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The Internet Security United States Your Rights Online

Feds Fund Anti-Terrorism Search Engine 278

Posted by Zonk from the google-isn't-good-enough? dept.
Ben writes "The FAA and researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing an anti-terrorism search engine that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner -- that can be puzzled together by grabbing bits and pieces from unrelated documents. Eventually, they say, the technique can be commercialized to improve search results on more mundane matters.`"
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Feds Fund Anti-Terrorism Search Engine More

Feds Fund Anti-Terrorism Search Engine

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  • Okay. I'm sorry. I just have to say. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13, 2005 @06:56PM (#12525311)
    That's the funniest thing I've heard about the government doing since they shut down the "psychic spies" unit ten years ago.

    • layoffs (Score:3, Funny)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 )
      That's the funniest thing I've heard about the government doing since they shut down the "psychic spies" unit ten years ago.

      Well, management knew it was time to close shop when, during their talks about whether to do layoffs, employees were asking for raises and coming in late.

    • Re:Okay. I'm sorry. I just have to say. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:06PM (#12525410)
      I knew you were going to say that.

      Timesprout
      Chief Psychic Sprout
      NSA
      1984-1994

    • Re:I don't know about you... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @08:11PM (#12525852)
      ...but *I* sure as hell feel safer.

      Huge deficits, imaginary dragons, a new mecca for terrorism, the erosion of freedom, all this shiny new tecknarlogy to watch our every move...

      Oops, guess not.
      • but that's the reason to visit porn sites and
        download images and videos. How cool is that?
        All terrorist plans, calendars, instructions for
        everything from bullets to bombs to WMD are all
        neatly encrypted and hidden through the use of
        steganography. And communications back up the
        chain of command can be done through much lower
        bandwidth SPAM.

        So when the neo-con Big brothers come knocking
        at the door to sift through your porn collection,
        it's really just a continuation of the fight against
        terrorism. No, really!

  • One Stop (Score:2, Interesting)

    by anandpur ( 303114 )
    http://cryptome.org/ [cryptome.org]
    Mirrors :
    http://cryptome.quintessenz.org/mirror/ [quintessenz.org]
    http://www.infosecwest.com/cryptome/ [infosecwest.com]

    UPDATED CRYPTOME DVD/CDs
    Cryptome offers its archives on a single DVD or 4-CDs.
    Donate $25 (yes, only $25) for a DVD or 4 CDs --state preference -- of the Cryptome archives of 25,000 files from June 1996 to February 2005 (~2.4 GB). Click Paypal, use E-gold or mail to John Young, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024. (E-gold users: send mail address to jya [at] pipeline.com.). Archives include all

  • This is a great idea! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Roadkills-R-Us ( 122219 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @06:58PM (#12525340) Homepage
    Since the government has been trying for decades to obfuscate information and make sure people can't really get useful data, this will help them accomplish that goal.

    ``Saunders, you did it again. If a user visits these 73 pages in the right order, and happens to hear the NBC news theme anywhere during the last 7 pages, it will be intuitively obvious to them how to actually get through to their Congresscritter. We can't have that!''
    • If this thing is government maintained... count how many days before it gets hacked. A search for "BUSH" might return "TERRORIST".

      In other news the search engine provide the administration excuses to raise taxes.

  • Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @06:58PM (#12525342) Journal
    I heard there was this device that allowed a person to kill others by simply pointing at them. Apparently it involves bits of metal propelled at high speeds by explosive charges. You reckon they'll be able to find instructions for one of these things so they can censor it?

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DAldredge ( 2353 )
      They will try. Hell, the US has 20,000 gun laws and the areas that have the most gun laws have the highests amount of gun/violent crime.

      It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to transfer money from the taxpayers to who ever donated to those that sponsored this.

      • Hell, the US has 20,000 gun laws and the areas that have the most gun laws have the highests amount of gun/violent crime.

        Ok, I don't get it. Why is the surprising? Who would expect an area that didn't have problems with gun violence to pass lots of laws about it? They would either pass no laws or they would pass a few that fixed the problem, so they would stop writing gun laws. Obviously the areas that pass tons of gun laws are going to be the ones that have endemic problems with gun violence. What is th

      • Your typical gun has less regulation then a car or a lighter. Sad but true.
    • I heard there was this device that allowed a person to kill others by simply pointing at them.


      Well, sure, but those aren't really allowed on planes.



