Natural Language Processing for State Security

Roland Piquepaille writes "Obviously, computers can't have an opinion. What computers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information. This branch of natural-language processing (NLP) is called 'information extraction' and is used for sorting facts and opinions for Homeland Security. Right now, a consortium of three universities is for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which doesn't have enough in-house expertise in NLP. Read more for additional references and a diagram showing how information extraction is used."

tinfoil hat... or is it?

[macadamia_harold (947445)]

What comptuers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information. This branch of natural-language processing (NLP) is called 'information extraction' and is used for sorting facts and opinions for Homeland Security.

Yeah, because we need AT&T giving wide-scale, undocumented wiretaps to the NSA, who use voice recognition to generate transcripts of everyone's phone calls, and then DHS can run NLP on those transcripts to compile a list of "persons of interest", who are then automatically added to the TSA no-fly lists.

Yeah, I can envision the future, and the future sucks.

Re:

[rtb61 (674572)]

Sorting facts from opinion by use of language, how amazingly pointless and stupid. Now lets see if the program can sort BS facts from real facts. This just seems like another scheme cooked up by incompetant political appointees, who don't have any idea about what they are being paid to do. Their only hope of retaining their postition, so they can continue their real function of politcal party support for the current adminsitration, is to try to get that magic box to do their job for them.

You want to know

Ooooh another funding scramble!

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

Blow the dust off all those AI research papers left over from the 1970's/early 80s.

Of course universities will be scrambling to help. Big dollars, imprecise goals..... and many of the professors would have done research in related fields.

Re:

[Mac Degger (576336)]

Especially since the system, whilst it will have some quite interesting applications and the research will yield interesting results, can't work. A computer cannot distinguish between a fact and a lie told as fact...garbage in, and all that.

Let me rephrase that with an example:

'I am ten years old' and 'I am twenty years old'. Which is fact, which is lie? Better yet: 'we believe Iraq has WMD' versus 'we beleive Iraq has no WMD'. No matter what algorythms or heuristics you throw at this, all a computer at mos

Moo

[Chacham (981)]

What comptuers are very good at, though,

.... is spell-checking.....

....something, apparently, the editors are not good at....

Re:Moo

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

Maybe Roland had a stroke over the weekend. Sure he's self serving, but at least he's usually literate. That sentence about the universities didn't even make sense!

Yes, computers are great at spell checking

[Colin Smith (2679)]

That doesn't stop the really determined idiot though. Oh no.

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

Sigh.

[Renraku (518261)]

The slippery slope to being automatically flagged as someone to watch out for. No human control in the process, but one day when you go to apply for a loan or get your drivers' licence renewed, you might get a surprise.

Re:Sigh.

[BiggerIsBetter (682164)]

I'd rather have a computer flagging me than a human who may judge me by the color of my skin

If they can flag based on what you said, I'm sure they can flag you based on the skin tone in the photo on your drivers license or passport too. Or by your just family history or name. Or where you live. Or where your parents live.

Anyways, odds are the computer won't be doing the flagging per se, it'll just be following the parameters and policies entered by those humans controlling it. I'm not sure they'd trust "national security" to a self-learning neural net without some sort of bias in it.

Number 891224

[bky1701 (979071)]

Number 891224 has expressed a dislike of Emperor Bush, incident reported to FBI and Homeland Security.

Re:

[ikkonoishi (674762)]

Number 979071 has expressed an interest in Emperors, incident reported to George Lucas

State security, my ass!

[Schraegstrichpunkt (931443)]

... I want to see this functionality in Internet search engines!

Re:

[otisg (92803)]

We [technorati.com] are slowly working towards that, but we are not at the point where this can be done both fast and well. Unless you have FBI/NSA/CIA/government resources, of course.

Alias-i's ThreatTracker

[otisg (92803)]

There is a great little company in Brooklyn, NY called Alias-i [alias-i.com]. Some years ago they built this interesting "tool" called....guess....ThreatTracker [upenn.edu]. Information Extraction, Named Entity Recognition and other interesting stuff, if you are into this.
No, I don't work for them, but their LingPipe toolkit has some cooooool stuff.

I missed the joke

[QuantumFTL (197300)]

Can someone clue me on in this funny mod? I must say I'm puzzled. Is it because it looks like astroturfing?

really?

[agendi (684385)]

"Obviously, computers can't have an opinion. What comptuers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information."

I would say that comptuers (sic) aren't very good at deducting human opinions yet. They _may_ become better. Are humans good at deducting other humans opinion yet?

One of the coolest/scariest things about the net..

[smilindog2000 (907665)]

Is that it could be used to train a true AI (uh... not "artificial insemination"... the other kind). Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

A really difficult problem

[MarkWatson (189759)]

I have, in agregate, spent about 3 1/2 years in the last 20 years working on using NLP for semantic information extraction.

Possible? Yes, given very narrow domains of discourse and lots of work.

All problems are difficult till solved

[Reality Master 201 (578873)]

That's why they're problems and not inconveniences.

Re:

[espressojim (224775)]

Some problems are more difficult to solve than others.

Can we have a competition for inane comments?

