Narus Develops Social Media Sleuth 96
maximus1 writes "Narus is developing a new technology code-named Hone that can be used to identify anonymous users of social networks and Internet services. Hone can do some pretty 'scary' things, says Antonio Nucci, chief technology officer with Narus. Hone uses artificial intelligence to analyze e-mails and can link mails to different accounts, doing what Nucci calls topical analysis. 'It's going to go through a set of documents and automatically it's going to organize them in topics — I'm not talking about keywords as is done today, I'm talking about topics,' he said. That can't be done with today's technology, he said. 'If you search for fertilizers on Google ... it's going to come back with 6.5 million pages. Enjoy,' he said. 'If you want to search for non-farmers who are discussing fertilizer ... it's not even searchable.' Nucci will discuss Hone at the RSA Conference in San Francisco Friday."
Re:scare tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
then address the real reasons for hating your society
That depends on what they hate you for. Some people do indeed hate people for their ideology. It's happened quite often in history. You think the Jews' problem was something other than what Hitler believed, not what the Jews believed? Or France, for that matter?
Pulling out the "terrorists just hate the US because of what the US has done" should be based on what the said terrorist has said, not based on what we think the US does wrong. Do I think the US does things wrong? Oh, definitely. But I don't think we can assume terrorists would stop hating the US if the US fixed things they did wrong. And it hasn't worked that way for a long time. Russia appeared to hate the US for a time because it saw the US as an obstruction to what Russia wanted (world communism). Hitler hated everybody because they stood in the way of what he wanted (a German/Arian world)...
But I do agree with most of your last paragraph... I wouldn't mind finding a non-tax-cheating Congress member, a "good person" politician, etc. And I'm all for lowering power abuse and crime.
Why the fuck (Score:1, Interesting)
would they have access to my emails in the first place.
The captcha is dignity, which is fitting considering this world seems to have lost it's.
Sounds like Semantic Web to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
'If you want to search for non-farmers who are discussing fertilizer ... it's not even searchable.'
This sounds an awful lot like the semantic web [wikipedia.org]. Specifically, this sounds exactly like what WebFountain [wikipedia.org] does (and has done since 2003).
Interested in Narus? (Score:5, Interesting)
PBS' Frontline [pbs.org] released a documentary called "Spying on the Home Front" [pbs.org] all the way back on May 15th, 2007. The entire documentary is available for viewing online (I believe it's even accessible in Canada; I'm not sure about access from other countries) at that Frontline site. If you're short on time, click the "Watch the Full Program Online" link on the right-hand side of the page, and then click on Chapter 3 in the new window that appears (it's titled "The NSA's Eavesdropping at AT&T"). The whole chapter only lasts about 10 minutes, but again, if you're short on time fast-forward through the chapter to about 4:30. That's the point where Mark Klein describes when he first became aware that a Narus STA system had been installed inside a secret room at a major AT&T facility. Shortly thereafter Brian Reid elaborates on exactly what its presence meant.
Even better, at about 5:05 an interview with Steve Bannerman, VP of Narus Marketing begins, at which point he begins describing just how deeply into network traffic their hardware can probe.
And beautifully, at about 6:35, Steve Bannerman suddenly becomes aware of exactly how deep a whole he's dug for himself, and becomes visibly flustered, starts stammering, and eventually trails off with a couple of classic lines like, "as far as I know, no one's ever proved [sic] anything!"
That part's worth rewinding and replaying a few times over.
Please forgive my obvious schadenfreude, but in the face of entities like the NSA and Naurus, who together apparently have complete access to anything of mine -- and that of my friends, and my family -- that travels over the Internet, schadenfreude is all I've got left.
Re:scare tactics (Score:1, Interesting)
Ron Paul is pretty honest. . . and there are others, usually trashed by the corporate media, but anyway:
I completely agree with you. This has gotten so far out of control. It needs to stop. This whole idea that society is safer with no freedom and an out of control corrupt government is nonsense. I don't care what excuse is made, whether real or manufactured, losing freedom is not worth whatever perceived benefit such measures could provide (Which is: None).
Not only is it a monumental waste of money in a time where we can't afford it, but it's detrimental to the integrity and social morality of society itself. More and more, this "terrorism" word is thrown around for political gain. The word itself is so loosely used these days that people in the UK are frequently called "terrorists" for taking pictures of parades. The sweeping power of anti-terrorism laws poses a far greater threat to the safety of the population than any potential attack could. They do not do anything to prevent bad guys from attacking, and serve only to destroy the incredible gift of liberty that this country was founded upon.
Simply put, there is no point in protecting the western world if there is no western world left to protect. What we lose in these endless "wars on everything" is the loss of everything that defines our culture that is worthy of praise.
Privacy, due process, accountability of even the highest offices of government, freedom of speech, freedom from official persecution, freedom of free-assembly, freedom to protect one's self, freedom of choice, freedom of mobility. Every traditionally American virtue is being stampeded upon in favor of this Orwellian nightmare state from hell. It provides no benefit, and there is no excuse great enough to justify it's existence.
Really, if you think about it, the people behind such massive abuses of American jurisprudence are the very defenition of terrorists. They are like hostage takers, that use fear mongering and doomsday scenarios to terrorize the population and elected representatives into going along with their agenda (or else). That IS terrorism, is it not?
I feel, as a law abiding American Citizen, quite a lot more terrorized by the government itself than by any brown skinned guy in a cave half a world away. That is a fact.
It's just as you said: Why not make this a place that nobody would want to attack, which would REALLY make us safer. No police state needed.