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.
