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Think of all the complete garbage interactions you'd have to sift through to find anything useful from a national security standpoint. The data is practically o

Think of all the complete garbage interactions you'd have to sift through to find anything useful from a national security standpoint. The data is practically obfuscated by virtue of its banality.

artursapek 1y ago
I’ve done my part cluttering it with my requests for the same banana bread recipe like 5 separate times.
- refuser 1y ago
  It was that good?
- baobun 1y ago
  gief
brigandish 1y ago
Search engines have been doing this since the mid 90s and have only improved, to think that any data is obfuscated by its being part of some huge volume of other data is a fallacy at best.
- farts_mckensy 1y ago
  Search engines use our data for completely different purposes.
  - yunwal 1y ago
    That doesn’t negate the GPs point. It’s easy to make datasets searchable.
    - farts_mckensy 1y ago
      Searchable? You have to know what to search for, and you have to rule out false positives. How do you discern a person roleplaying some secret agent scenario vs. a person actually plotting something? That's not something a search function can distinguish. It requires a human to sift through that data.
      - brigandish 1y ago
        > How do you discern a person roleplaying some secret agent scenario vs. a person actually plotting something? Meta data and investigation. > That's not something a search function can distinguish. We know that it can narrow down hugely from the initial volume. > It requires a human to sift through that data. Yes, the point of collating, analysing, and searching data is not to make final judgements but to find targets for investigation by the available agents. That's the same reason we all use search engines, to narrow down, they never produce what we intend by intention alone, we still have to read the final results. Magic is still some way off. You're acting as if we can automate humans out of the loop entirely, which would be a straw man. Is anyone saying we can get rid of the police or security agencies by using AI? Or perhaps AI will become the police, perhaps it will conduct traffic stops using driverless cars and robots? I suppose it could happen, though I'm not sure what the relevance would be here.
        farts_mckensy 1y ago
        The data is obfuscated and the cost to unlock the value of it is often not worth the effort.
        brigandish 1y ago
        And yet billions of dollars (at least) has gone into it. A whole group of people with access to the data and the means to sift it disagree and are willing to put their money behind it, so your bare assertions count for nowt.
        farts_mckensy 1y ago
bigyabai 1y ago
"We kill people based on metadata." - National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden Raw data with time-series significance is their absolute favorite. You might argue something like Google Maps data is "obfuscated by virtue of its banality" until you catch the right person in the wrong place. ChatGPT sessions are the same way, and it's going to be fed into aggregate surveillance systems in the way modern telecom and advertiser data is.
- farts_mckensy 1y ago
  This is mostly security theater, and generally not worth the lift when you consider the steps needed to unlock the value of that data in the context of investigations.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Citation?
    - farts_mckensy 1y ago
      -The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s 2014 review of the NSA “Section 215” phone-record program found no instance in which the dragnet produced a counter-terror lead that couldn’t have been obtained with targeted subpoenas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_Oversight_Board_report_on_mass_surveillance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_... -After Boston, Paris, Manchester, and other attacks, post-mortems showed the perpetrators were already in government databases. Analysts simply didn’t connect the dots amid the flood of benign hits. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack -Independent tallies suggest dozens of civilians killed for every intended high-value target in Yemen and Pakistan, largely because metadata mis-identifies phones that change pockets. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36962/pdf https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36962/pdf

Think of all the complete garbage interactions you'd have to sift through to find anything useful from a national security standpoint. The data is practically obfuscated by virtue of its banality.

artursapek 1y ago

I’ve done my part cluttering it with my requests for the same banana bread recipe like 5 separate times.

refuser 1y ago
It was that good?
baobun 1y ago
gief

brigandish 1y ago

Search engines have been doing this since the mid 90s and have only improved, to think that any data is obfuscated by its being part of some huge volume of other data is a fallacy at best.

farts_mckensy 1y ago
Search engines use our data for completely different purposes.
- yunwal 1y ago
  That doesn’t negate the GPs point. It’s easy to make datasets searchable.
  - farts_mckensy 1y ago
    Searchable? You have to know what to search for, and you have to rule out false positives. How do you discern a person roleplaying some secret agent scenario vs. a person actually plotting something? That's not something a search function can distinguish. It requires a human to sift through that data.
    - brigandish 1y ago
      > How do you discern a person roleplaying some secret agent scenario vs. a person actually plotting something? Meta data and investigation. > That's not something a search function can distinguish. We know that it can narrow down hugely from the initial volume. > It requires a human to sift through that data. Yes, the point of collating, analysing, and searching data is not to make final judgements but to find targets for investigation by the available agents. That's the same reason we all use search engines, to narrow down, they never produce what we intend by intention alone, we still have to read the final results. Magic is still some way off. You're acting as if we can automate humans out of the loop entirely, which would be a straw man. Is anyone saying we can get rid of the police or security agencies by using AI? Or perhaps AI will become the police, perhaps it will conduct traffic stops using driverless cars and robots? I suppose it could happen, though I'm not sure what the relevance would be here.
      - farts_mckensy 1y ago
        The data is obfuscated and the cost to unlock the value of it is often not worth the effort.
        brigandish 1y ago
        And yet billions of dollars (at least) has gone into it. A whole group of people with access to the data and the means to sift it disagree and are willing to put their money behind it, so your bare assertions count for nowt.
        farts_mckensy 1y ago

bigyabai 1y ago

"We kill people based on metadata." - National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden Raw data with time-series significance is their absolute favorite. You might argue something like Google Maps data is "obfuscated by virtue of its banality" until you catch the right person in the wrong place. ChatGPT sessions are the same way, and it's going to be fed into aggregate surveillance systems in the way modern telecom and advertiser data is.

farts_mckensy 1y ago
This is mostly security theater, and generally not worth the lift when you consider the steps needed to unlock the value of that data in the context of investigations.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Citation?
  - farts_mckensy 1y ago
    -The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s 2014 review of the NSA “Section 215” phone-record program found no instance in which the dragnet produced a counter-terror lead that couldn’t have been obtained with targeted subpoenas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_Oversight_Board_report_on_mass_surveillance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_... -After Boston, Paris, Manchester, and other attacks, post-mortems showed the perpetrators were already in government databases. Analysts simply didn’t connect the dots amid the flood of benign hits. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/whole-haystack -Independent tallies suggest dozens of civilians killed for every intended high-value target in Yemen and Pakistan, largely because metadata mis-identifies phones that change pockets. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36962/pdf https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36962/pdf