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Tone of this article is unfairly critical of DHS & FBI. When data and statistics underpin our decisions in everything - speech recognition to pricing and sugges

Tone of this article is unfairly critical of DHS & FBI. When data and statistics underpin our decisions in everything - speech recognition to pricing and suggestions on Amazon, apparently the government's use of it to go after suspected terrorists is unfair. The surveillance apparently shifted to a mosque after the San Bernardino shooting, not because the FBI hates mosques, but because data on individuals attending the mosque tagged them as suspects.

jstanley 9y ago
The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is that this method involves recording everything that happens within a large radius of their actual target.
- chronic824 9y ago
  That's better than what tech companies do. They record every good damn link you even hover over, whether you have an intent to click it or not. At least the FBI records within a radius of the target. Google, Uber, Salesforce, Orbital Insight, etc. record as much as they possibly can about everything.
- wildrhythms 9y ago
  How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.
    - mcny 9y ago
      Iirc CIA study seems to suggest that there is a point of diminishing with data. At some point, it starts to make a human agent overconfident and over reliant on the data to the point where it is worse than having less data. Now, add the fact that we have nation states as well as other actors working hard to influence us. How difficult wood it be to plant data into a mass surveillance system? Even assuming every politician and every government employee has perfect ethical and moral standing, can we completely trust our surveillance system? My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out adversaries have seen it.
  - vageli 9y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting mass, untargeted, constant surveillance is equivalent to putting a cop on every corner?

jstanley 9y ago

The problem isn't that they're trying to track down terrorists. The problem is that this method involves recording everything that happens within a large radius of their actual target.

chronic824 9y ago
That's better than what tech companies do. They record every good damn link you even hover over, whether you have an intent to click it or not. At least the FBI records within a radius of the target. Google, Uber, Salesforce, Orbital Insight, etc. record as much as they possibly can about everything.
wildrhythms 9y ago
How different is this from putting a police officer on the street corner?
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Data storage and interpretation. A single officer on every street corner can't aggregate data to learn of geographical trends, social connections, and aberrations from the norm in location, behavior, political thoughts, etc.
  - mcny 9y ago
    Iirc CIA study seems to suggest that there is a point of diminishing with data. At some point, it starts to make a human agent overconfident and over reliant on the data to the point where it is worse than having less data. Now, add the fact that we have nation states as well as other actors working hard to influence us. How difficult wood it be to plant data into a mass surveillance system? Even assuming every politician and every government employee has perfect ethical and moral standing, can we completely trust our surveillance system? My thought is this: likely whatever your trying to keep secret, out adversaries have seen it.
- vageli 9y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting mass, untargeted, constant surveillance is equivalent to putting a cop on every corner?