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posted by janrinok on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the kiss-your-freedom-goodbye dept.

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.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/pre-thoughtcrime-russian-think-tank-app-catches-protestors-before-they-protest/

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:47AM (#185967)

    Why is marrying little girls bad and taboo. Look in your bible: Deuteonomy 22 28-29, hebrew. Isn't royssia orthodox now? Doesn't Jesus say the law won't be gone till the heaven and earth is gone.

    The earth, certainly, is still here.

    Why can't you marry little girls?

    Why are you against it.

    The first thing feminists did was ban marrying girl children.

    Your russian church has spoken out against feminism. Why hate pedophiles then? They just need to keep the girls (and I'm sure they would prefer to)

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  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday May 22 2015, @03:40AM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 22 2015, @03:40AM (#186312) Journal

    Aha! I've discovered what your objective is! You want us all to start pleading for swapping you with GNAA!

    Clever, very clever, outright dastardly how sweet you make such a deal seem. But now your evil plan is foiled!

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))