Issac Asimov's Harry Seldon used "psycho-history" to predict the future. Tom Cruise used "precogs" in Minority Report. And now a pro-Putin think tank is trying to divine dissident activity by mining social media.
The Center for Research in Legitimacy and Political Protest claims to have developed software that will search Russian social media posts for signs of plans by political opposition to the government to stage unapproved protests or meetings. Described by an Izvestia report [in Russian] as "a system to prevent mass disorder," the software searches through social media posts once every five minutes to catch hints of "unauthorized actions" and potentially alert law enforcement to prevent them.
Public protests, rallies, marches, and meetings staged without government approval are outlawed in Russia—individuals can be fined up to about $600 (30,000 rubles) for participating in such events or sentenced to 50 hours of community service.
The software, which went live on May 18, is named "Laplace's demon" after the theoretical all-seeing intellect that could calculate the future of the universe based on the position and state of all matter. According to the Center's director, Yevgeny Venediktov, the software specifically monitors "politically oriented groups of social protest" at a national level, as well as local discussion platforms for specific geographic areas. "Particular attention will be paid to the number of likes and reposts in extremist groups." Groups and user pages associated with "extremists" are tagged by volunteers, aggregated into a central database, and analyzed and filtered by sociologists and political scientists.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 21 2015, @12:12AM
Anyone with any brains will avoid social media to stage any activity like this. If not Darwinian style selective pressure will perhaps ensure this.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kell on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:18AM
The smart protestor sets up international twitter account sockpuppets to pretend to be dissidents long enough to get tagged as a legit account of interest, and then uses them to flood the system with false positives.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday May 21 2015, @11:06AM
No, the smart protester replies "not this time, I have to go shopping." And then leaves the house with a shopping list. If they happen to spontaneously protest along the way, well, sometimes it happens.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday May 22 2015, @03:26AM
The smart human doesn't hold any opinions at all, bows the head meekly or proudly as befits the context, and tries to move away if at all possible (Elon Musk was too late, many decades too late, and Mars is a dead end shithole like a venus flytrap).
I'm not smart or I wouldn't be here, I'm afraid that goes for all, we (and others similar) might be the party at the world's end *cheers* :)
(And since that's one hell of a weird anti-recommendation for being here let's also all donate a little bit more if we can.)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))