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Facebook apologizes after wrong translation sees Palestinian man arrested
- adrianlmm 9y agoIt remains me to this: http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/i/3/2/d/a/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gi31y6.png/1435790539118.png http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/i/3/2/d/a/image.r...
- ThreePostWonder 9y agoWelcome to the Butterfly War http://www.cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-War/ http://www.cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-War/
- ch4s3 9y agoThe operative quote from the article is: "no Arabic-speaking officer had read the man’s Facebook post." This reminds me of the kind of alarmist, ham fisted policing we often see in America, where police will barge into an elderly person's home and trash the place because they forgot to double check the address.
- rbanffy 9y agoI would consider obvious it'd be enormously advantageous for Israeli police to have, at least, a basic understanding of Arabic. It's like a Miami policemen without any Spanish/Portuguese knowledge.
- ars 9y agoA lot of them do, it's very common for Israeli's to be fluent in Arabic. But not all of them obviously. And in this case, considering what someone with evil intent and a bulldozer can do, I can understand arrest first, figure out what's going on second. It's not like arresting someone after the fact - in that situation you can take some time. Here it's before the fact, and seconds count.
- pjc50 9y agoUnless it's the police driving the bulldozer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie
- ars 9y agoAre you trying to derail the conversion? This is not appropriate. Delete it before people start posting defense/accusations of what happened then, which has absolutely nothing to do with this thread.
- phaemon 9y agoA typical bulldozer has a top speed of less than 10 mph. I reckon they had time to think.
- ch4s3 9y agoYou'd think they'd take the 30s required grab literally the first person in the office they could find who can understand the language it's written in. Moreover, how did they arrest him without someone speaking a modicum of Arabic? Or did they just run into his home and snatch him by force? I personally find this kind of behavior by the armed representatives of government to be horribly undemocratic.
- dcole2929 9y agoUseful to whom? Often times the police aren't really there to be helpful to minorities. You'd think Miami Police would know a bit of Spanish just out of sheer necessity but in reality very little do. I'm not surprised at all that more Israeli police don't speak any Arabic
- sergiotapia 9y agoSpanish speaking people are definitely _not_ a minority down here in Miami hehe.
- kelukelugames 9y agoI took the time to look this up. Miami is 70% hispanic of any race according to 2010 census. Though that doesn't mean 70% of Miamians only speak Spanish. Source: https://www.google.com/search?q=miami+demographics https://www.google.com/search?q=miami+demographics
- r00fus 9y agoHowever, it's quite possible that a plurality speaks at least Spanish. Being able to know folks are saying around you is a survival skill for jobs like law enforcement.
- Carioca 9y agoMinorities are usually defined in terms of power rather than sheer numbers.
- sergiotapia 9y agoI don't subscribe to that nonsense lol, but I realize that's the normal definition.
- eesmith 9y agoThe mayor of Miami, Tomás Pedro Regalado was born in Cuba, and 3 of the 6 city commissioners were either born in Cuba or born to Cuban parents. The city commissioners are: * Wifredo "Willy" Gort - born in Cuba, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Gort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Gort * Ken Russell - born in Coral Gables, FL, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article39543000.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a... . Does not appear to have a Cuban connection. * Frank Carollo - born in Miami of Cuban-born parents, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1956852.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a... * Francis Suarez - born in Miami. His father Xavier Suarez, Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor in 1985, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article147517949.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a... * Keon Hardemon - born in Miami, "scion of one of Liberty City’s most politically active families and the son of a Miami police officer", http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1957634.html http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/a... . Does not appear to have a Cuban connection. I think that helps demonstrate local majority political power.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Zaheer 9y agoThis is unsurprising considering the US / Israeli Police coordination. [1] Additionally many similar cases of Israeli police being repressive against Palestinians have been well documented [2]. [1] https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-training-adl-human-rights-abuses-dc-washington/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-train... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-a...
- smileysteve 9y agoThis is scary and 1984 ish. A man was arrested because of a bad translation.
- geoffpado 9y agoMore like the movie Brazil, during the opening of which: > a fly gets jammed in a printer and results in the incarceration and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle – instead of renegade air conditioning specialist and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)
- pjc50 9y agoCollateral damage. People are routinely murdered for being in the same area as people who are suspected of terrorism on the basis of evidence which has never seen a courtroom.
- jstanley 9y agoNot sure if you're saying that makes it OK. I don't think that makes it OK.
- ars 9y agoOne post could be a mistake, but two posts like this is not an accident. This is not the right forum for you to start attacking Israel about everything and anything.
- detaro 9y agoExtrajudical killings is more a US drone strike topic than an Israel one.
- bigbugbag 9y agoArrested because a huge centralized corporation based on collecting people personal data to profile them has replaced humans by machines which made an obvious mistake. Then other people reported said man to local authorities who acted on it without checking the source.
