exit nodes?

[fred911]

So will this confirm compromised exit nodes allowing the network to heal itself?