Fighting Terrorists Through Software, Anonymously? 257
Silwenae writes "MSNBC has a story online from this week's Newsweek about Jeff Jonas, founder of System Research and Development. SRD's software attempts to verify a person is who he says he is, and then tries to determine who that person may be connected with. Originally used in casinos, the CIA has invested in SRD for use in the war against terrorism. Apparently, Jonas has developed a system that can anonymize the data being analyzed through hashing, so the government can share this information with the private sector to look for hits, without the private sector seeing the specific data."
detector (Score:5, Funny)
Does this software detect siamese twins?
Re:detector (Score:5, Funny)
No. It detects Kevin Bacon.
KFG
Re:detector (Score:2)
On a scale measured in degrees Kevin, one assumes.
Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Insightful)
I.e. so the state can put people it doesn't like on the list of people to be tracked with less risk that that person, or the rest of us, can know who is on the list.
Yeah, that's really reassuring.
Big brother may be watching you, but you have no way of knowing...
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is far more scary
Personally I'd feel more comfortable travelling in China, as I know for a fact what will happen to me, if I were to air my oppinions about their government. In the USA however
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots.
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:4, Insightful)
They're about the DEA and tracking potential "politcal radicals." i.e. people who are likely to oppose you politically.
KFG
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, we have another instance of the current government administration taking advantage of the fact that our "freedoms are threatened" by terrorism to implement some sort of control and monitoring device on the entire population. I'm almost immune to the talk of it by now though, as we've had countless instances of things like this being proposed.
damnit I'm tired of living in fear. (Score:4, Funny)
Now I'm going to sing it.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon
Puff the Nuclear Weapon was pointed at Iraq,
and waited in his submarine for the signal to attack.
Little George Bush Junior, he loved that rascal puff,
and all those days, he nightly prayed for the UN to get tough.
oh
Puff the Nuclear Weapon lived in the sea,
protecting all our freedoms to
a brand new SUV.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon lived in the sea,
protecting all our freedoms to
a brand new SUV.
Now Puff he liked to travel, so he wore travelling clothes
While Bush was home and on the phone, from locations undisclosed.
Presidents and Princes, they bowed when'ere he came,
and Nation States lowered their flags when Puff roared out his name.
oh
Puff the Nuclear Weapon defender of the peace,
securing the world's oil supply
and the occasional golden fleece.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon defender of the peace,
securing the world's oil supply
and hte occasional golden fleece.
Plutonium lasts for ever, but not so little boys.
ICBMs and M-16s give way to... other toys.
And one grey day it happened: The traders broke the Dow.
So Puff the Nuclear Weapon's on the open market now.
His warhead packed in plastic, green crates that bore his name.
Poor Puff would not intimidate for the Stars and Stripes again.
Without his life long friend, poor puff could not be brave,
so al-Qaida hid that that weapon in a deep, dark, man-made cave.
oh
Puff the Nuclear Weapon lived in the sea,
but now he's in a backpack
some where close to you and me.
Puff the Nuclear Weapon defender of the free,
and you can blame it all upon
Bush fiscal policy.
Sorry if I've just raised your subversion quotient for having read this. but hey, we're slashdotters so that means we're all pretty much under suspicion of being a little odd anyway.
Re:damnit I'm tired of living in fear. (Score:2)
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:4, Insightful)
Second? Hell, we've been down this road so many times the cobbles are worn to little nubs. We've had the French scare, the Loyalist scare, the Mexican scare, the Spanish scare, the Nez Perce scare, the bootlegger scare and the British scare alone was milked for 100 years. The Alien and Sedition acts were passed in 1798.
Christ almighty, if you want to get an idea of how far back this goes just read the Bible.
KFG
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, definitely a book everyone should read, worth it just for the anecdote of the guy who has been flying around the US using a photo ID which says he is the martian ambassador, and only had a problem when they started checking for an expiration date. Wouldn't want the Ex-martian ambassador on your plane!