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoGiven how ridiculously common the phrase "Good morning" is in Arabic, (I mean, look at any Arabic 101 textbook, the Sabah Al-khair / Sabah al-noor exchange is one of the first things they teach you), it's puzzling why Facebook's translation algorithm didn't see that as a fixed phrase, rather than trying to translate it word by word. So much for machine learning.
- Eyas 9y agoRight, though this was the slightly less textbook (but just as common in day-do-day language) "Yisbah-hum", a shortened and less formal 'good morning' greeting.
- shp0ngle 9y agoMost sources for machine translation from Arabic-English pairs are data from US Army / anti-terrorist data. So the data are learned to translate terrorist messages very well, as well as army terms. However, it doesn't translate day-to-day use that well. Machine learning is only as good as the source data - and Arabic-English language pair specifically has data from US military complex, that loves translating terrorist messages. So translating Al Qaeda messaging will be good, translating regular message boards will be worse. The machine learns to translate everything as an attack, since that is what it knows. (I cannot give you exact sources, but I knew people from inside Google. Facebook uses Bing, but I think the data sources will be similar.)
- kfrzcode 9y ago> Most sources for machine translation from Arabic-English pairs are data from US Army / anti-terrorist data. Interesting! This is HN, where's the source? > I cannot give you exact sources I find your claim hard enough to believe but this seals the deal.
- Udik 9y agoIt'll turn out in due time that Bin Laden was just sending the US his best wishes. Joking of course, but up to a point. There are cases of words from the "enemy" deliberately translated in their more literal sense when their sense is figurative (one for all, "death to America"- even the official translation is "down with America"). And statements by Bin Laden himself have been deliberately ignored in the parts that made more sense from a political point of view, to reduce them to a more comfortable "we hate you because you're free".
- iandev 9y agoThis is both the fault of Facebook and the police. Unfortunately, not all police forces require evidence to arrest people. I would argue that the larger problem is actually the way in which the police handled this and not so much Facebook's inaccurate translation.
- jaynos 9y agoFacebook often asks me if I want to translate posts that are already in English. I'm not surprised that "mistakes may happen".
- slothtrop 9y agoThis headline got a chuckle out of me, not gonna lie.
- Larrikin 9y agoBecause you don't see any situation where you are unnecessarily harassed and could face arrest or death from a poor interaction with the police.
- slothtrop 9y agoTranslation: don't have a dark sense of humor about things. It's not because I lack empathy, you dolt. Obviously everyone of us is far removed from that risk. It just reads like something that could have been an Onion article: ridiculous and exasperating. Enjoy being a stiff, and go fuck yourself.
- dang 9y agoAi yai yai, we ban accounts that break the rules like this, so would you please read them and follow them when commenting here? Even if another comment was unduly stiff. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 9y agoThe parent comment wasn't good, but would you please follow the site guidelines regardless? In this case you broke the one that asks: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- xlat32 9y agoNote that in Arabic there are no vowels. Also note that it's not the common "good morning" (Sabah Al-khair), but a rarer term: one word, 6 letters, no vowels. The equivalent in english would be "gdmrng".
- Eyas 9y agoNo, seeing as there are no vowels in Arabic, the equivalent is not an English word with vowels, with the vowels removed. It is a shortened form though, and is equivalent to "Morning!"
- xlat32 9y agoArabic text has much higher entropy than English. The last two letters in the Arabic word he used (H M) is also the common suffix for "them". That's not strictly equivalent to simply "Morning!" in English. Maybe the translation algorithm confused "Yisbah-hum" (good morning) with "Yitbah-hum" (Kill them)?
- djrogers 9y agoThank you! all this reading, including the source article, and finally someone gives a likely source for the mistake.
- yorwba 9y agoAFAIK, spoken Arabic has vowels, but the script is an abjad with optional vowel markers. So English text written using only the consonants would be a good approximation.
- gotchange 9y agoActually, good morning صباح الخير has a strong vowel right there "ا" in the first word. One of the problems people face with learning Arabic is that weak vowels are implicit by nature and you need to know them by heart in order to read the words properly.
- FourPostWonder 9y agoThe predator will not eat a bad tasting butterfly, but we can trick it to do so. They talk about a "linguistic translation" error in the attempt to deflect focus away from the meta data triggers that this person generated. Cyber phrenology is real. https://www.cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-War/ https://www.cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-War/
- FilterSweep 9y agoThe referenced article was interesting. A single blackhatter posing as a greyhatter (read: "I did it for 'research purposes'" shortsightedly) can cause massive social disruption - and Facebook holds no culpability.
- acobster 9y agoAre you implying this was part of some cyber-phrenological attack to poison the "predator"? Or something? Pardon my ignorance, as my attempts to understand just what the hell cyber phrenology is all about is a bit stymied by the fact that this theory reads like a William Gibson novel...