Re:

[Walt Dismal (534799)]

I agree with the 'lots of work' part, but believe it is possible to achieve good results on wider domains outside of toy worlds. One key - from my own research - is to use (massive) databases of culture-related knowledge (belief systems) to build alternative viewpoints from which to massively parallel analyze the input. Each analysis agent has its own viewpoint or frame, driven by a very large database of world knowledge that is culture-specific. By culture I mean not just nationality but specific domains o

Re:A really difficult problem

[constantnormal (512494)]

It's the "narrow domains" that is the crux of the problem.

When used successfully over said "narrow domains", the human tendency (especially that set of humanity which makes the high-level choices for groups and organizations) will be to expand the domain in hopes of applying it to ever greater numbers of items.

Of course, as the search domain is expanded, the effectiveness of the results decline, with no warning to the clueless idiots driving the search. False positives eventually exceed true positives by greater and greater margins.

In the end, the strategy collapses, as a great many victims are shown to be wrongly targeted -- but until that point, the system does a LOT more harm than good.

Thank Goodness our leaders are such wise and contemplative souls that they would never, ever misuse such a tool.

A boon to research

[JanneM (7445)]

It's clear "national security" has become what "the internet" or "the cold war" were in their prime: an all-purpose catchphrase to get funding for any research whatsoever, no matter how tenuously connected.

Look at the two project proposals below and imagine which one will have an easier time getting funding:

"An epistemological metaanalysis of object-subject interrelations and conflict avoidance in Beowulf"

or

"An epistemological metaanalysis of object-subject interrelations and conflict avoidance in Beowulf to better understand threats to NATIONAL SECURITY"

Re:

[Firehed (942385)]

A bit of an unfair example (any true slashdotter care to decode the first bit?), but a good point nonetheless. Of course, CHILD PORNOGRAPHY would have worked better, but that's aside the point. Giving an explicit reason, no matter how flawed/shitty/suckupish/pointless, is more likely to get funding than something where you need a specialist to decode what's going to happen and then how it can be used. Abusing that reason to appeal to the congresscritters and whatnot is naturally a Bad Thing, but having n

Re:

[NitsujTPU (19263)]

With all due respect, that is inaccurate.

DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is a gigantic agency that funds a large proportion of academic research. The political hot button of child pornography, on the other hand, has no large funding source to offer universities. That's why so many academic projects have ties to defense.

Also, yes, usually research is, "do whatever you were going to do, but tie it to defense somehow." That's the way it goes, you need the cash. However, usually you can ti

Re:

[NitsujTPU (19263)]

I should caveat that above I meant "DARPA related research."

Two Roland junk submissions in two days

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wow, thanks for another waste of time. And you people stop linking to his blog in comments, he exists for nothing but ad clicks.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, he linked to the almost EXACT same blogs he did last night in his Hydrogen junk article, tisk tisk Roland. You can mod us offtopic all you want man, just checking the last article proves he is scamming Slashdot (and it's users) for ad clicks for these blogs and his own.

Let us filter this guy please. Seriously, I will stop subscribing and so will my usergroup if we can't filter out his faux science crap. It's getting near the end of the month Slashdot, do you, Roland ,and his ad carriers have

Man...

[GnomeChompsky (950296)]

There goes a promising career path. I know any technology can be used for good or for evil, but in today's political climate, it seems especially irresponsible to be aiding and abetting what may wind up becoming the pretext for torture of some 16 year old blogger.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare myself for my upcoming extraordinary rendition....

well

[thealsir (927362)]

Of course, stuff that is stated as fact could be opinion, conveniently made to look like fact. Hence Orwellian doublespeak. Given how far AI is at current, I would say that such an algorithm would not really be able to alert flag doublespeak.

Sounds like GALE

[Dr. Eggman (932300)]

Sounds kind of like DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office's GALE [darpa.mil] Program:

" The goal of the GALE (Global Autonomous Language Exploitation) program is to develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages, eliminating the need for linguists and analysts and automatically providing relevant, distilled actionable information to military command and personnel in a timely fashion. Automatic processing "engines" will convert and distill the data, delivering pertinent, consolidated information in easy-to-understand forms to military personnel and monolingual English-speaking analysts in response to direct or implicit requests."

Actually, it sounds more like ACE

[Reality Master 201 (578873)]

http://projects.ldc.upenn.edu/ace/ [upenn.edu]

GALE seems geared towards translation and aggregation of data for convenient
access by mono-lingual military and intelligence personnel. The goal of the
ACE project is to provide classification of data based on what it actually
means.

Re:

[waynemcdougall (631415)]

G.A.L.E. report for September 25, 2006

Executive Summary

Classication: Classified.

CRUSH! KILL! DESTROY!

End of report

abuse?

[mr100percent (57156)]

Why do I immediately assume this will be abused?

DHS officer: Mr. 100%, I'm afraid we'll have to take you into custody. Our information extraction search on your blog concluded you are anti-American.
Me: From my blog? Is this about my criticism of the Iraq war?
DHS officer: Our results are classified, but please accompany us to GTMO for further "information extraction" to confirm the results of our investigation...