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a question of degree. Many people on the government's list of 'suspicous characters' are going to be innocent. Their lives will be somewhat effected by police attention, but (if the system works) they will be shown to be innocent, and removed from the list after wha
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:2)
As someone else has pointed out, this kind of argument would have more weight if it seemed that these new systems were actually needed to combat the evil bad guys.
It seems that the US security services had all the data they needed to prevent the 9/11 attacks, but (und
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:2)
I think you missed the second part of my original post, which, looking back, is somewhat my fault for not being more clear. I was under the impression that one of the main reason the security services didn't put the dots together for 9/11 is that the FBI and the CIA were tracking the same guys but couldn't share
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:5, Insightful)
One would hope that they start from the crime and compile the list, rather than starting from a list and trying to fit list members to the crime.
Otherwise we end up with Louis:
The classic case in the UK is the `Birmingham Six'. Faced with the worst terrorist attack ther had ever been on the UK mainland, the police started with their list and worked really hard to find some suspects who fitted. Needless to say, those convicted were eventually found innocent and set free, and the people who did it were never caught and punished.Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:2)
One would hope that they start from the crime and compile the list, rather than starting from a list and trying to fit list members to the crime.
Regardless of their methodology for determining suspects, police have to eventually do what I originally said:
"At some point in the process of compiling the list, the police are going to have to match a collection of suspect-traits against their knowl
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is the heart of the issue. The theory of information sharing about crimes isn't all that bad. The advantages seem to outweigh the costs. The secret lists of which we have been speaking are not so terrible and have an obvious, practical value. The real problem concerns this particular type of information: lists of suspected terrorists. You are right: these are not short-te
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:2)
The software is effective. That's the scary part.
Remember that doctor that wanted to blacklist lawyers, plaintiffs and plaintiffs experts? Well, this is the sort of software that would may that work and allow such people to punish wives, boyfriends, roommates and other slightly associated 3rd parties.
Use your imaginations. Contemplate this sort of tech being used in other strictly civilian corps.
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless you're operating under the assumption that they people they watch never, EVER turn out to be actual terrorists, I would think the reasons why that's an absolute necessity would be obvious.
The CIA is spending money to enhance their ability to do their job, while still preserving as much of the person's privacy as possible. We should be applauding this, not lamenting it.
Re:Stealth Snooping (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure the East German secret police occasionaly caught someone who was an actual danger to people (rather than to the state). Would that justify their networks of secret informers etc?
I think we are well into ``those who would give up...'' terretory here.
Using Hashing (Score:5, Insightful)
Although this is a step in the right direction, hashing algorithms can be brute forced right ?
I mean, this information may be valid for years, a thing you did when you where 18 may still be there when you are 50. I don't think this data should be distributed much at all, even though it's encrypted.
Re:Using Hashing (Score:4, Funny)
Great, so now we have to worry about cash-strapped government departments selling our personal data to spammers too.
Re:Using Hashing (Score:5, Informative)
Brute forced? Nope. Assuming they picked a decent secure hashing algorithm (ie something like a 3-pass SHA-256 and definately not MD-5) then brute forcing isn't feasible.
The weakness is not in the hash algorithm, it's in the use the hash is being put to. See my other post for an explanation.
Re:Using Hashing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Using Hashing (Score:2, Informative)
Hashing is the transformation of a string of characters into a usually shorter fixed-length value or key that represents the original string.
The hash function is used to index the original value or key and then used later each time the data associated with the value or key is to be retrieved. Thus, hashing is always a one-way operation. There's no need to "reverse engineer" the hash function by analyzing the hashed values. In fact, the ideal hash function can't be derived by such an
Re:Using Hashing (Score:2)
Brute-forcing hashes and Spelling (Score:5, Interesting)
And then there's the problem of extra data hidden in the hashes - some of the signature algorithms, for instance, can carry a bunch of hidden "subliminal" bits, like the one that says you're a Jew or black or Dues-Paying Republican or a Federal Agent or a Known Troublemaker.
