THSCC Forums

How do you do that? Observe and monitor X number of large terrorist attacks and then figure out what it looks like so you can catch them the next time? You want to catch terrorist #1 not #10.

The easier question to pose is how do you identify aberrant behavior? It would be pretty easy to identify the movement patterns of many "normal" people and then identify those who behaved differently. Just imagine that most folks move about driving at or near the speed limit and stay within 15 miles of home. Do you qualify as normal? No? Well then you might need a little more scrutiny.
Been to too many Democratic fund raisers? Well we Republicans may need to evaluate you a little more closely.... And it grows from there.
Charlie G

So how do we get to the point of being able to analyze the behaviour unless you track people and see what behaviour falls outside the norm and use that to profile the folks that are walking around? Then instead of the TSA strip searching 6 year olds because they are the 32nd person in line, they would search person 24 because they profiled to fit someone with bad intentions. You gotta start somewhere to build a database and the bigger the sample size the more accurate the prediction.
We are going off topic but...

Wow! Let's build a huge monitoring network and then once it is done see if we can find a way to make it work.

To use your TSA and 6yr old search example, A large TSA system is in place today and I think most people feel it's not doing a great job. Lets keep making it bigger until it works? IMHO, "IF" the technology can be created to automate this process, it should not require the roll out of a huge preliminary system first. Your argument is basically saying we will have to "train" the system to "learn" the behavior it would need to track. How do you do that? Observe and monitor X number of large terrorist attacks and then figure out what it looks like so you can catch them the next time? You want to catch terrorist #1 not #10.

Overall, I personally think it is impossible to predict the type of behavior you are talking about short of huge costs and significant loss of civil rights. I can envision activities that would look normal and fall within historical patterns, but could still result in terrorist activity. Eye in the sky systems can be defeated if you try hard enough.

Richard

I still have a hard time finding anything wrong with the phone collecting location data.

Someone please explain what's so wrong with it?

Jeezus... maybe that's the data that's used to locate you for 911 calls?... but more than likely, it's simply the data used for the new "find my phone" feature.

What the companies do with the data is to be determined, but there have been reports of police officers requesting phones from drivers so that they can dump the contents onto a machine and browse through the data on it.

Third result on Google: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3458.asp

You forgot that this would be outsourced to the private sector so it would be done cheaply and efficiently and better than the government could do it. They would make additional revenue by selling the "marketing" data to other companies thereby lowering the cost to everyone. I still don't see a problem. We voluntarily give up our privacy in exchange for lower prices at Harry Tweeter, Lowes, Fud Kitty etc and even to Facebook, Linked In, Myspace etc. Why not give it up to stop terrorists?

This is exactly what El Al has employeed so effectively to combat terrorism for the last 30 years or so. :shrug:

On topic post...

I have an Android phone and I am not surprised that Google is doing the same thing. Google is no more of an angel then Apple or MS. The biggest problem I have is the level of detail and text buried in user acceptance agreements with most everything these days. It's like you either have to just give up and accept whatever they may include, or become a complete Luddite and shun all tech. I don't know what the answer is.

Richard

here's a thought:
(2) buy a Garmin. It tells you where you are with only downloaded maps and subtle timing differences between satellites. No uploading location data.

As far as you know. Garmin might be the next Apple, MS or Google. I'm sure Garmin is dedicated to doing no harm.... oh wait was that Google?.... maybe Apple? I can't recall who was supposed to be the good guy? Is Garmin German? Must be, sounds German..... is Germany good or bad today? I need to Google it.....