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This has nothing to do with authoritarism. It is method to detect behaviour not mathching "normal" pattern. This is used as a heuristic to detect suspicious beh

by chmike 14y ago

This has nothing to do with authoritarism. It is method to detect behaviour not mathching "normal" pattern. This is used as a heuristic to detect suspicious behavior.

oelmekki 14y ago
Thanks for confirming my point.
dalke 14y ago
An issue is that they are only an _approximate_ heuristic. What is the likelihood that an unusual behavior is suspicious? The level of false negatives is, as this article points out, very high. That's because it's essentially impossible to define "normal" behavior. "Normal" behavior doesn't include jumping off a bridge. But I and friends have, as a lark. Is that then suspicious? Or from the article, normal people don't buy explosive chemicals and a timer in the same week ... except if the person's teen wants the chemicals for a science experiment and the timer replaces the broken one for the lawn irrigation system. There are a huge number of these low-probability events, and it overwhelms the signal of any truly suspicions behavior. Should the authorities investigate all of these? Some of these? What sets the limit? The lack of funding or the law? "Authoritarianism" comes into play because the authorities do come in and investigate. That's their mandate. And innocent citizens are compelled to submit to the investigation, or at the least get the clear signal that the government thinks they are suspicious. Some will stop doing legal things (like traveling by air) in order to not be subject to increased scrutiny by the authorities. This might be low-level authoritarianism, but it still is a higher level of submission to authority than I would like. There's always going to be some false positives, where innocent citizens are investigated, accused, and even put into prison, so it's not like I'm saying that we can have a non-authoritarian government. But do say that this has nothing to do with authoritarianism is only focusing on the collection of the data, and not the likelihood that someone in authority will do something with it.

by chmike 14y ago

This has nothing to do with authoritarism. It is method to detect behaviour not mathching "normal" pattern. This is used as a heuristic to detect suspicious behavior.

oelmekki 14y ago

Thanks for confirming my point.

dalke 14y ago

An issue is that they are only an _approximate_ heuristic. What is the likelihood that an unusual behavior is suspicious? The level of false negatives is, as this article points out, very high. That's because it's essentially impossible to define "normal" behavior. "Normal" behavior doesn't include jumping off a bridge. But I and friends have, as a lark. Is that then suspicious? Or from the article, normal people don't buy explosive chemicals and a timer in the same week ... except if the person's teen wants the chemicals for a science experiment and the timer replaces the broken one for the lawn irrigation system. There are a huge number of these low-probability events, and it overwhelms the signal of any truly suspicions behavior. Should the authorities investigate all of these? Some of these? What sets the limit? The lack of funding or the law? "Authoritarianism" comes into play because the authorities do come in and investigate. That's their mandate. And innocent citizens are compelled to submit to the investigation, or at the least get the clear signal that the government thinks they are suspicious. Some will stop doing legal things (like traveling by air) in order to not be subject to increased scrutiny by the authorities. This might be low-level authoritarianism, but it still is a higher level of submission to authority than I would like. There's always going to be some false positives, where innocent citizens are investigated, accused, and even put into prison, so it's not like I'm saying that we can have a non-authoritarian government. But do say that this has nothing to do with authoritarianism is only focusing on the collection of the data, and not the likelihood that someone in authority will do something with it.