Spelling is a real problem. I have enough trouble because my ancestors or their relatives were either illiterate or at least using names like "Stewart" "Stuart" "Steward" and "Steuart" before English spelling became relatively standardized. But Americans munging the names of people who use other alphabets, like Arabs, or who don't use alphabets at all, like Chinese, can't just use simple hashes, because any misspelling can either let somebody whose name is the same as a Real Suspect not get flagged, or let some non-suspect whose name is close to a Real Suspect get flagged, and any terrorist smarter than the Shoe-Bomber knows to use an alternative spelling of his name or get some fake ID. You probably know Chinese people who use different names in English and Chinese, either as immigrants or kids of immigrants; I knew a Hakka Chinese family from Vietnam who also had Vietnamese names, and in at least one of their languages, they had an alternate set of names for use within the family (approximately "Number One Son" etc.) And then there's the problem of exactly which name parts to use if you've got more than three, and nicknames, etc.
And then there's the problem of people whose names are the same as Real Suspects' names, and people who ever had their wallet stolen. Just spend a day in traffic court listening to DMV-screwed-up-and-I-got-arrested-by-mistake cases some time if you weren't already worried, or read any news article about identity theft.
Re:Brute-forcing hashes and Spelling (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Using Hashing (Score:2, Informative)
This is an issue in the UK at the moment with the Soham murders in that some data (complaints of rape and indecent assault) on Ian Huntley was deleted because some police departments thought they couldn't keep it with others the information was there but not found
More information here the BBC has a
Re:Using Hashing (Score:2, Informative)
False Positives and False Negatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:False Positives and False Negatives (Score:3, Funny)
How can I get on that list?
Re:False Positives and False Negatives (Score:2)
Re:False Positives and False Negatives (Score:2)
Re:False Positives and False Negatives (Score:2)
Re:No its not racist. (Score:2)
Watching people coming from countries you are at war with is one thing, but what if they are just refugees ? In Norway we have a problem with refugees coming here without any form of identification. Should we just send them back ? According to the UN and human rights watch, that's not an option. And didn't most of the terrorist in the 9/11 attack have american or european citizenship ?
Re:No its not racist. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No its not racist. (Score:2)
Uh...compassion?
Re:No its not racist. (Score:2, Insightful)
We don't know. We know what their fake IDs said, who they claimed to be when the ticket was booked. Several of the people named as the hijackers have turned up, alive and well (and not terrorists). They had the bad luck to have their identities stolen.
On another tangent, I really don't think that it's believable that Mohammed Atta's (sic?) passport could have survived a fireball intense enough to [theoretically]
Re:No its not racist. (Score:2)
Which countries are you at war with?
Dan.
Re:False Positives and False Negatives (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there no such thing as an American terrorist?
Even if you forget about the cases where US citizens have turned to terror, don't you think it is possible that US citizens could become terrorists?
Dan.
Re:False Positives and False Negatives (Score:3, Informative)
A real danger as all hashes (unless they are at least as large as the data they are hashing- which makes them a bit pointless) inherently will have collisions (ie two sets of different content will produce the same hash).
In fact secure hashes emphasise the fact that given a hash and the content it would be difficult to modify the content to give the same hash. This is different to "there won't be any collisions".
Automated Guilt By Association (Score:2)
This worries me. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This worries me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand the angle of not wanting to lose your property and thus, being more willing to deal with crap (as most people are, if we got uppity at every turn in the road, the road would be jagged, torn, and probably wouldn't work that well). The past 6 or so presidencies have been really shitty IMO,; with each passing administration corruption increases; money is stolen, rights are taken away, and our country is torn apart brick by brick. Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, and now Bush Jr, all slowly taking away our rights accept for Bush Jr, who is putting a new definition to the term of "rocking the boat".
Eventually something's gotta give. My prediction is that people are going to begin losing their incomes, and with those their livings. It was the robber-barons that caused the great depression, and eventually the stock market will collapse. I don't see buisness law becoming regulated any time soon like it was in the 50'a or 60's. Couple this with tremendous debt to other nations, a whole lotta weapons, a whole lotta enemies, devaluing currency, and corruption widespread in the high level goverment and in most lower level goverments and you've got a powder keg waiting to blow.
