NSF's Dark Web project will "snag extremists and terrorists online"
The Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona has developed a National Science Foundation funded system "to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web."
Using advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis, Chen and his team can find, catalogue and analyze extremist activities online. According to Chen, scenarios involving vast amounts of information and data points are ideal challenges for computational scientists, who use the power of advanced computers and applications to find patterns and connections where humans can not.Link (Thanks, Lance!)One of the tools developed by Dark Web is a technique called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating 'anonymous' content online. Writeprint can look at a posting on an online bulletin board, for example, and compare it with writings found elsewhere on the Internet. By analyzing these certain features, it can determine with more than 95 percent accuracy if the author has produced other content in the past. The system can then alert analysts when the same author produces new content, as well as where on the Internet the content is being copied, linked to or discussed.
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Time for Tor and Freenet, I guess.
95% accuracy. Wow. That's pretty advanced technology, all right.
Of course, 70% percent of that is the guy who always writes about "Windoze suxx0r!!!!1!" and the other 25% percent is the guy who always writes "I CN HAS CHEEZBURGR?"
But it's very advanced technology -- we might never have found these people otherwise.
wait, you mean their secret weapon is plagiarism detection software? haven't colleges been using this stuff for the past 3-5 years?
Future BB Post.
Man denied mortgage for having same middle name as prolific slash fic author.
Now if they could only harness the technology to rid the Internet of lousy comic strips.
...system "to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web."
1. Define everything as terrorist-generated content.
2. Track all terrorist-generated content.
3. Profit!
God this is such bullshit. That powers that be essentially want us all to live in a permanent state of fear and paranoia. As long as we can be maintained in this state they can ensure funding for these wicked projects.
The reality is that anyone can committ small acts of terror that can kill between 1 and 50 people. Making a bomb is simple. There's no way to prevent this as any Israeli, or now Iraqi can attest. Killing more than 100 people at a time is very difficult, and more than 1,000, even more so. Not to say that it's impossible, but I'm imagining that would-be terrorist probably know enough by now not to use any form of electronic form of communication in constructing their plans.
Now that the government has so successfully established an ambient level of fear, it can proceede to power-grab at will. Terrorism is the pretext that failed and pathetic men use to fulfill their violently orgiastic dreams that arise from their feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy. Men are designed for violence, but the world no longer has a place for it. These projects absorb a lot of the displaced violent urges of overweight, pathetic and powerless men who sit behind desks dreaming up violent fatasies of death and destruction.
But this has nothing to do with the prevention of terror. I'll take the government seriously about all of this when they ban .50 caliber rifles that are easily capable of taking down commercial air liners from a safe distance.
And what about the holocaust on our highways? I can never get my head around the strange logic that people employ to ignore the 42,000 traffic fatalities which occur every year in the U.S. How in God's name is that acceptable while we're all running around paniced by the next possible terrorist attack? If we were consistent in our thinking, we would have banned cars by now.
If there is a threat it comes not from terrorists, but from technological advance which might one day put awesome destructive powers within easy reach of everyone. It has now become fairly easy to manipulate living organisms, for example, on a genetic level. Basically all you need is a gene gun. I can't imagine that it will be too difficult for the average person to engineer their own virus or bacteria within 20 years or less.
The thing that gets me is that no one is fighting government becaue everyone also subscribes to the idea that the only thing important in life is making money. I haevn't been able to find any causes that embrace anything larger than this.
Pyros@#5: where do you get the idea that a .50 slug will take down a commercial airliner? Especially "easily"? If you can manage to hit it, which is no mean feat, you'll make one very small neat hole through it, and even if you manage to hit an engine (a much smaller target) and wreck it instantly (not a forgone conclusion) that still won't cause the plane to crash most of the time.
There's a reason the P51 (WWII fighter) for example was armed with six of belt-fed full-auto machine guns firing that cartridge; one single shot is just not a reliable kill. 20mm machine cannon (big enough to use explosive projectiles, a hugeimprovement) or larger were becoming popular around then for air-to-air.