- FourPostWonder 9y agoThe Butterfly War describes a theory of meta data warfare that forces a predator to change its behavior and target people it's been trained not to target. In this case, the connection between Silicon Valley and national security apparatuses are so hypervigilant, everyone in the anaylsis pipeline accepted the meta data that arrested this guy to be sufficient. The Butterfly War teaches you how to put anyone you want into that pipeline.
- acobster 9y agoI'm with you so far. What I'm wondering is if you're saying this Palestinian guy was "put into the pipeline" by someone performing such a metadata attack, since he seems at first glance to fit the profile of someone the security apparatus would target anyway. In any case, it's an intriguing tactic.
- Synaesthesia 9y agoThe fact that you can get arrested for a Facebook post in Israel is already alarming.
- qq66 9y agoIn what country can you never be arrested for a Facebook post?
- Synaesthesia 9y agoIn the US which has freedom of speech laws. But which country has arrested users for Facebook posts other than authoritarian countries? Particularly for such a relatively innocuous post.
- bigbugbag 9y agoPeople have been arrested over facebook in the US, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-comments-arrest-prosecution https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-com... http://www.businessinsider.com/people-arrested-for-facebook-posts-2013-7?IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/people-arrested-for-facebook-... AFAIK most of the countries have had arrestations over facebook posts, those who have not are following this global trend.
- Synaesthesia 9y agoInteresting I did not know that. Of course there are limits to free speech. Threats, and involvement in criminal activity, like if I order somebody to shoot someone, that’s not protected by free speech. This was a pretty innucous statement not a threat.
- tyingq 9y agoPeople have been arrested in the US for social media posts. And well before the internet, for things they've said or written. Also, generally, the bar for "arrested" is pretty low. Cops can arrest you with very little fear of reprisal.
- FilterSweep 9y agoThe trend will continue as long as the 0 accountability standard remains.
- huac 9y agoFor Facebook or the Israeli state?
- Twirrim 9y agoBoth?
- FilterSweep 9y agoprecisely - but Facebook sits upstream here
- mrguyorama 9y agoI have no love for Facebook, but it should always be the LEO's duty to verify everything, even if just to save their own ass.
- mezuzi 9y agoAs if a mistranslation is needed to arrest, harass or attack a Palestinian!!? The guy would've been arrested or even shot to death for no reason, except the occupation soldier is sure he is a Palestinian.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y agoMaybe they feared he was preparing an attack using a goedendag [1] (itself named after a possibly mythical shibboleth [2])? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
- electriclove 9y agoI'm not exactly a Facebook fan but the blame for this needs to be shared by the Israeli police.
- maxerickson 9y agoBlame should rest mostly on the police.
- bigbugbag 9y agoIMHO responsibility is 90% facebook, 8% people who reported it and 2% police. I do not expect police officers to be expert in using facebook.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt's not so much being Facebook experts as it is actually having a solid pretext for an arrest. I guess if Facebook isn't marking the automatic translations that is a problem, but they shouldn't be giving someone a bad day before they understand which part of the post he wrote and what it likely means.
- eh78ssxv2f 9y agoI think it is 99% police. I do not use FB translate, but Google translate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. I expect that it is not 100% reliable, and anybody who frequently uses the automated translation tools for critical tasks (presumably the police in this case) should know this. My suspicion is that this was just an excuse for the police to arrest somebody.
- guelo 9y agoWhat an awful society that is where you can get arrested for posting two words on social media by a police department run by politicians you can't vote for.
- whipoodle 9y agoThat's strange. I'm sure it could just as easily have happened to an Israeli citizen. (Just kidding!)
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agohttps://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail https://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-tw...
- kwhitefoot 9y agoI pasted the offending Arabic into Google translate and got "Become them" (https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/%D9%8A%D8%B5%D8%A8%D8%AD%D9%87%D9%85 https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/%D9%8A%D8%B5%D8%A8%D8%...). Bing just says "become", Translate.com and Cambridge dictionaries have "Come in the morning to them". Yandex says "ISG world"! All a bit odd or downright weird but none so threatening as Facebook's. Was Facebook's translation engine sabotaged?
- Stranger43 9y agoHow does that happen? I know that "googlebombing" google translate used to be a thing as i have seen it done fairly often(usually stuff like translating android to iphone etc) in the Danish/English translator, where the fact that a few votes could change a words meaning. I wondering if what happened here is a less harmless version of that were a group of people deliberately messing with crowd sourced translation tools, and if facebook have any kind of sanity checking on their translate function or if they are as vulnerable as google translate to that kind of manipulation?
- elietoubi 9y agoCrazy!!! ... let's take politics aside for a sec. What if the man was actually planning an attack? That would be really crazy that an AI tool could actually find that with the context of the picture. Let's give another example ... let's say I pose with a fake gun and I write: "Ready to party" would the algorithm render a different translation than if I posed with balloons?
- misterHN 9y agoThis problem can be solved with a crowbar and a couple of hours alone in a room with the zuck.