Spotting And Culling Terrorist Groups On Social Media: Pipe Dream, or Possibility? (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Can Twitter Spot Terrorists and Put Them In Jail? Hany Farid, the chairman of the Computer Science department at Dartmouth University, thinks so. He told the New York Times that there's "no fundamental technology or engineering limitation" to spotting terrorists on the Intertubes. In other words, he's figured out how to tell the difference between bragging terrorists and kids who are just joking about being "da bomb." Can artificial intelligence make these distinctions? Or will it generate a ton of false positives? Or is Prof. Farid just trolling for more grant money to make Dartmouth the premier department for spying on social media?

Comments

Yes to one of these.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is Prof. Farid just trolling for more grant money

If you want an infinite pool of grant money in electrical engineering in the UK, you go for something with clear defence applications. I expect similar applies for IT.

What I find embarrassing in all this is that there is really nothing stopping thousands of people being shot every day by lone wolves except that people are generally not that shitty. And when there is propaganda to drive people to do horrific things that they would not normally do, it doesn't come from the DEEP DARK OMG WEB (you have to really want it in the first place to look hard for it there, by its very nature), but from regular media pounding the TV/radio/web sites with news about previous attacks and the threat of the enemy, marginalising and factionalising and dividing and conquering (while arms are sold to both sides, and politicians take great advantage).

Here's the thing: terrorism is not a big threat in Western nations. In fact, world violence is at a relative low. What is at the highest of highs, however, is the ability to quickly set the narrative for news, getting people to panic about all the appropriate things, then turning their attention to some new event to stop them reflecting too much.

Anonymous Has Already Done This

[Nova Express]

At least at a certain level, with Anonymous taking out thousands of pro-Islamic State Twitter accounts with Operation Tango Down. Now that's just one service, and nothing prevents them from signing on again. But you can slow momentum and make it harder for supporters of terrorism to broadcast their views to supporters without reprisals, and also limit or prevent coordinated action.

Best of all, it's possible to do it merely for Terms of Service violation, without government action.

Of course, to actually defeat terrorists, you have to kill them faster than terror organizations can create new terrorists, and to dry up their financial support (of which the Islamic State has plenty in "moderate" Sunni states...)

Re:Anonymous Has Already Done This

[Rei]

Unfortunately "violations for terms of service" is just as vulnerable to false positives. The other day I went to check out a video on Youtube and found out that it had been pulled for violation of the terms of service. Someone clearly glanced at it and saw screenshots all too familiar: a row of Daesh (ISIS) thugs in all black, their prisoners in orange jump suits before them forced to kneel, guns pointed to their head for an execution. Youtube has taken up a policy of banning such videos.

Except, that's not what the video was. The video was not from Daesh but Levant Front, an anti-Daesh coalition. The people in black were Levant Front members and the people in the orange jumpsuits Daesh solders that they had captured. And rather than execute them, they all holstered their guns, took off their face masks, and walked away, while an imam showed up and gave a sermon to the Daesh prisoners about forgiveness and being fair and just in life. In short, it was precisely the opposite of the Daesh videos that Youtube is supposed to ban.

False positives are a real thing.