      On the other hand, I've heard that if you soak an iPod in the bathroom sink and then stick it with a piece of metal you can make a bomb...


      c.

  • Worthless (Score:5, Funny)

    by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @06:58PM (#12525343)
    UnleSs thEy have A BOt capable of huMan level thinking they won't find a Blasted thing.

    • Re:Worthless (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:03PM (#12525390)
      > UnleSs thEy have A BOt capable of huMan level thinking they won't find a Blasted thing.

      I assume you also support the Terror Services And Terrorism Reform Act of Prevention [Sponsor -- Sen. Ackbar (R-MC)] bill too, huh?

    • Somebody set up us the false positive?
    • UnleSs thEy have A BOt capable of huMan level thinking they won't find a Blasted thing.

      Apparantly you are not familiar with the NSA. They excel at cryptography and pattern recognition, pattern analysis, etc. Why do you think your elite code would be so hard to notice? It took me about 30 seconds to device a program to look for patterns like yours.

      They don't need to develop something to do everything for them, just to flag data that should be examined further, presumably by humans in this field.
      • And the winner of the Mr. Anal contest goes to... That's Unpossible!! When reached for comments, That's Unpossible! declared "I have no need for humor, my program makes jokes for me. I'm just that good."

        Like serIously, just kiddinG Here. There's a lot wE Need to learn about Us before we can imProve surveillance.

  • Watch out if you place any "modern" RPGs... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @06:58PM (#12525345) Homepage
    ...and post after action reports to the Internet.

    How many gamers do you think will get tagged by and subsequently visited by authorities who believe they are mixed up in terrorist activities?

    • so many there database will be useless.

      A friend of mine starting a conversation about WoW in a resturant with the following sentence:
      "I really like killing priests."

      uncomfortable moment there as everyone in line turned to look at him.
    • I was on the cell phone talking to a friend: he was stuck waiting in a gov't office to take care of bureaucratic paperwork...

      Suddenly he said "Wow, oh wow." I asked what happened. He said "something great, I'll tell you later." Wouldn't say anything more.

      Because he'd just scored 20 million points in Drug Wars, after Coke went up to some zillion dollars a kilo. "I was surrounded by security officials- didn't seem like a good time to be talking about dumping heroin," he later told me.

  • I don't quite get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wankledot ( 712148 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @06:59PM (#12525351)
    Sounds to me like it's simply a terrorism search engine designed perfectly for terrorists. What purposes would culling bits and pieces of info about how to take down an airplane serve for anti-terror efforts? You would find out that it's possible to find lots of info on the subject... great... now what? You're not really going to be able to stop that information from existing.

    • Re:I don't quite get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by VidEdit ( 703021 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:19PM (#12525500)
      The only use for this search engine is find things to censor. Otherwise, as the parent says, it is just a *terrorism* search engine, not an anti-terrorism search engine.

      I"d be worried that this will be used as a way to identify subjects for federal Patriot act "National Security Letter" searches--the kind that the victim is prohibited by law to revealing to anyone, even a lawyer!

      This is not a good thing.
      • the kind that the victim is prohibited by law to revealing to anyone, even a lawyer!

        If you did share it with a lawyer, wouldn't the lawyer be bound by attorney-client privilege, so you couldn't get in trouble for doing so? Assuming, of course, that you didn't decide to take further action.
      • I"d be worried that this will be used as a way to identify subjects for federal Patriot act "National Security Letter" searches--the kind that the victim is prohibited by law to revealing to anyone, even a lawyer!

        I'd like to see someone try to press charges against someone for seeking a lawyer. That would go over really well in the judicial system.

        Balance of power exists for a reason, and that reason is that abuse is inevitable and regular.
    • What purposes would culling bits and pieces of info about how to take down an airplane serve for anti-terror efforts?

      Isn't it obvious? If your site has a discussion of the strength of aluminum and this search engine decides it can use that to blow up an airplane, they'll kick in your door and send you to Cuba.

      We don't want people helping the terrorists now, do we?
    • would be that it's much less about the information that you can piece together with this engine, than the location of the pieces.

      If all the nuggets of how to (insert evil thing) reside on similar servers/sites/etc., I'm guessing they're looking to be able to spot those patterns and see who's behind posting all these seemingly innocuous bits of info.

      Oh, that, and they want to read your email.

