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posted by takyon on Wednesday February 17 2016, @02:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the make-bad-scifi-real dept.

[Important Note: Some links (especially Ars Technica) are NSFW for US government employees as they contain slides that are marked "Top Secret". Exercise discretion/caution in this story's comments, too. -Ed.]

Yes, it is cloud-based, yes, it does decide about the fate of hundreds of humans, and yes, ultimately it does direct robots to kill innocent humans.

SKYNET is a system created by the NSA that applies machine learning algorithms to supposedly determine the likelihood of someone turning into a terrorist based on mobile phone metadata. According to slides published at Ars Technica, evil acts like switching off your mobile phone (= evading surveillance), switching SIM cards (= trying unsuccessfully to evade surveillance, thanks to IMEI, etc.), swapping phones with others (= trying unsuccessfully to evade surveillance, thanks to other surveillance data) will be taken together as indicators of your evil intentions.

Patrick Ball—a data scientist and the executive director at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group—who has previously given expert testimony before war crimes tribunals, described the NSA's methods as "ridiculously optimistic" and "completely bullshit." A flaw in how the NSA trains SKYNET's machine learning algorithm to analyse cellular metadata, Ball told Ars, makes the results scientifically unsound.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:07AM (#305644)

    Activists are always put on a list. Ghandi was, MLK was, they are all noticed by the powers that be. Its having the guts to stand up and say "fuck off I'll do what I want because there is nothing wrong with that".

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:49AM (#305654)

    Hellfire target list? No, they were not. Ghandi and MLK could be easily exterminated for simply being terrorists square and simple, but they were not. One got to become an activist at the right time and with the right politically correct agenda. Folks under hellfire behave differently I think.

    • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday February 17 2016, @10:49AM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday February 17 2016, @10:49AM (#305696) Journal

      Those people weren't eliminated because .gov knew they'd be making martyrs. Modern methods involve thoroughly discreditting the target first, so that they can be safely removed without creating a martyr. IIRC they attempted to kill MLK by trying to induce suicide.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @02:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @02:16PM (#305775)

        They sure did, it's absolutely disgusting. And you should know about it. http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/12/7204453/martin-luther-king-fbi-letter [vox.com]

        If you trust the gov then you should certainly read about it. And larger COINTELPRO. Abuses happen, also systematically and at the highest level...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @06:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @06:55PM (#305882)

          Lately one underage nude picture on the subject's phone will do the trick and everybody knows it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2016, @02:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2016, @02:27AM (#306094)

      And yet both Ghandi and MLK were murdered.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @09:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @09:38AM (#305682)

    Yeah, and part of telling them to fuck off is trying to foil their unethical and unconstitutional surveillance.