Simply put, people will lose their patience. And with that loss of patience we'll see a revolution. The guys with the guns are already on the brink of it themselves.
NO WAY! (Score:5, Interesting)
NO WAY! Stop corporate abuse, now! (Score:2, Insightful)
Authority without accountability is a recipe for abuse which has been illustrated many times each year. In the U.S. the corporate boar
Uh-huh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because they are searching for hash matches instead of plaintext doesn't mean profiling en-mass is right. It just means nosey companys who are being 'asked' won't know WHAT they are being 'asked' about.
Gee, bob the builder knowns mahek alzis. Mahek is a suspected link betwene so and so, and then he works for this manager, and then these people. Hmm, we better start asking alot of questions..see who else matches our '(personal network) search criteria'
What, you think i'm kidding?
(And yes, some of you are going to explode that this sort of search-and-peck is not profiling, when it really is. Look it up. Searching through personal *profiles* and *information* to find any people who match enough of the criteria = profiling.)
This sort of thing is bull, It really is. Instead of doing real investigative work, they can just whip up a list of 'possible hits',snatch them all up, and then queston and otherwise probably scare the shit out of all of them - hoping their deeper searches find a hit in the crowd.
Welcome to the nightmare, please don't choke on the red pill while the door is hitting you in the ass.
[/tinfoil-hat]
Does not work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does not work (Score:2)
It's the "anonymizer" that hasn't necessarily been proven yet.
Who has access to our data? (Score:5, Informative)
The credit card companies, for example, have access to a LOT of data. People seem to be content with that.
And it is ridiculous how much information about your activities are already out there, though not publicly accessible, accessible to certain organisations.
I think the scariest bit about this article is that casinos have access to your, YES YOUR, data. And if casinos can do that, so can the mafia.
The government having access to all this information is only a part of the problem. The real problem is, how much of it is available to bad guys, like telemarketeers and the Russian Mafia.
Which Mafia? (Score:2, Interesting)
definition of "war against terrorism"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can anybody help me and define the limits of the problem "the war against terrorism"?
It strikes much of the issue is defining the problem, hey we're geeks right, give us a spec to build to, yup? This seems to be the chief concern of slashdot posters so far, that the problem has not been bounded and there are varying interpretations being made on what the problem is. How can we define the problem? Or are we accepting that the term is a worthless media and political construct to sell newspapers and justify military/ intelligence spending? Can we frame this fuzzy problem in a more meaningful way?
Re:definition of "war against terrorism"? (Score:2, Insightful)
The human world is made up of human beings who exasperatingly insist on exhibiting human nature.
Extrapolate.
Predict what your girlfriend is going to do, as well as where and when.
Now all you have to do is expand that technology to encompass the general populace.
Did that help?
KFG
Re:definition of "war against terrorism"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many men far wiser than us have pondered the human mind, and we have discovered its complexity and depth are pretty much beyond comprehension. ( I know PhDs in cognitive science, AI and psychology who all say the same thing so dont even argue the point unless you fall into that category ) Deterministic behaviourism is a childs philosophy, as are the many inadequate and naive tools used by so called 'anti -
Here's one real solution... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:There is so much wrong with that post. (Score:2)
Yeah, they're glad the invasion of Iraq happened. I would be too if I were an Iraqi. But the invasion of Iraq and the fight against terrorism are two unrelated things.
I agree that terrorists are irrational and can't be reasoned with. But this whole Iraq thing was a total waste of resources that could have been used to fight terrorism.
Re:definition of "war against terrorism"? (Score:3, Informative)
Go to Parris Island (Marine Corps boot camp), find a recruit and take the notebook that he is likely carrying. Look inside the cover and you will see listed the "Articles of War".
Not going out of your way to inflict civilian damage is one of the rules listed.
