noteworthy wrote:
That's it! A public algorithm. What we need here is a global-scale collaborative filter. We could resume the draft, but for NSA instead of the Army. You could work from home, or even in your car, for an hour each day, listening in on phone calls. But mind you, as the President said, that "There is a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring." This is just the detection phase. If you hear something suspicious, you just press a number key, 1 through 9, to indicate how urgently dangerous it seems. The call is then forwarded to a professional for further handling, including FISA procedures as necessary.

A national "nosey neighbor jury" is a tremendously bad idea, but I underline it because its innovative and it would make a great science fiction short story. 80% of the phone calls flagged by it would likely be flagged because of various prejudices.

The meme that has been going around that "its not really an invasion of privacy if its just a computer listenning to the phone call" is absolutely falicious. Those computers serve human ends. Next they'll be arguing that there is no 4th amendment implication if they randomly send a drug sniffing robot into your house without a warrant. If thats the direction our legal jurisprudence heads we might as well roll up the Constitution and smoke it.

There are two reasons we don't do random searches:
1. Such things are inevitably abused for political purposes.
2. They contribute to a culture of fear and suspicion.

In the context of preventing significant terrorist incidents, if it is in fact useful to do this, then I think that where you've removed the court oversight from the data collection you need to add it to the data application. The people involved in this surveillance are firewalled from the people involved in pursuing leads and they have to present the information they collect to a FISA style court before they can share it. Such a check would ensure that the information is specifically related to national security issues and isn't about a political enemy or a minor crime.

Decius wrote:
80% of the phone calls flagged by it would likely be flagged because of various prejudices.

Oh, no, not at all. You see, that's where the social network analysis comes in. These calls you monitor ... they aren't just randomly chosen. No, the calls that get routed to you have been carefully selected (by a computer, okay -- not to worry!) to be far enough away from you (on the positive repcap network) so as to not have too-strong ties. The negative repcap network comes into play, as well, so as to keep you from hounding your known enemies (and their friends). According to all available data, you are perfect for those calls.

Therefore, in this environment, to be a successful terrorist, it no longer works to keep a low profile. Instead, the goal is to be outrageously popular across an incredibly diverse fan base. This tends to insulate you from popular surveillance because no one passes through the filter when it comes time to select a listener for your calls. And then you're back to fighting against the professional eavesdroppers, which of course everyone knows is no challenge at all.

Of course, this has the side effect that real celebrities are sometimes mistaken for terrorists.

To compensate for the inability to find a suitable "lone listener" in the cases of suspected celebrities and real terrorists, these calls are automatically multicast to a wide audience in hopes that the collective efforts of the broader community will overcome any individual biases that may exist. Tuning in to these multicasts, which are an eclectic amalgam of amateur reality television, satellite radio, and fire/police/rescue scanners, becomes a major American pastime, largely replacing sitcoms, and thus finally unseating Ray Romano as the nation's most reliable evening entertainment.

Now, since every ten-year-old formally learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in preparation for the draft at age 16, another side effect of the Filter is that all of the underground rap is now in Arabic. This trend presages a larger cultural divide between the older generation and those who were kids during the draft era. After two decades, the authorities decided that actually going to DLI was optional; you could test out of it as long as you could pass the Lone Listener proficiency exam. This became increasingly common as the kids began teaching each other Arabic on the streets.

noteworthy wrote:

Decius wrote:
80% of the phone calls flagged by it would likely be flagged because of various prejudices.

Oh, no, not at all. You see, that's where the social network analysis comes in. These calls you monitor ... they aren't just randomly chosen. No, the calls that get routed to you have been carefully selected (by a computer, okay -- not to worry!) to be far enough away from you (on the positive repcap network) so as to not have too-strong ties. The negative repcap network comes into play, as well, so as to keep you from hounding your known enemies (and their friends). According to all available data, you are perfect for those calls.

Therefore, in this environment, to be a successful terrorist, it no longer works to keep a low profile. Instead, the goal is to be outrageously popular across an incredibly diverse fan base. This tends to insulate you from popular surveillance because no one passes through the filter when it comes time to select a listener for your calls. And then you're back to fighting against the professional eavesdroppers, which of course everyone knows is no challenge at all.

Of course, this has the side effect that real celebrities are sometimes mistaken for terrorists.

To compensate for the inability to find a suitable "lone listener" in the cases of suspected celebrities and real terrorists, these calls are automatically multicast to a wide audience in hopes that the collective efforts of the broader community will overcome any individual biases that may exist. Tuning in to these multicasts, which are an eclectic amalgam of amateur reality television, satellite radio, and fire/police/rescue scanners, becomes a major American pastime, largely replacing sitcoms, and thus finally unseating Ray Romano as the nation's most reliable evening entertainment.

Now, since every ten-year-old formally learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in preparation for the draft at age 16, another side effect of the Filter is that all of the underground rap is now in Arabic. This trend presages a larger cultural divide between the older generation and those who were kids during the draft era. After two decades, the authorities decided that actually going to DLI was optional; you could test out of it as long as you could pass the Lone Listener proficiency exam. This became increasingly common as the kids began teaching each other Arabic on the streets.

there is a cliche in britain that americans understand neither irony or satire
i sense evidence to the contrary

noteworthy wrote:
That's it! A public algorithm. What we need here is a global-scale collaborative filter. We could resume the draft, but for NSA instead of the Army. You could work from home, or even in your car, for an hour each day, listening in on phone calls. But mind you, as the President said, that "There is a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring." This is just the detection phase. If you hear something suspicious, you just press a number key, 1 through 9, to indicate how urgently dangerous it seems. The call is then forwarded to a professional for further handling, including FISA procedures as necessary.

A national "nosey neighbor jury" is a tremendously bad idea, but I underline it because its innovative and it would make a great science fiction short story. 80% of the phone calls flagged by it would likely be flagged because of various prejudices.

The meme that has been going around that "its not really an invasion of privacy if its just a computer listenning to the phone call" is absolutely falicious. Those computers serve human ends. Next they'll be arguing that there is no 4th amendment implication if they randomly send a drug sniffing robot into your house without a warrant. If thats the direction our legal jurisprudence heads we might as well roll up the Constitution and smoke it.

There are two reasons we don't do random searches:
1. Such things are inevitably abused for political purposes.
2. They contribute to a culture of fear and suspicion.

In the context of preventing significant terrorist incidents, if it is in fact useful to do this, then I think that where you've removed the court oversight from the data collection you need to add it to the data application. The people involved in this surveillance are firewalled from the people involved in pursuing leads and they have to present the information they collect to a FISA style court before they can share it. Such a check would ensure that the information is specifically related to national security issues and isn't about a political enemy or a minor crime.