5 ms·

Such software exists, it is as bad as you think it is and it produced well off targets that loudly complained. See the nsa skynet program that used map reduce o

Such software exists, it is as bad as you think it is and it produced well off targets that loudly complained. See the nsa skynet program that used map reduce on pakistans telecommunication metadata to identify possible terrorists and promptly identified Al Jazeera as a terror cell. As you correctly guessed LE did not go after them and did not bomb their office because, luckily, someone cross checked the automatons results. And then we did hear about it from a leaker. There is far less known about such systems in police and fbi but what i read so far about the fusion centers that is, if not already achieved, at least a goal.

middleeastern21 6y ago
Al Jazeera is absolutely a terrorist organization if you live in the Levant (Iraq/Syria/Jordan/Lebanon), Non Muslim Brotherhood Gulf (KSA, UAE, Kuwait to an extent), Egypt, or others. They routinely white-wash news about terrorist organizations (called ISIS rebels in Iraq until they couldn't get away with it anymore), funnel money to such groups, and lobby western governments to look away. And as an Iraqi, I wish they had the balls to bomb their headquarters. Some really good resources on this are in Arabic, and sadly the only way those get to English are through xenophobic blogs or far right outlets which delegitimizes this to the average western ears. These only scratch the surface: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/qatar-club-med-for-terrorists.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/qatar-club-med-fo... http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/ http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-email... http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/10/rich-little-qatar-big-ugly-ties-to-terror.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/10/rich-little... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/islamic-charity-officials-gave-millions-to-al-qaeda-us-says/2013/12/22/e0c53ad6-69b8-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/islam... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-saudi-qatar-idUSBREA2806S20140309 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-saudi-qatar-idUSBREA...
- Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
  There is a misunderstanding. The skynet system did not flag them for any of the reasons you would flag them, it is not intelligent, it simply runs map reduce on "who talks to whom" data, with some scores set for some of the numbers. By nature of the algorithm it tends to mark journalists and lawyers as high value targets, because their phones were in contact with scored phones or low value phones that were in contact with such scored phones. Point is: if such a system would be used against other populations, it would again flag journalists and lawyers as high value.
- dang 6y ago
  > And as an Iraqi, I wish they had the balls to bomb their headquarters. Please don't do this here. It breaks the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html badly, and it also badly discredits any good information in the rest of your comment.
jancsika 6y ago
Do you have a citation for a story about the Al Jazeera example you gave? > There is far less known about such systems in police and fbi Yeah, I should have specified that's what I was speculating about.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
  - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n... > However, as The Intercept's exposé last year made clear, the highest rated target [who travelled to Peshawar and Lahore] according to this machine learning program was Ahmad Zaidan, Al-Jazeera's long-time bureau chief in Islamabad. -- https://theintercept.com/2015/05/08/u-s-government-designated-prominent-al-jazeera-journalist-al-qaeda-member-put-watch-list/ https://theintercept.com/2015/05/08/u-s-government-designate... -- https://theintercept.com/document/2015/05/08/skynet-applying-advanced-cloud-based-behavior-analytics/ https://theintercept.com/document/2015/05/08/skynet-applying... ah my bad i misremembered: it was not the bureau in Islamabad, but the bureau chief from Islamabad and the system is also bit more intelligent and not only evaluates who calls who but also location data and suspicious pattern changes like sim swapping and buying second hand.

middleeastern21 6y ago

Al Jazeera is absolutely a terrorist organization if you live in the Levant (Iraq/Syria/Jordan/Lebanon), Non Muslim Brotherhood Gulf (KSA, UAE, Kuwait to an extent), Egypt, or others. They routinely white-wash news about terrorist organizations (called ISIS rebels in Iraq until they couldn't get away with it anymore), funnel money to such groups, and lobby western governments to look away. And as an Iraqi, I wish they had the balls to bomb their headquarters. Some really good resources on this are in Arabic, and sadly the only way those get to English are through xenophobic blogs or far right outlets which delegitimizes this to the average western ears. These only scratch the surface: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/qatar-club-med-for-terrorists.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/opinion/qatar-club-med-fo... http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/ http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-email... http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/10/rich-little-qatar-big-ugly-ties-to-terror.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/10/rich-little... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/islamic-charity-officials-gave-millions-to-al-qaeda-us-says/2013/12/22/e0c53ad6-69b8-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/islam... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-saudi-qatar-idUSBREA2806S20140309 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-saudi-qatar-idUSBREA...

Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
There is a misunderstanding. The skynet system did not flag them for any of the reasons you would flag them, it is not intelligent, it simply runs map reduce on "who talks to whom" data, with some scores set for some of the numbers. By nature of the algorithm it tends to mark journalists and lawyers as high value targets, because their phones were in contact with scored phones or low value phones that were in contact with such scored phones. Point is: if such a system would be used against other populations, it would again flag journalists and lawyers as high value.
dang 6y ago
> And as an Iraqi, I wish they had the balls to bomb their headquarters. Please don't do this here. It breaks the rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html badly, and it also badly discredits any good information in the rest of your comment.

jancsika 6y ago

Do you have a citation for a story about the Al Jazeera example you gave? > There is far less known about such systems in police and fbi Yeah, I should have specified that's what I was speculating about.

Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n... > However, as The Intercept's exposé last year made clear, the highest rated target [who travelled to Peshawar and Lahore] according to this machine learning program was Ahmad Zaidan, Al-Jazeera's long-time bureau chief in Islamabad. -- https://theintercept.com/2015/05/08/u-s-government-designated-prominent-al-jazeera-journalist-al-qaeda-member-put-watch-list/ https://theintercept.com/2015/05/08/u-s-government-designate... -- https://theintercept.com/document/2015/05/08/skynet-applying-advanced-cloud-based-behavior-analytics/ https://theintercept.com/document/2015/05/08/skynet-applying... ah my bad i misremembered: it was not the bureau in Islamabad, but the bureau chief from Islamabad and the system is also bit more intelligent and not only evaluates who calls who but also location data and suspicious pattern changes like sim swapping and buying second hand.