Cognitive Dissidents

Yet again proving that governments are using "data mining" techniques that will not stop terror on public websites - we have this story:I only wanted to make fairy lights, says eBay man in terror raid

A man who bought items on eBay to make fairylights and fireworks for a family celebration had his home raided by police because they thought he was making a bomb.

Neil Harris used the online auction site to buy a rucksack, electronic relay board and saltpetre, which has explosive properties.

Data profiling such as this means that in the New Cold War - We Are All the Enemy Now - because we cannot trust the underlying technology to make the correct decisions.

Let's look at some numbers. We'll be optimistic -- we'll assume the system has a one in 100 false-positive rate (99 percent accurate), and a one in 1,000 false-negative rate (99.9 percent accurate). Assume 1 trillion possible indicators to sift through: that's about 10 events -- e-mails, phone calls, purchases, web destinations, whatever -- per person in the United States per day. Also assume that 10 of them are actually terrorists plotting.

This unrealistically accurate system will generate 1 billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Every day of every year, the police will have to investigate 27 million potential plots in order to find the one real terrorist plot per month. Raise that false-positive accuracy to an absurd 99.9999 percent and you're still chasing 2,750 false alarms per day -- but that will inevitably raise your false negatives, and you're going to miss some of those 10 real plots.

Right - so this piece of "security theatre" means that there are, statistically speaking, at least 10 undiscovered terrorist plots apart from this false-postive ..

Right - way to go - in this wonderful "Age of the Web" - can't something a little better be done?

Is it really, really necessary to watch everyone all of the time in order to foil a "tiny minority of extremists" of the "religion of peace"?

Or is there something else being played out behind the scenes by the powers that be - who really just want more power and control?

When everyone is perpetually watched to see if they are a potential security threat then everyone is a potential security threat

Welcome to the New Cold War - where private information, propaganda, disinformation, lies and unreliable data mining techniques feed false information to the security services -

Welcome to the New Cold War - where you are the suspect - forever.

---

Tags: data-mining, propaganda, disinformation, big brother, george orwell, eric blair, 1984, newspeak, war on terror, ebay, daliymail