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NSF-Funded "Dark Web" to Battle Terrorists
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Sep 12, 2007 02:07 PM
from the whos-watching-the-watchers dept.
from the whos-watching-the-watchers dept.
BuzzSkyline writes "The National Science Foundation has announced a new University of Arizona project, which they call the Dark Web, intended to monitor all terrorist activity on the Internet. The project relies on 'advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis [to] find, catalog and analyze extremist activities online.' The coolest part of the project is a tool called Writeprint, which 'automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating "anonymous" content' with an accuracy of 95%, according to the release."
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5% (Score:3, Insightful)
So when they get it wrong, and the police storm my front door instead of my neighbors, will it still be "cool"?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
About 20% of "colonists" opposed our Independence. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you had polled England at the time, and those Loyalists, you'd understand that the "terrorists" had control of the "colonies".
If England had won, every one of those "terrorists" who had signed their little "Declaration" would have been hanged. And their would have been rejoicing in the streets of the colonies.
Parent
Re:About 20% of "colonists" opposed our Independen (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure nothing of the sort happened, but i'm willing to hear evidence to the contrary.
Those were greatly less "evolved" times, and yet, my impression is that those at the forefront of political dissent were vastly more humane in spreading their message.
Re:About 20% of "colonists" opposed our Independen (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree if the insurgents would act in a military manor. but as of yet, they are completely happy with killing
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The US wasn't attacked by terrorists. They were attacked by a tight knit military group that went after their critical infrastructure. The world trade center, the center of their economy. The pentagon, center of their military. And the commander in chief.
There have been no grocery stores blown up, no shopping malls, no attacks with Nuclear, C
Re:5% (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:5% (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
And simple to defeat? (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, they'll be able to group all of his posting as being posted by him
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't think for a second that they aren't trying to actively hack some of the more popular places these things are being posted. If they can get one honey pot and the correlate that guys p
It's not even that difficult. (Score:4, Interesting)
So all that the government would need would be the addresses of the web sites (no matter where they are located) and taps on the pipelines. You can either try to catch the stuff going OUT of your country or going INTO their country (if you can't just tap the line of that website).
That will tell you who, in your country, is going there.
As long as it isn't using encryption, you'll even get what is being read/posted.
If it is using encryption, you still should have the location of the guy reading/posting. Or you can try cracking the encryption.
Once you have the location of the guy, you get a warrant and put a keylogger on his box or whatever.
There's no need for all of this crap about "darkweb". Google can already tell you what is posted on what websites. If these guys are smart enough to beat the basics, they're smart enough to know NOT to use the Internet for point-to-point communications.
Parent
Re:5% (Score:5, Funny)
Now, the biggest problem is to get terrorists to register to and use that DarkWeb thingy. But with such a kewl name and a good advertising campaign, it shouldn't be too hard.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
In other words: they may not know the real names, but they can identify all the anonymous posts made by the same person with 95% accuracy. That seems much more doable compared to divining a person's real identity from nothing more than a pile of anonymous data.
=Smidge=
Re:5% (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say in 1,000,000 posters there are 20 secret terrorists. This system (assuming the 95% figure isn't just made up, and since it's a reliability figure coming from a government contractor - it is) will label 19 of the real terrorists as terrorists and *50,000* innocent internet users as terrorists. Since we already live in a world where being under government suspicion (but no charges) gets your assets frozen, phones tapped, and puts you on the no-fly list this is a BIG problem.
I go to a fairly international university. I've seen this 1984 B.S. shit on innocent people's jobs and educations first hand. As long as our elected representatives keep granting themselves and their officers these kinds of powers, we do not have the right to call ourselves the "land of the free."
Right now the US has in place a set of laws that would allow for an authoritarian (not-quite totalitarian, though if the press keeps dismantling itself, who knows) government. All it would take is the decision to enforce them to the letter; no consent from the voters would be needed.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I would hope that if your neighbors are terrorists, you would have already called them in. I wouldn't want a bomb maker living next door to me!
Re:5% (Score:5, Funny)
It's better to be safe than sorry; why, just the other day, I saw some guy walking suspiciously down the street. I'm not one to overreact, but this guy was just suspicious if you know what I mean. He looked like he came from the Middle East, had shifty eyes, the full shebang.
So I'm walking along and I see this guy. I almost kept going, minding my own business, but I thought about the danger this proud nation is in and I thought to myself, "If I don't do something, who will?"
And thank god I did.
I called 911 (blessed may that number always be in our hearts) and reported the likely perpetrator. I tailed him from a distance for a while, and my if he wasn't surprised when that officer pulled over next to him! You should have seen the look in his eyes, caught in the act!
So, long story short, turns out the police couldn't arrest him for anything (or he got off on some technicality, probably). I know one thing: he'll be more careful next time he decides to pull something. You've got me to thank for that.
Parent
Re:5% (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:5% (Score:4, Funny)
"Hello?"
"My neighbor Ivan Asimov is an enemy of the State. He is hiding undeclared diamonds in his woodshed."
"This will be noted."
The next day, the KGB goons go over to Asimov's house. They search the shed where the firewood is
kept, break every piece of wood, find no diamonds, swear at Asimov, and leave.
The phone rings at Asimov's house.
"Hello, Ivan! Did the KGB come?"
"Yes."
"Did they chop your firewood?"
"Yes, they did."
"Okay, now it's your turn to call. I need my vegetable patch plowed."
