[Air-l] back to 1984

[Frank Thomas]

I wouldn't speak of "thought crime" but of dangerous naivety (if such a 
behaviour is not intentionally naïve).

Training a content-analysis and data mining system working for foreign 
newspaper articles with US newspaper articles! This sounds surprising , 
to put it mildly. You understand the Pravda when you know how to read 
the New York Times? And you use the same technology for understanding 
both sources?

A general solution then is to say: common sense tells everyone that .. 
So, you would get a common denominator. One might in fact think that 
there is some common sense in all cultures, and we can base our 
judgements about the realities (and dangers) of life on common sense, at 
least. 

But the last Atlantic Monthly November edition shows that common sense 
as understood by an American prosecutor is not always the same as the 
common sense as it is understood by a religious Pakistani:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200610/waldman-islam

What happens if you fall into the hands of a government which knows 
visibly nothing of intercultural differences?

- Frank



Barry Wellman 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.)
>
>  Barry Wellman
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
> "Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S."
> New York Times (10/04/06) P. A24; Lipton, Eric
>
> The Department of Homeland Security is funding the development of
> "sentiment analysis" software by a consortium of major universities that
> uses natural language processing technology to scan foreign publications
> for negative views on America and its government.  The goal of the
> three-year, $2.4 million grant is to help DHS locate possible dangers to
> the U.S.  The software would provide Homeland Security personnel with
> instant access to an entire article that contains subversive statements.
> While efforts have always been made to stay abreast of global opinions of
> our country, this new technology will make the process far more efficient.
> Cornell University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of
> Utah are working on the research, which is led by Joe Kielman, who says it
> could take several years to get the system in place.  He says, "We want to
> understand the rhetoric that is being published and how intense it is,
> such as the difference between dislike and excoriate."  Kielman noted that
> they are not monitoring U.S.-based news sources.  Currently, the system is
> being fed hundreds of articles published between 2001 and 2002 from a
> variety of publications and tested on its ability to discern between
> similar statements.  The task of classifying and ranking opinions
> expressed about America without error has proven quite challenging, says
> Cornell computer science professor Claire T. Cardie and University of
> Pittsburgh computer science professor Janyce M. Wiebe.  Electronic Privacy
> Information Center executive director Marc Rotenberg calls the research
> "really chilling,"  and compares it to the Defense Department's aborted
> Total Information Awareness project.  He says the research "seems far
> afield from the mission of homeland security."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/us/04monitor.html
>
>
>
>
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-- 
..........................................
Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France