Sunday, July 6, 2014

More nonsense


Came across this article, How the Pentagon Can Track the Taliban 5 Apparently releasing the five Taliban prisoners in exchange for Bowe Bergdah is no big deal, because:

 "... researchers say not to worry, big data and a formula that predicts terrorists’ movements gives the U.S. the ability to forecast some of the key places where the dangerous former detainees would go next... 

Subrahmanian said that the U.S. should be able to track the Taliban 5 by combining the techniques in the Lashkar-e-Taiba study with new data on the family, friends, and associates of the former prisoners... 

That predictability is borne of a key network theory phenomenon, our habits become more predictable when we visit people who also have habits, which are predictable. As the Taliban 5 return to their old ways in Afghanistan, their movements will become easier to anticipate because they will have to re-establish contact with known associates...  

So long as U.S. had some idea of who the Taliban 5 were, the networks and the people that they worked with, there is no reason why the U.S. shouldn’t be able to predict the likelihood of the gang going to certain key places, or meeting up with certain associates, with as high as 80 percent accuracy, Subrahmanian said..."  

What malarkey!

This blogger has already pooh-poohed FAST ("Future Attribute Screening Technologies") to detect 'malintent',  or PCASS ("Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System") to detect truth/lies, "Robocop glasses" for facial detection and the distance identification of suspects, and thermal imaging cameras w/software to detect lies... Along with the "Predictioneer" Bruce Buena de Mesquita to forecast the future and Palantir Technology software to investigate terrorist networks, this latest technological silver bullet is probably more sales job than anything else!

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