This is what makes the difference between a Chechen partisan and a Chechen terrorist.
Freedom for security (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory quote:
"Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty." - Benjamin Franklin
My personal opinion on the matter is that you can't fight a war against terrorism without looking at what the root causes of that terrorism are. The fact is, that at the moment the west is seemingly willing to just overlook what the causes of terrorism are, and are trying to just blow the terrorists to smithereens.
When will people learn that labelling people "terrorists" and killing them just creates new "terrorists" at an exponential rate? As far as these "terrorists" are concerned, America and the UK are "terrorists" too.
Clever tracking software or not, "terrorists" are not going to go away until we start looking at why they are "terrorists" in the first place.
Just because a government chooses to carry out military activities, doesn't make them any less terroristic or any more legitimate.
Perhaps those doubting the terrorism carried out by the US and allies in Iraq should check this page [mykeru.com] for help in visualising the numbers.
Re:Freedom for security (Score:3, Informative)
What he did say is this: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Puts it in a different light, doesn't it?
And the bodycount site you link to is, not to put to fine a point on it, a complete lie. Deaths of Iraqi civilians caused by our (and their) enemies is presented as though it was caused by the US and its allies. And even that needs to be contrasted against the thousands of
Re:Freedom for security (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not anti-American. I'm anti the actions of the American government under the banner of "the war against terror", because it is utter bullshit.
The only correct reaction to terrorism is no reaction at all. Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile. By reacting to terrorist attacks in such a knee-jerk frenzy of panic, we have already lost the war against terror, because it has taken the grip on society that the terrorists wanted it to take.
I'm not saying terrorism is right - it's clearly not. But
Re:What if you cannot address the reason? (Score:2)
No, you never, ever "just gotta kill".
If "the terrorists" hate non-Islamic people already, then why give them yet more ammunition for their cause? Why legitimise their reasons to hate us?
Attempting to kill them by starting wars in their part of the world only increases their credibility and furthers the objective of "the terrorists", because we become (in the eyes of many Muslims) the things they have already said we are. (Evil murdering imperialists, who want to destroy their way of life.)
The only p
Re:What if you cannot address the reason? (Score:2)
Your right to swing your fist ends in my face.
Your right to hack off your daughter's clit ended in downtown Manhattan.
We didn't start this war, but we are going to finish it.
I'd rather we wipe you out with memetic warfare - Democracy, Whisky, Sexy. People free to speak, drink, and fuck are also fr
Re:Freedom for security (Score:2)
As far as these "terrorists" are concerned, America and the UK are evil operatives in some primitive religious war. And when I say "evil", I mean it literally, in the basic religous working-for-the-wrong-team sense of the word.
Their viewpoint isn't remotely oriented to a concept like terrorism.
As victims of terrorism, our initial basic preference is simply that the whole problem be laid to rest. On the other hand, their initial preference is that we die.
Today the situation has escalated to the
Re:Freedom for security (Score:2)
The end game of the terrorist is probably the overthrow of current governments in Muslim countries. Killing Westerners is their Walt Disney propaganda channel. So it is absolutely true to say that negociating with Al Quaida is pointless, they dont want anyt
Re:Freedom for security (Score:5, Interesting)
True enough, but most people that say so aren't really interested in finding out - they *think* they already know. They'll cite poverty, or income inequality, colonialism and western arrogance. Yet in their own example of patronizing western arrogance they refuse to take the terrorists own statements about motives at face value. Apparently they believe brown people are incapable of self-knowledge and must be deciphered by enlightened western intellectuals to discern their "real" motives. In this regard the conservatives grant the terrorists more dignity as fellow humans - they take the terrorists at their word regarding motives and goals and find no room for compromise.
