4 ms·

WHOOOOOAAAAAA, that is definitely wrong. The FBI is definitely not actively monitoring 300 million people, and is certainly not going to start anywhere near soo

by antics 15y ago

WHOOOOOAAAAAA, that is definitely wrong. The FBI is definitely not actively monitoring 300 million people, and is certainly not going to start anywhere near soon. In fact, it is not even close to being ready to take that on, and certainly not either at the current level of funding or staffing. What you've said is categorically incorrect in every sense of the word. Once again, I cannot emphasize enough that what was said here is wrong. But, on the positive side, you are totally right that he is completely naive about data mining technology.

antics 15y ago
Adding to the above, when we talk about monitoring people, most people have in mind a model that requires O(log n) monitors; monitoring 300 people is like keeping 300 bookmarks in a book, as it takes only a few people to monitor those 300 bookmarks. To the government, the model is O(n). They're not maintaining 300 bookmarks, they're reading 300 pages simultaneously. The reason is that people are the asymptotic bottleneck. If computers totally and automatically understood everything, then the dominating term would be compute time. But it's not. The dominating term is clearly people, who must ultimately review the truly promising information. Maybe the compute resources make this linear relationship hold over lower constants, but it is still definitely linear. And any technological advantage is unfortunately shortchanged by the constant factor of red tape. Ex-Googlers like Ron here no doubt have a different view on what can/should be done to monitor people, but I argue that this is irrelevant to the government. And even if they agreed with them in principle, there's enough red tape that a system like what they have in mind would just never be realistic.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  In these sorts of situations, it is almost always prudent to overestimate your enemies capabilities. If you're going to be surprised, it's best for it to be pleasant.
- Retric 15y ago
  The model is not actively watching everyone it's flagging people for additional screening. It's one thing to know walking into an airport is going to be a pain, it's quite another when driving down the highway your license plate is tagged and someone pulls you over. The security apparatus get's to make it's numbers and occasionally even pick something up, but for those false positives out there there is little recourse but leave the country.
- lisper 15y ago
  > The dominating term is clearly people Now who has the burden of proof? > who must ultimately review the truly promising information. You could make the same argument for e.g. the stock market. Program trading can never become a dominant force in the market because humans must ultimately make all the decisions (like what programs to run). The flaw in this reasoning should be self-evident. > this is irrelevant to the government [because of] red tape You put too much faith in red tape. You may not have noticed, but since 9/11 there has arisen a shadow government that is not subject to normal bureaucratic constraints, or indeed even to the rule of law. See e.g. http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
lisper 15y ago
I didn't say they were monitoring 300 million people, I said that they could, and so the author's strategy of preventing the FBI from monitoring us by overwhelming them with data is doomed to fail.
- antics 15y ago
  If you're going to spread FUD, then you must prove these very strong claims that you are making. Hand-waving dissent away and pretending that you've proven your point is doing no one favors, especially not the people here who may be mislead into believing that you know what you're talking about. I cannot emphasize this enough: you have the burden of proof, and so far you have completely failed to live up to it. EDIT: Though, to clarify, I do agree that we don't need 300 million people to monitor 300 million people. That's not the part I'm contesting.
  - lisper 15y ago
    > you must prove these very strong claims that you are making What very strong claims are you referring to? I have only made two claims: 1) The FBI is easily capable of doing the data processing to monitor 300M people, and so flooding it with data is not an effective defense against being monitored. Facebook monitors 500M+ people. Do you seriously doubt that the FBI couldn't? 2) Data mining the information from 300M people is virtually certain to lead to false positives. Proving this is an elementary exercise in probability theory. The details are left as an exercise.

by antics 15y ago

antics 15y ago

Adding to the above, when we talk about monitoring people, most people have in mind a model that requires O(log n) monitors; monitoring 300 people is like keeping 300 bookmarks in a book, as it takes only a few people to monitor those 300 bookmarks. To the government, the model is O(n). They're not maintaining 300 bookmarks, they're reading 300 pages simultaneously. The reason is that people are the asymptotic bottleneck. If computers totally and automatically understood everything, then the dominating term would be compute time. But it's not. The dominating term is clearly people, who must ultimately review the truly promising information. Maybe the compute resources make this linear relationship hold over lower constants, but it is still definitely linear. And any technological advantage is unfortunately shortchanged by the constant factor of red tape. Ex-Googlers like Ron here no doubt have a different view on what can/should be done to monitor people, but I argue that this is irrelevant to the government. And even if they agreed with them in principle, there's enough red tape that a system like what they have in mind would just never be realistic.

burgerbrain 15y ago
In these sorts of situations, it is almost always prudent to overestimate your enemies capabilities. If you're going to be surprised, it's best for it to be pleasant.
Retric 15y ago
The model is not actively watching everyone it's flagging people for additional screening. It's one thing to know walking into an airport is going to be a pain, it's quite another when driving down the highway your license plate is tagged and someone pulls you over. The security apparatus get's to make it's numbers and occasionally even pick something up, but for those false positives out there there is little recourse but leave the country.
lisper 15y ago
> The dominating term is clearly people Now who has the burden of proof? > who must ultimately review the truly promising information. You could make the same argument for e.g. the stock market. Program trading can never become a dominant force in the market because humans must ultimately make all the decisions (like what programs to run). The flaw in this reasoning should be self-evident. > this is irrelevant to the government [because of] red tape You put too much faith in red tape. You may not have noticed, but since 9/11 there has arisen a shadow government that is not subject to normal bureaucratic constraints, or indeed even to the rule of law. See e.g. http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

lisper 15y ago

I didn't say they were monitoring 300 million people, I said that they could, and so the author's strategy of preventing the FBI from monitoring us by overwhelming them with data is doomed to fail.

antics 15y ago
If you're going to spread FUD, then you must prove these very strong claims that you are making. Hand-waving dissent away and pretending that you've proven your point is doing no one favors, especially not the people here who may be mislead into believing that you know what you're talking about. I cannot emphasize this enough: you have the burden of proof, and so far you have completely failed to live up to it. EDIT: Though, to clarify, I do agree that we don't need 300 million people to monitor 300 million people. That's not the part I'm contesting.
- lisper 15y ago
  > you must prove these very strong claims that you are making What very strong claims are you referring to? I have only made two claims: 1) The FBI is easily capable of doing the data processing to monitor 300M people, and so flooding it with data is not an effective defense against being monitored. Facebook monitors 500M+ people. Do you seriously doubt that the FBI couldn't? 2) Data mining the information from 300M people is virtually certain to lead to false positives. Proving this is an elementary exercise in probability theory. The details are left as an exercise.