    • The concept is that vulnerabilities in real life work much like many vulnerabilities in software -- doing one thing, like passing off help:// urls to a help application, is fine, and doing another thing, like running scripts in your help application, is fine, but put them together and it's an exploit. Lots of places could tell you either one of those facts, and once you know both of them you can defend yourself -- the premise is that this engine would be able to bring them together.

      So what kind of info mig
  • Get yourself a schizophrenic math genius. They see everything. :)

    • Or a geeky nerd with a six-pack of Jolt Cola, and a magic monitor that can project images of the screen onto the user, and makes a chattering noise at the same time. Passwords should always be displayed as 2-inch high *'s, but not be more that six letters in length. Printing or saving a document must not take less than 30 seconds or at least until the bad guys have entered the building. Accessing a shared directory must trigger the entire building alarm network, while encrypted documents must be easy to dec

  • www.googlebomb.com (Score:4, Funny)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:01PM (#12525371) Journal
    +explosion +"bad arab guys" -"al qaeda" +iraq +france
    • Yes, because France (yes I'm canadian) is definately a terrorist hotspot. I know it's been said before but haven't you ever googled "French Military Victories" and hit "I'm feeling lucky"? They don't really pose a significant threat. But don't take my word for it: result here [google.ca](albinoblacksheep.com) Once you get there, click on one of the links
  • There's already a search engine that compares 2 pieces of data.. it's called googlewhack http://www.googlewhack.com/ [googlewhack.com]

  • Anti-terrorism? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by MoogMan ( 442253 )
    Wouldn't that be a terrorism search engine?

  • terrorist recipe generator (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:09PM (#12525433)
    i'm going to develop a site where you can put in what equipment you have and it will generate instructions on how you can kill the most people with said equipment.

    kind of like macgyver but in reverse.
    • That would be a major strike against bureaucracy. After all most office products (as in pens, not as in MS Office) were used by MacGyver in one episode or the other to produce some weapon or other special forces-like equipment.

  • Oblicatory PI quote (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Phrekie ( 724303 )
    Sol Robeson: Hold on. You have to slow down. You're losing it. You have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing every
  • Does the intelligence agency put out fake advertisements for selling weapons? Underground sources could then try and secure weapons through these channels and be caught.

  • UIR is an example of text mining, going across documents and uncovering things that are not apparent to the user," she said. [emphasis mine]

    So, IOW, someone who posts in their blog a phrase they overheard in a bar can now be surrepitiously linked to terrorism. Thanks to the PATRIOT act, their house could be then searched without them even knowing it. Isn't it wonderful that we have this computer program which even further undermines our basic liberties?!

    So what this tool basically does is allow th

  • absurd (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:18PM (#12525492)
    anti-terrorism search engine that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner

    To be honest, that sort of thing has never struck me as the kind of problem terrorists have had- usually when they've tried it, they've been pretty successful. They haven't tried many times, and we've seen how close even complete and total idiots like Richard Reid(sp?) can come, despite all our "security measures".

    Nevermind that far more planes crash because of pilot error or mechanical problems than terrorist hijackings- maybe we should rethink priorities here a little?

    What's next? The Department of Transportation determining driver ed manuals need to be pulled because they tell people how to drive a truck, and trucks might be used to carry bombs? Next thing you know, budgets will be hidden because, gasp, we wouldn't want terrorists to know where we spend the most money, they might try to blow it up! Then CSPAN won't be allowed to broadcast senate sessions- wouldn't want terrorists to know when senators are in session. The list goes on and on and on.

    This paranoia is getting REALLY annoying. Folks- come to grips with the fact that freedom might, on occasion, require personal sacrifice. This country is getting really fucking annoying to live in, which is pretty much exactly what terrorists set out to do.

    In the words of Ben Franklin, "they that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

    • I'm beginning to believe that it's not about terrorism at all and that even the fbi guys know it. It's about controlling people, whether through false terrorism allegations and the fallout they cause or merely the threat of anti-terrorism activities to keep people from speaking political dissent.
    • In the words of Ben Franklin, "they that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

      Whenever I hear this quote, I have to wonder which essential liberity he was talking about. Because he might have been discussing the virtues of maintaining a minstress over a wife. He was quite the lady's man.

      Maybe someone else can find that quote of his with him talking about the virtues of having an older mistress over a younger mistress. Classic stuff...
    • As if anyone actually watches C-SPAN anyway...

