
Algorithms and computers won’t stop terrorism - edward
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11431757/Algorithms-and-computers-wont-stop-terrorism.html
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MaastrichtTreat
> If the father of a girl travelling to Syria to join Isil had no idea what
> she was planning, what hope does her computer have?

Algorithms can tell if you're pregnant before you know it. Wasn't that Target
incident also about a father having no idea his daughter was pregnant until
the machine learning algorithms indirectly informed him? I can't really trust
the article's conclusions if it contradicts these well known events.

~~~
nebula
Forgive my ignorance, but what was that Target incident, and how/why
algorithms informed a father that his daughter is pregnant?

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JoshuaRedmond
I believe they're referring to [0], where Target's use of buying patterns on a
loyalty card led them to send out pregnancy related vouchers to the daughter.

[0] - [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-
targe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-
figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)

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IndianAstronaut
In the large scope of things, terrorist incidents are fajrly rare and
committed by a tiny fraction of the population. It will be tough to come up
with an accurate way to predict such a rare event.

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Delmania
This article is timely. For all our advances in technology, terrorism remains
a social and economic issue. Technology can help us scale a solution, but it
can't do it for us.

~~~
tomjen3
This sounds like a cop out. The people who flew into those towers were neither
poor nor badly educated - so it can't be a social issue. They weren't very
religious either (mohammed atta went to night clubs and drank alcohol), so
what caused them to act?

~~~
dragonwriter
> The people who flew into those towers were neither poor nor badly educated -
> so it can't be a social issue.

Social issues don't only effect the poor and badly educated. I don't see why
rage born from impotence over limited prospects for oneself and one's
family/identity group -- and rage at horrors that have occurred to one's
family/identity group for which there is no apparent effective recourse --
which are "social issues" that come from living in impoverished countries
under brutal dictatorships, or having family that do -- would not affect the
decently educated and relatively well-off. Indeed, in some ways, I'd expect
them to effect those people more than those who are poorly educated and
personally impoverished, so that their prime struggle is meeting the needs of
survival.

This seems similar to me to the way that, where a participatory political
system provides avenues for resolving some dissatisfaction, the educated and
economically comfortable are often more politically engaged than the poor.

~~~
rayiner
The countries that are the biggest source of international terrorists are not
"impoverished," relatively speaking, nor do they live under "brutal
dictatorships," as far as authoritarian governments go. Egypt isn't the U.S.,
but it's not Malawi, or Bangladesh, or even India. In terms of per-capita
income, it hangs around countries like Peru or Ukraine. The other 9/11
hijackers came from Saudi (rich), the UAE (rich), and Lebanon, a solidly
middle-income country with per-capita income comparable to Mexico.

Looking further afield: Pakistan isn't significantly poorer than India, but
contributes much more to international terrorism. Bangladesh is significantly
poorer than Pakistan, but also contributes much less to international
terrorism. When I lived in Bangladesh, it was devastatingly poor, but
terrorism wasn't an issue. In 25 years, per capita GDP has quadrupled, and now
it's only poor, but terrorism has become a much more significant problem.

I'd go so far as to say it's ethnocentric for Westerners to chalk terrorism up
to poverty/lack of education. "Oh, these people are just poor dirt farmers,
they don't know any better."

~~~
dragonwriter
> nor do they live under "brutal dictatorships," as far as authoritarian
> governments go.

You are essentially saying that, _among brutal dictatorships_ , they aren't
particularly brutal dictatorships. Which may be true, but not all that
significant.

> In terms of per-capita income, it hangs around countries like Peru or
> Ukraine.

Which are also substantial sources of terrorists, though largely internal
rather than international.

> When I lived in Bangladesh, it was devastatingly poor, but terrorism wasn't
> an issue. In 25 years, per capita GDP has quadrupled, and now it's only
> poor, but terrorism has become a much more significant problem.

Which actually fits perfectly well with the point I made in the post you are
responding to, that one would expect that violent solutions to problems for
which the political system is not perceived to provide adequate avenues for
solutions would, like political engagement on issues where the system is
perceived to provide adequate avenues for solutions, be expected to increase
as people reach levels where they are able to spend more effort dealing with
things outside of immediate survival concerns.

> > I'd go so far as to say it's ethnocentric for Westerners to chalk
> terrorism up to poverty/lack of education.

And I'd go so far as to say its a strawman for you to take the suggestion that
terrorism was a "social and economic issue" and instead argue against the idea
that it is an issue of "poverty/lack of education", and similarly to take a
suggestion about terrorism and respond to it with comparisons related to
_international_ terrorism.

Its like you've got an argument you are so keen to argue against that you
can't be bothered to pay attention to what anyone else in the discussion is
actually saying, you just keep repeating a canned counterargument whether or
not the argument it counters is even being presented.

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MaastrichtTreat
Freakonomics had an episode recently "Is there a better way to fight
terrorism?" [1] An interesting statistic they note is that occupation is the
primary cause of terrorism. Rather than focus on prediction, why not focus on
the causes?

[1]: [http://freakonomics.com/2015/02/13/is-there-a-better-way-
to-...](http://freakonomics.com/2015/02/13/is-there-a-better-way-to-fight-
terrorism-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

~~~
BonsaiDen
Focussing on the cause won't give you the side-effects (or benefits, depending
on how you look at it) of installing a surveillance state / building up
intelligence for economic advantages etc.

If in today’s world the act of merely "kidding" around on the internet or
dropping a suitcase in front of some building, is enough to bring whole cities
to a grinding halt, then the terrorist already one.

And because of this, you won't need anymore technology to stop terrorist, but
the technology to remove all the fears from peoples minds. Fear and the
removal of freedom are the terrorist ultimate goals, they may achieve this in
part by killing people, but they also receive a tremendous amount of help by
your government of choice which wants to know every little detail about you.

It's a game about visibility after all, many many more lives are lost every
day due to illness and hunger than through means of terrorism. But there is no
visibility, because spending money on medical research isn't as "effective" as
spending it on your military / intelligence budget. Partly due to the
lobbyists and partly due to the fact that helping - seemingly "random" \-
people won't convince your average voter, that you're actually doing something
for them. Arguing about how you're protecting _their_ children is much more
convincing in the short term.

Sadly, at the moment I don't see any way out of this dilemma, except for some
horrible events to take place which will wake everyone up e.g. someone newly
elected using the existing surveillance mechanism in their country to install
a totalitarian regime along with the mandatory secret police. Which I really
hope won't happen.

