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And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors. No...

And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors. No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!

zdragnar 8y ago
Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate. The far more interesting and valuable debate to my mind is the extent to which we, the civilian government, should enable the policing and military powers to use the tools, and at what cost to ourselves.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  The excellent thing about citing a claim is that it obviates the need for trust, it’s about demonstration. My default position isn’t to assume that because you’re anonymous and online, you’re lying or misleading me, and supporting a claim with evidence only further reinforces your credibility. The absence of that evidence doesn’t make me consider you dishonest either, I’m just not going to put much weight in considering the specific unsupported claim you’ve made. Beyond that, for the debate you want to have (a good one I think) all parties need more information. I can’t judge the efficacy of a system without dats on its past. Maybe the inherent asymmetry in information between TLA’s and the public makes this impossible in all cases, but not to the extent we currently live with.
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    Every system is unique, so citing statistics for one won't apply very well to another. Finding the statistics in the first place is going to be a problem as well. It's a bit of a catch-22. Discussing the effectiveness of one strategy versus another could easily lead to bad actors changing their communication strategies to avoid what is currently effective. It is, in that regard, not much different than the reason why we don't compare the effectiveness of various secret agents and spies and their techniques in public forums; if we know, so too do others. The very effectiveness relies, in part, in not being part of public knowledge. Finally, I think one point (perhaps the most important in this regard) that you didn't address is that these tools aren't necessarily allowing anyone to do anything new, assuming they had the data in the first place. They've taken what intel analysts were previously doing by hand for many years and automating gathering the data and generating views into it. Both of those save a significant amount of time, but I have yet to see a system that generates something that a human: a) didn't need to verify first by inspecting the source data to confirm, and b) couldn't have come up with given time to do the job by hand The products themselves are only novel in their packaging. The amount of analyses that can be performed has also increased due to the broader array of data that can be ingested, but again, that in itself is only a matter of scale, not novelty.

zdragnar 8y ago

Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate. The far more interesting and valuable debate to my mind is the extent to which we, the civilian government, should enable the policing and military powers to use the tools, and at what cost to ourselves.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
The excellent thing about citing a claim is that it obviates the need for trust, it’s about demonstration. My default position isn’t to assume that because you’re anonymous and online, you’re lying or misleading me, and supporting a claim with evidence only further reinforces your credibility. The absence of that evidence doesn’t make me consider you dishonest either, I’m just not going to put much weight in considering the specific unsupported claim you’ve made. Beyond that, for the debate you want to have (a good one I think) all parties need more information. I can’t judge the efficacy of a system without dats on its past. Maybe the inherent asymmetry in information between TLA’s and the public makes this impossible in all cases, but not to the extent we currently live with.
- zdragnar 8y ago
  Every system is unique, so citing statistics for one won't apply very well to another. Finding the statistics in the first place is going to be a problem as well. It's a bit of a catch-22. Discussing the effectiveness of one strategy versus another could easily lead to bad actors changing their communication strategies to avoid what is currently effective. It is, in that regard, not much different than the reason why we don't compare the effectiveness of various secret agents and spies and their techniques in public forums; if we know, so too do others. The very effectiveness relies, in part, in not being part of public knowledge. Finally, I think one point (perhaps the most important in this regard) that you didn't address is that these tools aren't necessarily allowing anyone to do anything new, assuming they had the data in the first place. They've taken what intel analysts were previously doing by hand for many years and automating gathering the data and generating views into it. Both of those save a significant amount of time, but I have yet to see a system that generates something that a human: a) didn't need to verify first by inspecting the source data to confirm, and b) couldn't have come up with given time to do the job by hand The products themselves are only novel in their packaging. The amount of analyses that can be performed has also increased due to the broader array of data that can be ingested, but again, that in itself is only a matter of scale, not novelty.