  • Yeah but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by isotope23 ( 210590 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:20PM (#12525517) Homepage Journal
    btu wlli ti wrk if I tpey htings ni schu a wya thta u cna raed lla abuto a trreor plt?

    I smee 2 ermmeber taht poeple cn rdae obfsuctaed
    wrds. So hw wlle wlil ti wrok whne I strt tlaknig
    aobut pultonmiu ro drity bmbs?

    • Re:Yeah but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by psetzer ( 714543 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @10:35PM (#12526505)
      Well, you can slow it down and make things much more difficult, but it's not impossible. The words that you've typed are close to the words that you meant to type. But what's close? Any string of finite length can be transformed into any other string of finite length by adding, subtracting, and substituting characters. Two strings have a distance defined by the minimum number of additions, subtractions and substitutions that it takes to transform one into the other. This is called the Levenshtein distance, or for those who can't pronounce it, the edit distance. It's incidentally how most spellcheckers work, and if you run your text through one, it will be more readable by just about everyone. Now, consider using a SOM, or self-organizing map, a type of neural network. It can classify similar objects into single groups most similar to eachother. You can use this to find instances of possible manglings of uranium, plutonium, and most other words, given a large enough sample. Incidentally, just running your post through a spellchecker (Thunderbird's) and picking the default options on everything made the phrase 'dirty bombs' appear normally. So, it helps, but it's not perfect.
      • I dunno, a system like that would generate a lot of false positives and would have to rely on grammar to interpolate what word it may be. No one should ever rely on grammar on the net!

    • Re:Yeah but (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gkitty ( 869215 )
      Since you asked...

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pultonmiu+dri ty+bmbs&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]

      Google, the patriot's friend!

  • The easiest way to take down an airplane is to land a nuke on it. Easy. It's all science.
    • Or, if your sufficiently tech'd-up to have a nuke, launch it so that the peak of it's suborbital trajectory is over the US, then detonate.

      One nuke in a exo-atmospheric explosion -> All planes bigger then a cessna will drop out of the sky like a bunch of car keys when their avionics fuse.

      Oh sure, the military will be fine (if a little bit pissed off). But just about every other circuit above ground's gonna have a whole lot of trouble headed it's way.

      See http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/emp-senate-hear [unitedstatesaction.com]

  • Surreal & Strangelovian (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Withigo ( 99983 )
    Eventually, they say, the technique can be commercialized to improve search results on more mundane matters.

    What a totally lame plan. I am outraged that my tax dollars are contributing to this.
    For starters, it's totally inefficient.

    A much better program would be to create an Afgan-style terrorist training bootcamp somewhere in the Midwest and invite radical Muslims and people from the militia/posse commitatus scene to "try it out" free of charge. Then "study" them afterwords in order to better understand
  • The TRUTH is that this post is in-fact a terrorist transmission, using their technology I have decoded it:

    "The FAA and researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing an anti-terrorism search engine [buffalo.edu] that will hunt for 'hidden' information -- like how to take down an airliner -- that can be puzzled together by grabbing bits and pieces from unrelated documents. Eventually, they say, the technique can be commercialized to improve search results on more mundane matters.`"

    And I didn't hav
  • It looks to me like they are developing software for finding a trail of links between two different documents.

    Most likely this will be abused to shut up dissidents by saying: "Your web page links to a web page that links to a web page that links to a web page by someone we consider terrorists. Shut down your home page or go to jail on terrorist charges."

  • I think this [google.com.au]might give you a good start, particularly the recipe for nitroglycerin.

    <sarc> But of course those "stupid towelheads" in those "axis of evil" countries wouldn't already KNOW that this information is freely available. </sarc>

    I fail to see what this will achieve.

  • I can see it now (Score:3, Funny)

    by webappsec ( 854813 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:48PM (#12525700)
    $ telnet terrorsearchengine Trying terrorsearchengine... Connected to terrorsearchengine. Escape character is '^]'. GET /search?query=WhereIsOsamaBinLaden HTTP/1.0 Host: terrorsearchengine HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 23:41:17 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) Location: http://nobodyfuckingknows/ [nobodyfuckingknows]

  • Sounds like a waste of money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HairyCanary ( 688865 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:51PM (#12525723)
    Does the FAA and the University of Buffalo think that they can do a better job of searching web pages than Google does?

    If they really want quick results, it seems to me that our tax dollars would be better spent hiring Google to whip them up something instead. Or better yet, just save the tax dollars altogether and find something more useful to spend it on.

