The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
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Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#2"Obliterated a wedding because people where celebrating by shooting in the air."
This is the definition of evil.
How and why is the Pakistani government allowing this program to operate within their territories?
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#3"Obliterated a wedding because people where celebrating by shooting in the air." This is the definition of evil. How and why is the Pakistani government allowing this program to operate within their territories?
You are missing the main point of the article.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#4They don't actually care if the person is innocent. The point is to intimidate their population. They use this metadata to fit into the system of law so they can cover their ass.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#5"Obliterated a wedding because people where celebrating by shooting in the air." This is the definition of evil. How and why is the Pakistani government allowing this program to operate within their territories?
You are missing the main point of the article.
I am not. I am just at a loss why a foreign sovereign would give the US, or any other country, the license to randomly kill their own citizens.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are missing the main point of the article.
I am not. I am just at a loss why a foreign sovereign would give the US, or any other country, the license to randomly kill their own citizens.
If they did not, what could Pakistan do about it? The U.S would do so anyway covertly, and the Pakistani government would be seen to be weak, since they were powerless to stop it.
So the Pakistani government 'allows' it to at least appear in control.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#7They literally named it Skynet. They have an evil sense of humor.
Actually using machine learning to detect terrorists isn't a terrible idea. But you are going to get an error rate, and probably a high one in the noisy real world. Maybe only 50% of the people you detect are actually terrorists. Maybe it's even worse than that. We can't even test it because there is no validation set and unreliable labels.
The reasonable thing to do with that information, would be to surveil them further, search their house, or arrest them. Not assassinate them without a trial.
And the more I read the details, the more alarmed I am. The 50% figure I used above may have been way too high. The base rate of terrorists way too low and they have very little data to begin with.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not. I am just at a loss why a foreign sovereign would give the US, or any other country, the license to randomly kill their own citizens.
If they did not, what could Pakistan do about it? The U.S would do so anyway covertly, and the Pakistani government would be seen to be weak, since they were powerless to stop it. So the Pakistani government 'allows' it to at least appear in control.
And Pakistan gets fucktons of foreign aid that the use to buy US made weapons.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#9This story is stupid.
I'm sorry. No fan of the NSA, but the premise behind it is completely ridiculous.
There is zero evidence of the repeatably asserted idea that the list this tool generates is any kind of kill list.
It's a tool that generates indicators of people that may be worth looking at when trying to find couriers. That's a very specific subgroup of terrorists, and I find it entirely unsurprising that a journalist would be falsely flagged as journalists have statistically unusual travel habits (Clearly labeling him as "member of Al Qaida" is unjustified by this evidence though).
Also, criticizing the NSA on their knowledge of statistics seems unwise. The NSA is many things, but "bad at Math" isn't one of them.
Read the information yourself, and come to your own conclusions.
Re: The NSA’s machine learning algorithm may be killing thousands of innocent people
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not. I am just at a loss why a foreign sovereign would give the US, or any other country, the license to randomly kill their own citizens.
If they did not, what could Pakistan do about it? The U.S would do so anyway covertly, and the Pakistani government would be seen to be weak, since they were powerless to stop it. So the Pakistani government 'allows' it to at least appear in control.
They have nukes. They could easily institute a defense doctrine of nuclear retaliation tomorrow, and the terror would stop. But the reason they don't is that they are bought and paid for, both as a country via foreign aid and as individual government members via bribes (or "speaker fees", as you guys call those now).