Ok, I know I'm taking a very cynical view here and that's pretty full of FUD, but why else does State security need this? Is this for them to monitor every chat room and blog?

Aha!

[suv4x4 (956391)]

Obviously, computers can't have an opinion.

Welcome the new opinion-based CAPTCHA-s!

Re:

[TheSpoom (715771)]

"We're sorry, your liberal slant is too far left to access this site."
-- Fox News

NLP

[walnutmon (988223)]

I was a little confused how they used the link between human brain activity on different wave lengths to extract opinion from written text, but Neuro-linguistic programming is apparently not the most popular term with NLP as an acronym.

This could be a double edge sword for the government. What if it falls in the wrong hands? People all over could use the technology on the news to extract the real information, and realize that things are not what they seem.

Of course, I suppose that what they would probably

Can do or will do?

[Dan East (318230)]

What comptuers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information.

Funny, because neither of the articles state that. In fact, they don't even say that software can do that at all yet: A new research program ... aims to teach computers to scan through text and sort opinion from fact. Or, We're interested in seeing how we would extract information about opinions.

So yeah, it would be nice if they could sort opinions from facts. Why they're at it, why don't they just recognize lies from truth too, because wouldn't that be doing the exact same thing? Then we can just run statements made by people suspected of committing a crime through the software, which can then sort out all the facts from the opinions, and we'll no longer need judges, juries or attorneys.

Roland, next time save yourself some time and just make the whole freaking thing up from scratch.

Dan East

one thing

[shack420 (821947)]

another thing Rolands computer is not very good at is spell checking his posts!

screw national security

[argoff (142580)]

Screw national security, how about search, how about for business and commerce, how about for for culturial exchange and global interaction. The chances of me getting attacked by a terrorist are less than getting hit by lightning, the chances with dealing with foriegn cultures, foriegn business and commerce are rapidly approaching 100%. There are 4 billion people out there who have the potential to mutually benifit from clean communication. Please don't patrinoze me, I'm not too worried about getting nailed by terrorists, but am very bothered by the possibility of having my individual liberties nickeled and dimed to death.

Too Smart

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

"Right now, a consortium of three universities is for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which doesn't have enough in-house expertise in NLP."

If one of these NLP "expert" systems can extract fact or opinion from that sentence, we should delete it.

Start writing long run-on sentences with big words

[nuntius (92696)]

Knowing the general quality of the average programmer, it stands to reason that this code will only be validated to function in the usual case; thus, the 3l33t coder immediately realizes that simp1e substitutions present an initial defense against the naive academic's simple-minded algorithms and the cut-and-past output of their underpaid cheating slaves (which is, to mean, graduate students or even cheaper undergrads), bringing us closer to the more important question for which this test sentence is being

Who Thinks this is Reasonable?

[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

This story fits in the broader context of a developing "surveillance state" in the USA. Forget about wiretaps and such, I just want to focus stuff that is out in plain view.

The 4th amendment says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or thi

Bushed

[Anne Thwacks (531696)]

You mean it was not the computers that voted for George W Bush? Then who the hell did?

Re:

[1u3hr (530656)]

It's supposed to be a way to identify an article based on keywords. It's not an opinion poll. Keywords like "yes", "no", and "duh", are completely irrelevant!

Whatever the orignal intention, users have noticed that if enough of them use a particular tag, it is displayed under the articles. Thus it's become a way to respond directly to it. It does show, I think, that users want a way to rate articles directly, and have leapt on this as a way to do so.

Anyway, I've not seen any other use for tags yet, so w

Re:

[blixel (158224)]

Personally, I find a "yes" or "no" tag somewhat more informative than a list of the words in the story title... (which seems to be the usual situation)

Really? How is it informative when the same, single article has the following associated tags: "Yes", "No", "Maybe", "duh"

Re:

[MillionthMonkey (240664)]

Really? How is it informative when the same, single article has the following associated tags: "Yes", "No", "Maybe", "duh"

I hope you haven't been relying on those "Yes" or "No" tags to tell you if a story is right or wrong. The point of the tag system is to give you a link of all stories associated with a given tag, not to see what tags are associated with a given story. You're supposed to click on the tags, not read them.

The tag system must by design incorporate a mix of useful and useless tags because any

Re:

[blixel (158224)]

>> Really? How is it informative when the same, single article has the following associated tags: "Yes", "No", "Maybe", "duh"

> Good point - if it has all of them at once, it's probably a waste of time. Although it could be a good indicator of whether this is a hotly debated topic, or possibly just a load of crap not worth reading (OK, a waste of time as first stated).

I understand the sentiment to want to vote on an article, but that's a different mechanism.

If slashdot wants to implement a "Vote on

Re:

[raduf (307723)]

Not his site. This time(?) it's actually quite legit, not a blog and no advertising.

Re:

[MillionthMonkey (240664)]

It's important that we gather our intelligence from computers, because computers cannot form an opinion. If they could, they wouldn't help us for long, or they'd start lying to us.

That's the basis of our overreliance on technology in intelligence gathering all over the world. This torture stuff isn't going to help.