[Air-l] back to 1984

[Richard Forno]

Talk about the potential for an unnerving amount of false positives
(particularly semantical and contextual nuances flagged as suspicious) and
the many potential --  dare I say mostly adverse? -- outcomes resulting from
these technologies and their analytical limitations.

But looking to develop this kind of stuff hardly is surprising, and ties
into the whole "one percent doctrine" of threat and vulnerability analysis
that's been fostered, if not encouraged, here in DC since 9/11.

[dons grumpy political hat]

In a country where accusation and assertion has replaced fact in many key
decision areas, this is most unsettling -- particularly if critical
decisions (or decision-support materials) fail to recognize the limitations
of such technologies and/or forgoes any competent human analysis prior to
being acted upon.  Scary stuff, indeed.

[removes grumpy political hat]

So, to change the subject completely and avoid accusations of fostering
noisy political debate here, I hope y'all had a great time in Brissy last
week!

-rick



On 10/4/06 7:07 PM, "Barry Wellman" <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:

> In the old days (1984), we used to call this "thought crime".
> 
> And what is a reputable university like Cornell doing with such stuff?
> 
> Might put out of a job some US national security folks I met recently
> whose task it is to listen to TV, read papers from the -stans (Kazakhstan,
> etc.)