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It wouldn't be too hard for the surveillance society to distinguish the real profiles and bots(Edit: or people pretending to be different people). The US Gover

It wouldn't be too hard for the surveillance society to distinguish the real profiles and bots(Edit: or people pretending to be different people). The US Government has built up such far reaching surveillance tools, of which we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, that this chaff that you are talking about wouldn't be chaff at all.

mirimir 11y ago
These aren't bots. These are people, pretending to be other people.
- dineshp2 11y ago
  Either way, it would be very hard to generate significant chaff that the surveillance guys would go after.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    Maybe. But the thing is that they're going after everything. Add some hot key words. Back in the day, we used sigs for our Usenet posts that were loaded with hot keywords. Anyway, this would cost real money, for sure. But the labor supply for fake friends is huge, especially if you don't care about proficiency in English. Edit: For example, one could generate numerous fake Russian acquaintances of Edward Snowden, and have each buy a few fake friends. Maybe the fake friends would be impressed ;)
    - DanBC 11y ago
      When someone suggests rolling their own crypto a bunch of people pop up to point out the considerable risks. We need the same for these "wheat / chaff" steganographic noise generation schemes. Steganography is probably secure, but people tend to vastly underestimate the amount of cover material needed. Considerable money and time has been devoted to "finding the real signal". The Usenet keyword triggers were trivially easy to filter. Mostly because people just put a list, in all caps, at the end of their post. We know these are trivially easy to filter because putting a list like [ECHELON CIA NSA GCHQ IRA BOMB inurl:groups.google.com] returns loads. Here's one example, with the handy words "anti echelon block" https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/uk.media/KqhWP1rLF9U/GK05lbwYuUcJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/uk.media/KqhWP1rLF9U/G...
      - mirimir 11y ago
        I'm not suggesting that this would, by itself, hide anything. But if enough people did it, it could have an overall pro-privacy impact.
      - AI_Overlord 11y ago
        Doesn't that mean that the real bad guy would just put that list in his messages?
- zardo 11y ago
  The whole thing reminds me of the main character's job in Her. Life imitates art.
geon 11y ago
Isn't spotting an AI algorithmically about as hard as building it?
- physicality 11y ago
  Well, based on inspection of content, maybe. But we're not talking about mere words as an expression thought. The simple fact is that within U.S. borders alone, there are maybe 300 million animals, each weighing in at probably 150 lbs (75kg) or more. They drive cars visible from space. They flip light switches on and off wherever they go. They clock in at work. They clock out. They walk in front of cameras, and there are cameras dotting every place of business, and in homes and outdoors. They plug things in and then unplug them. They power on machinery. They use credit card terminals. They visit ATMs. They buy things in cash, with serial numbered currency, which passes through more optical scanners than you might guess. And almost everyone speaks English, exclusively. And then there are the mobile devices, the uniquely identifiable radio beacons we've, almost all of us, have volunteered to be tagged with. So, VPNs, and proxies, and TOR, as much as they do, are only going to go so far.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Your assuming competence. The surveillance state is built by the lowest bidder and is far far less useful than generally assumed. Just look into false positives on the no fly list. Sure, it's slightly better than random chance, but odds are if you pick an name from that list they are a non threat. (It's far worse than that you can probably pick several names before finding a real issue.)
    - Rylinks 11y ago
      The no-fly list can have three nines of accuracy and still have more false positives than actual hits.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Depends on how you define accuracy. Your thinking in terms of the test for the no fly list is X accurate, but that does not mean the no fly list it's self has X accuracy. List A, contains every person on the planet so it's comprehensive, but nobody would call that an accurate no fly list. List B contains one name of an terrorist who has made specific credible and recent threats, it is very accurate.

mirimir 11y ago

These aren't bots. These are people, pretending to be other people.

dineshp2 11y ago
Either way, it would be very hard to generate significant chaff that the surveillance guys would go after.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Maybe. But the thing is that they're going after everything. Add some hot key words. Back in the day, we used sigs for our Usenet posts that were loaded with hot keywords. Anyway, this would cost real money, for sure. But the labor supply for fake friends is huge, especially if you don't care about proficiency in English. Edit: For example, one could generate numerous fake Russian acquaintances of Edward Snowden, and have each buy a few fake friends. Maybe the fake friends would be impressed ;)
  - DanBC 11y ago
    When someone suggests rolling their own crypto a bunch of people pop up to point out the considerable risks. We need the same for these "wheat / chaff" steganographic noise generation schemes. Steganography is probably secure, but people tend to vastly underestimate the amount of cover material needed. Considerable money and time has been devoted to "finding the real signal". The Usenet keyword triggers were trivially easy to filter. Mostly because people just put a list, in all caps, at the end of their post. We know these are trivially easy to filter because putting a list like [ECHELON CIA NSA GCHQ IRA BOMB inurl:groups.google.com] returns loads. Here's one example, with the handy words "anti echelon block" https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/uk.media/KqhWP1rLF9U/GK05lbwYuUcJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/uk.media/KqhWP1rLF9U/G...
    - mirimir 11y ago
      I'm not suggesting that this would, by itself, hide anything. But if enough people did it, it could have an overall pro-privacy impact.
    - AI_Overlord 11y ago
      Doesn't that mean that the real bad guy would just put that list in his messages?
zardo 11y ago
The whole thing reminds me of the main character's job in Her. Life imitates art.

geon 11y ago

Isn't spotting an AI algorithmically about as hard as building it?

physicality 11y ago
Well, based on inspection of content, maybe. But we're not talking about mere words as an expression thought. The simple fact is that within U.S. borders alone, there are maybe 300 million animals, each weighing in at probably 150 lbs (75kg) or more. They drive cars visible from space. They flip light switches on and off wherever they go. They clock in at work. They clock out. They walk in front of cameras, and there are cameras dotting every place of business, and in homes and outdoors. They plug things in and then unplug them. They power on machinery. They use credit card terminals. They visit ATMs. They buy things in cash, with serial numbered currency, which passes through more optical scanners than you might guess. And almost everyone speaks English, exclusively. And then there are the mobile devices, the uniquely identifiable radio beacons we've, almost all of us, have volunteered to be tagged with. So, VPNs, and proxies, and TOR, as much as they do, are only going to go so far.
- Retric 11y ago
  Your assuming competence. The surveillance state is built by the lowest bidder and is far far less useful than generally assumed. Just look into false positives on the no fly list. Sure, it's slightly better than random chance, but odds are if you pick an name from that list they are a non threat. (It's far worse than that you can probably pick several names before finding a real issue.)
  - Rylinks 11y ago
    The no-fly list can have three nines of accuracy and still have more false positives than actual hits.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Depends on how you define accuracy. Your thinking in terms of the test for the no fly list is X accurate, but that does not mean the no fly list it's self has X accuracy. List A, contains every person on the planet so it's comprehensive, but nobody would call that an accurate no fly list. List B contains one name of an terrorist who has made specific credible and recent threats, it is very accurate.