Parent
Re:5% (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The coolest part of the project is a tool called Writeprint, which 'automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating "anonymous" content' with an accuracy of 95%, according to the release."
So when they get it wrong, and the police storm my front door instead of my neighbors, will it still be "cool"?
5% error rate is too high to base any first-order data on. My assumption would be that they'll use this information to determine what online content to spend their time working on. For example, if the modern equivalent of Echelon tells us that a terrorist in Iraq makes frequent calls to someone who makes frequent, high-signal calls to someone in the U.S. and that person is identified as the potential author of several anonymous postings to various forums, then you spend a whole lot of time analyzing those
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No and neither do you as that has never been the case. Checks and balances precludes true independence.
This could have been used... (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than that, I'm afraid this is the sort of technology that's only "cool" when it isn't being used on you.
Not to be confused with Darknet (Score:4, Informative)
Security is more important now than ever! (Score:2)
Attention NSF (Score:5, Funny)
Either the terra'rists give up after the spamming, or they kill the spammers. Either way, we win.
Re: (Score:2)
The quote you're looking for (Score:3, Interesting)
Quis custodiet, ipsos custodes
- Juvenal
Re: (Score:2)
F or A? (Score:4, Insightful)
Change NSF to NSA, and the summary would make just as much sense...except "terrorist" would be defined as whatever the current politicians in power decide it to mean.
Space race, nuclear power, this kind of technology. Just goes to show, if you have a good idea, find a way to use it to further the war machine and political agendas and prepare to get buried in money. Can someone please figure out a way to weaponize a cure for cancer?
Re:F or A? (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean kind of like how there are now lots more skilled laser eye surgeons in the private sector competing to give you better prices for your business because once the military decided to back providing that service to its pilots, there was a giant leap in people being trained to do the work during their rotations?
As far as cancer: the military provides all kinds of basic medical research from which we all benefit. You'll see considerable military spending in epidemialogical studies, trauma treatment, etc. To the extent that, say, The Marine Corp is a weapon, the huge studies that can be conducted on the systematically collected health stats, DNA, etc., on a huge number of generally healthy people over several generations IS a part of all sorts of cancer (and other) studies.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
1) Find a cure for cancer
2) Indiscriminantly irradiate the globe, giving everyone cancer
3) Distribute the cure only to card carrying citizens
There you go. Where do I get my money?
Another good tactic is to create diseases which, based
Who's the extremist on-line? (Score:2, Redundant)
These jerks are the "extremists on line".
Re: (Score:2)
Also, they should not be ashamed of creating the technology, but ashamed of how it is used if it is wrong. That is like saying inventing the plane was bad because it would be used to fight wars. Bad example perhaps, but you get the idea.
"Spying" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's reasonable to call it spying.
You're right, it's not spying, it's surveillance.
That doesn't really make it any better, however.
remember... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"NSF-Funded" (Score:2, Interesting)
OMG! I am dead (Score:2)
Anonymous Cowards? (Score:2)
This tech could destroy Slashdot as we know it!
Aliens moment (Score:3, Funny)
Reminds me of something..."I'm ready, man, check it out. I am the ultimate badass! State of the badass art! You do NOT wanna fuck with me. Check it out!...Independently targeting particle beam phalanx, VWAP! Fry half a city with this puppy! We got tactical smart missiles, phase-plasma pulse rifles, RPGs! We got sonic, electronic ball-breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks..."
Computationally expensive beyond practicality (Score:5, Interesting)
You can only extrapolate data you've read properly. The simplest of encryption and/or obfuscation schemes applied to this content would effectively protect against extrapolation. Sure, Big Brother can have software scrub the Net looking for suspicious content. But can they have software scrub the Net while applying decryption measures to everything found? While analyzing every image file for obfuscated content (or even something as simple as writing your terrorist plans on a piece of paper and scanning it in as an image)? While applying rot13 to every block of text found?
I would say no. The problem becomes computationally impossible at that point. There are theoretically infinite ways to hide, encrypt, or obfuscate data. To have a system check first for unhidden, unencrypted, un-obfuscated data, then also for each of those, is simply not doable unless one makes radical limitations to the format of the data itself.
I would say instead that this "Dark Web" will be invaluable in identifying characteristics of perfectly law-abiding forum posters, slashdotters, and so forth, and that the data gleaned will fetch a good price from directed marketeers, pharmaceutical companies, spammers, government bureaucracies, and other servants of the Dark Lord.
The super awesome do-it-all tool been waiting for (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, their job should be simple! (Score:4, Interesting)
They just need to pull up their own employee roster to see who's largely responsible for world terrorism.
Of course, the young recruits are probably still too busy puffing their chests smartly while humming the "Alias" theme music while quietly wishing that the NSA was the one which received the big Hollywood PR/propaganda effort to notice such sticky details as who was responsible for what. But what are a few sticky details? M's and W's all look the same.
-FL
Extremist =! Terrorists (Score:3, Insightful)
This should scare anyone that likes their right to free speech. And yes, even terrorists should have the right to *speak*. If you restrict their right to speak, its not much of a stretch to restrict yours too.
Be afraid.
Re: (Score:2)
25% Kerry
18% Gore
7% Osama
5% Hillary
45% 3rd grader Stevie Able of 1209 Mayburn St, Dallas, Tx
If you could post a few more messages please.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
However, I did find the following address:
1209 N Mayburn St
Dearborn, MI 48128
Okay, its official. I'm a dork.