Bruce Schneier: Why Collecting More Data Doesn't Increase Safety 149
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Bruce Schneier, security expert (and rational voice in the wilderness), explains in an editorial on CNN why 'Connecting the Dots' is a 'Hindsight Bias.' In heeding calls to increase the amount of surveillance data gathered and shared, agencies like the FBI have impaired their ability to discover actual threats, while guaranteeing erosion of personal and civil freedom. 'Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through. The television show Person of Interest is fiction, not fact.'"
Fiction, not fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck if he thinks he convince the American public that televised fiction isn't fact.
A lack of concern for freedom. (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem here is that people just don't seem to care about freedom if they believe that something will keep them safe (or at least makes them feel safe). Even if it were true that the TSA, ubiquitous government surveillance, free speech zones, the Patriot Act, and warrantless surveillance in general kept people safe, that wouldn't make them any less wrong. Indeed, the main problem is that people seem to generally be spineless cowards who give up freedom for safety and are easily manipulated (especially after a disaster).
Re:After the fact... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. So the "compromise" could be lots of data collected but only kept for a short time (weeks, not years).
On the other hand, the frequency of any threats is so rare that do we really want to erode our liberties like this? Is regular police work just not capable of "connecting the dots" without this kind of surveillance?
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not a problem of statistics, this is a problem of identifying individual terrorists. Even if you could determine exactly how many terrorists there are, it would help you absolutely nothing to prevent the next terror act. You have to know who the terrorist is.
You can stare at the weather statistics of the last ten centuries as much as you want, it won't help you much when trying to predict when and where the next lightning will strike.
The opposite. (Score:5, Insightful)
That works for trends. Not for the actions of individuals.
From TFA:
He's a bit wrong there. It isn't a million unnumbered pictures. It's one picture per person in the country at the time. That's over 300 million pictures. Each one overlapping millions of other pictures.
And after a certain point you are just amplifying the "noise". And enough "noise" can appear to be a pattern.
It is only after an event that the "noise" can be filtered out and the extraneous pictures discarded.
Re:After the fact... (Score:4, Insightful)
.. the collection of data helps after the fact, i.e., once someone is caught. The additional data allows a more solid case to be built, and makes it easier to find co-conspirators.
I'll buy that. Once you know who you can go back and sift through logs, security camera footage, peoples cell phone snaps, phone records, etc and find evidence. I don't Bruce would argue otherwise.
But...Where mass murder and terrorism is concerned what is our objective? Make sure we can punish the guilty or prevent attacks?
So far I am not aware of any revelation that has come out of all the surveillance that would have helped us 'prevent' the bombing. Plenty of things we might have done, but all things we already knew we could be doing but had rejected for reasons of civil liberties, cost, character of our nation etc.
Its also entirely possible that something that helps us identify and punish the guilty after the fact harms our ability to detect and prevent in terms of to much hay.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but thats more of a strategic thing. If you are going to have a big gathering, a bunch of good cameras would be pretty good to identify problems later on.
On the other hand, checking what everybody, everywhere, did on the internet the night and years before that may not be a great benefit.
You want more good and relevant information, always, and while just increasing the general amount of information may actually help get more relevant information, it doesn't always seem to be the best way possible.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
How to accomplish that? The simplest way is to catch them right before they are about to attack. For example, we could read the minds of individuals who are experienced in seeing the future, call them pre-cogs. Then when they are in agreement, we can catch the terrorist with our future crime force, lead by Tom Cruise.
Just kidding. Bruce Schneier doesn't give an plan on how to stop future terrorists, his point is that there's no reason to shred even more civil liberties in order to try to catch terrorists, especially since it probably won't help.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
He knows as much about police work and catching criminals or preventing crime as your average sewer worker.
Not very useful unless you determine how much the average sewer worker knows. If they watch the appropriate TV shows, they might actually know a lot both about how crime occurs and the process of catching criminals, despite the notorious exaggerations and biases of that medium.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
they identified a lot of people on the cameras. a witness told them which guys were the culprits. the realtime videos did zilch to stop them from leaving bags unattended. ...
feds didn't spend any agents on surveillance on these guys. which would have made it fairly obvious that they were gonna do something stupid,
First, surveillance is not about prevention, it is ALWAYS about catching people after the fact.
You can't seriously be suggesting that the realtime video (it wasn't real time, it was recorded) should be enough to have a policeman appear the instant you take your backpack off and put it at your feet? Do you want to live in a society where there are actually enough cops for that?
The feds didn't spend ANY time surveilling these guys. They ask him some questions in 2011, and he gave all the right answers at the time. Do you really want to live in a society where the mere mention of your name gets you assigned a 24/7 surveillance team for YEARS AND YEARS into the future?
Thing about what you are suggesting. Wouldn't you be the first one to jump on Slashdot and bitch about an FBI team following you around because of something someone else said about you?