The islamist terrorists want an end to western colonialism, including not only the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the abolition of Israel (and the withdrawal of Spain from Andalusia) but also to be free from the imposition of western values regarding the status of women in society and quant western notions about "human rights". They want to establish a pure islamic society governed by sharia law as interpreted by the most extreme wahhabi doctrine. Their religion teaches an absolute morality, it teaches that man is not fallen, nor is he good, but that man is weak and needs the help (control) of the theocratic state in order to live a virtuous life. Their doctrine also teaches that those outside of the helpful control of the theocratic state must someday be brought in to it (for their own good of course). Any loss of territory is cause for jihad - holy war to recover land and peoples that had once been under submission to God. The theocratic state must ever expand - never shrink.
The people that believe this and that join al quaeda are NOT the poor and downtrodden but members of the ruling and middle classes. Well educated, reasonably wealthy, even quasi-westernized believers of a triumphalist, extreme Wahabism. They feel humiliated by western success and Islamic failure and by the past and present wrongs of colonialism and the decline of their culture currently and most shockingly represented by westernized women freely going about uncovered against all tradition and religious doctrine.
Hashing & Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
In order to check if there is a matching telephone number, you would first have to run the encryption algorithm on the number and then match this against every encrypted number you have in your data store. So if the two encrypted strings are equal, you have a match. But there is no way to know what the encrypted number is unless you have something to test for in the first place.
But I'm not sure how much use that is. Wouldn't you then need to be able to see who's number that is, i.e. decrypt the person's personal data?
Also, it would be interesting to see what the reaction to this software would be in the EU what with its Data Protection directive. Storing personal details about someone is prohibited except for certain circumstances... long term storage of someone's personal data for distribution to companies is not one of them. Whether the encryption of the data would make this acceptable or not would make for an interesting argument.
Err no. (Score:5, Informative)
Hashing != encryption.
Encryption is intended to be unencrypted.
Hashing is one way because it involves information loss. It is not encryption: there is nothing secret. For example simple hashing algorithm might be "take the ascii value for each character in string and add them all up, rolling over each time you reach 10,000". The result will be a hash. Which is dependent on the data you put in- is impossible to *directly* extract the original data (you could use a lookup table to do it). As I said though, this is NOT encryption.
Which means we have problems either way. (Score:2)
If you intentionally use a system that is not collision free, so that you can ensure that the data can't be reliably gotten from the input, you're just making it so that there are multiple sets that could produce the hash. But most likely, very few are going to make 'sense' given the context of the data. [out of 'asd!@#$
So by six degrees of seperation.... (Score:4, Funny)
everyone will be connected with Bush andBin Laden....
Re:So by six degrees of seperation.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't take "six degrees" to separate W and Bin Laden. The Bin Laden family was a major investor in W's first company, Harkin Energy (of which he was CEO). That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it does show what a small world we live in...
Re:So by six degrees of seperation.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, especially given that Bush and bin Laden are connected by much fewer than six degrees...
Consider how nicely the bin Laden family was treated in the days immediately following 9/11, when the government allowed a plane to fly around and pick them up to take them out of the country after only the most cursory FBI screening. (No one else was allowed to fly at the time except the military.) I mean, normally the relatives of a suspect in a murder will be questioned to see if they can lead you to the suspect or provide any evidence that he either did or didn't do the crime. But Bushes and the bin Ladens go way back [uni-muenster.de], and they got off the hook. Way to be "strong on terrorism", Bush.
We have zero problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Zero problems, but how many innocent people wrongly flagged as being unsavory?
How does this SRD system measure the accuracy of its conclusions?
Re:We have zero problems (Score:2)
Unsavory Character (Score:2)
I prefer being an "unsavory character"
-kgj
This is getting absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is getting absurd (Score:2)
What's absurd is that you'd be so stupid as to compare the simple outright murder of thousands of people -- to the risks you imagine exist when you take "a walk in the hills".