    • Well, I don't know.

      Google isn't too good at shooting people. Not too much practice. And they weren't able to predict the 9/11 fiasco or any of the other terrorist attacks. I don't know if Google is up for it.
    • Look, you don't understand how the whole university-research thing works. Said university professor cooks up a grandiose project proposal which may or may not end up with a successful implementation, and someone in the government with money to spend in a particular area decides to accept the proposal. Now said professor/university may not be able to come up with anything that works like Google or even like anything that the proposal intends, but they will be funded well for years. Professor is happy, and th
    • DoD security grant = either everyone on the project gets a security clearance, or, minimally, no foreign workers (H1B et al) on the project. Google might have a hard time with either one of those qualifications.
    • Of course it does sound like a waste of money -- you obviously have not been properly re-programmed yet. The judge will likely sentence you to another 40 hours worth of taxpayer supported regime generated television propaganda, under the auspices of the US Patriot Act (I & II).

      Does it strike no one else here on slashdot as peculiar beyond the pale that so much effort and money is being expended on spying on the American public, in lou of sealing our borders against terrorist infiltrators, inspecting a
  • Since the fear is that somehow people are going to be able to put together information that lets them commit terrorist acts there is no reason to let people have any of the equipment that lets them commit terrorist acts. Perhaps the simplest solution is to lobotomize everyone so no one can think.
  • "Intelligence" services were warned about the previous attack on the WTC, but they lacked translators. They were warned about 9/11, but they couldn't prevent it because they lacked translators.

    They obviously need a search engine to solve this problem.
  • I was looking at Nuclear Regulatory Commission incident reports [nrc.gov] today, when suddenly a pop-up appeared saying "You have been randomly selected to participate in a survey" to obtain information about their users.

    Never saw that before on a Government site. Anyone else seeing this? It seems to appear infrequently.

  • First discoveries are on Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fortran IV ( 737299 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @08:16PM (#12525886) Journal
    Combining "bits and pieces" from this posting and the preceding five (some slight allowance for tense and common words must be made), I find the following alarming statements:

    the Internet community / [is] publishing / anonymous / suggestions for / terrorism / [in] article[s] running on Yahoo News / AOL, MSN, and Earthlink

    rumored / revelation that / three recent / occurrences / (touches / 30,000 people / collectively) / will change the landscape / forever

    'hidden' information / [has] doubled / success in this endeavor / - "nearly everyone will go" / - about 10% of IBM's staff / is already / infected

    pro-freedom / dissidents / are looking for ways / to take down an airliner / for nothing

    commercialized / products/procedures/systems / [and] hardware / too risky / [at] exaggerated prices / as high as $950

    bits and pieces / at an unidentified / 'banned' sites / can be puzzled together / to improve / technique

    an unidentifed / spokeswoman for the / FAA / points out that / [their] staff / [has] commitment to / more mundane matters

     So Slashdot is advising the Internet terrorist community where to look for information on biological warfare and anti-aircraft weapons.

    Yipe!
  • I assume that once they 'piece together' these bad things, they go out and shut down the sites where the 'pieces' are, in the name of 'safety' ?
  • ...searching for potential terrorist secrets:

    I feel it's my duty as a true American to give the Feds a tip on a concept that's widely dispersed in various places throughout the internets. This secret tehnology has been placed in everything from chocolate chip recipes to plumbing manuals, but if put in the wrong hands and used in combination with a few other technologies, it could be use to take down a jet airliner. In fact, it even appears to have been use in an indirect way during the 9/11 incident.

    Her
  • I think google already does an excellent job of finding that information.

  • Truth is (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MerlinTheWizard ( 824941 )
    as of late, any endeavor related to anti-terrorism and that looks remotely "intelligent" has a good chance of getting funded by the US government. I think that's as simple as that. Also, you wouldn't believe how many "anti-terrorism" devices and concepts have been granted a US patent the last 4 years.
  • This technology has "false positive" written all over it. It'll just tie up our existing system by having agents investigate and track down innocent people.
  • Buffalo, NY was involved in a terrorist plan.

    And now the gov't is working with the University of Buffalo against terror. Ironic. Do those background checks throughly, Uncle Sam!

    More info on Buffalo and terrorism here:
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=buffalo+terr o rist&btnG=Google+Search [google.com]

    We don't have the anti-terror search engine yet, but Google turns up a lot.

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