Ground-to-air used a lot of 40mm and up explosive projectiles, and very advanced analog computer sighting systems (my father taught anti-aircraft gunnery at Aberdeen Proving Ground during the Korean war).
Sounds to me like you're demonizing the .50 largely based on misinformation. They're a blast to shoot!
Well said, Pyros.
And Mujadaddy's on the right track, too, IMHO. The labels "terrorist" and "extremist" have been shown, post-9/11, to be remarkably flexible and inclusive in the hands of the Right.
Scenarios that were unthinkable 10 years ago but that would hardly raise an eyebrow today:
Do some graffitti on a government building, you're a "terrorist." Do some anti-Bush graffitti on a government building, you're an "extremist terrorist." Demonstrate against the war, you're "inciting a riot."
Inquire into the whereabouts of these people after they've been "detained," you're a "traitor" trying to divulge "information vital to national security." Carte blanche for the feds.
This kind of approach is likely to be much more effective for use against political movements trying to organize online, or to try to "out" people who have public lives but who also blog anonymously.
You can expect to see these approaches used against groups that try to organize demonstrations and protests at the political conventions next year, and you can expect to see claims that the protesters are potential terrorists.
Agree with Joe;
"much more effective for use against political movements trying to organize online"
When personal reputations and matters of economic pillage are regarded as "national security", so-called terrorism is secondary in concern to keeping a lid on legitimate inquiry.
ya well thats why u should write yor anonnymos posts to lokk like they were writen by an iliterate trolll!!!!!!!
oh crap, i just gave away my secret.
Seriously, the 95% claim seems highly suspect. If anyone could do anything close to that, Google search results would be approximately eight million times better than they are.
#8 you're out of your mind if you don't think .50 caliber can't take out commercial aircraft. If not, why are fighter jets mounted with .50 caliber machine guns?
You're just arguing that it would be a tough shot, and even here I disagree. One round might not do it, but if you had a sniper, or several, located near some airport with a good site, it could be done probably from the safety of a hotel window. There is some airport somewhere in the U.S. that would allow for an optimal shot.
There are plenty of other things you could also do with .50 caliber unrelated to shooting at airplanes.
The point is, no one is! I think .50 would be fairly tempting to a domestic terrorist, but it is not something that I'm concerened about. We have not been attacked since 9/11 not because the government is doing such a great job of fighting terrorists, but because there are no terrorists. This is actually a fairly serious problem for the government fear mongers.
Even if it did happen occasionally, it would not be the organized work of governments--something we might legitimately fear--but the work of small groups of very desperate men. Governments are run by people who have something to lose--fols with a strong incentive in protecting their power. World leaders now know that their actions can be traced. Libya could not get away with Lockerbee, nor could Putin get away with poisoning Litvinenko. People in power generally aren't mad, or at least not so mad that they are willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause because their causes generally have to do with themselves. They leave that to the young and the naive who don't know any better.
Orgaizations that are so desperate and without resources that their only option is suicide bombing are not to be feared. State organized terror is acutally becoming a thing of the past among civilized countries. I guess it's too bad that the U.S. isn't quite civilized yet.
Getting back to the main idea...by keeping everyone in fear it a simple matter to lauch these extensive surveillance programs. If you really think about it, there isn't a whole to fear. Even if there were, the thing to do would be to buck up like the English during the WWII German air raids. When you cower you just get punkd.
What scares me is the sort of selective prosecution of "terrorism".
Subscribe to the Earth First! newsletter and you're a terrorist- call out the FBI, NSA, and SWAT teams. Firebomb a clinic or shoot a couple doctors who perform abortions- well, that's not terrorism, just a simple police matter...
Having a background in law and finance, am I the only one who always get a giggle when I see the acronym for the National Science Foundation? It was especially funny to hear my brother talk about "applying to get a research funding grant from NSF".
Remember when Metal Gear Solid 2's information-monitoring AI was a ridiculous conspiracy theory?