So tell me, Voice of Restraint, where do you draw the line? After all, Ted Bundy offing all those college girls
Re:This is getting absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
If we let our response be governed by that reaction, we lose our liberties, and the ter
Re:This is getting absurd (Score:2)
However, I have to say that your second post doesn't appear to follow as a logical conclusion from your original post. (And unless I missed something in the original article, I can't see where you might have simply been responding to some
Re:This is getting absurd (Score:2)
In this case, the terrorists aren't just misunderstood underdogs. They aren't just the powerless downtrodden. They are an or
To what degree... (Score:4, Insightful)
Guilt By Association (Score:4, Insightful)
If you search deep enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
It will be cheaper to put a fence around the whole country I'm living in than to build prisons for all of us.
Re:If you search deep enough... (Score:2)
Dumb idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were a terrorist organisation planning something like 9/11 and I knew many of my lemming-recruits would be identified by airport security as risks, I would process my terrorist volunteers myself and only send those who would not raise any eyebrows. This information (anonymous though it is) would be of great value as it would eliminate another uncertainty from the evil plan.
If I were a private individual with interest in knowing the identities of all suspects then I would be able to mount a dictionary attack using, say, the electoral role or census data - with only a few billion people worldwide, a modest cluster of PCs would be able to exhaustively search for matches in reasonable time.
Finally - if this anonymous data were to be available only to authorities to whom the raw information would otherwise have been available then this approach is still a disadvantage. Without access to the reason for someone matching, it will make it much harder for authorities to make appropriate judgement calls based upon a match. The mere possibility that a match might be due to a hashing collision or data- entry errors prior to hashing could result in the wrong decisions being taken. There is certainly a risk that without information on why someone is a suspected risk that related vital clues may be missed - possibly resulting in an otherwise preventable disaster.
No sharing? (Score:2)
I was under the impression it would require a strong level of DRM to enforce such a thing. And in fact the DRM would be the only thing special about this. Aside form DRM, how is this not just another database!?
Sounds like Bruce Schneier's Clueless Agents (Score:2)
Terrorists winning (Score:3, Insightful)
Read the book _Translucent Databases_ for info (Score:2)
Heh... "Little Sister" is watching you? (Score:2)
Perhaps it's more freindly than Big Brother, but there's still that gods-awful-huge uncheckably-and-doubtfully-accurate master database somewhere.
There isn't enough tinfoil on earth anymore! (Score:2, Insightful)
Nasa with mind reading shit, BB reading my email and watching the websites I visit. WTF?
You don't trust me? Fuck you.
This is NOT the America that I was born into.
America has turned into a third world police state. We are all treated as suspects and potential enemies of the state. You trample my rights? Fuck you too.
Kiss the Bill of Rights goodbye, they've wiped their asses with it and flushed it down the toilet. Anyone in the 40+ age range knows what I'm talking ab
I have a name for it... (Score:4, Funny)
I predict the next technology that will be used to find terrorists will be dowsing rods.
Oh wait...
This is a huge threat to civil liberties (Score:4, Insightful)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
This is the stupidest concept ever. (Score:3, Insightful)
All they have to do is figure out their position on this 'watch list', which is easy enough to do with the ability to query the list in private hands. Then pick the least suspected one of them to carry the bomb. If they want to be really clever, send a half dozen really suspicious people in in front of the guy with the bomb, so security is busy and they won't get hit with a random search.
Flagging suspicious people in ways they can find out they have been flagged is so mind-bogglingly stupid anyone suggesting it should be utterly shunned by the security community. Hello, terrorists normally operating in groups! In any group, there's going to be a few people we've never suspected, and we must never let the terrorists know which ones those are!
Re:Cost effective anti-terrorism countermeasures (Score:3, Funny)
#
Thanks for the tip, I'm sure glad I could do my part to fight terr
Why should we spy on ourselves? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why should we spy on ourselves? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I'd assume there would be concerns to the security of the data. I'm sure most of the information this database contains could be found elsewhere (though it'd be spread out between different sources). The point though is that the US is trying to find ways to find the terrorists amongst you, and any method that helps with this while not making all your personal information available to any law enforcement agency th
Re:The terrorists are winning... NOT (Score:4, Informative)
The US governments reactions to terrorist threats are exactly what the terrorists wanted.
How so?