Austerity in the Caliphate

Generali

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8525438a8ca94624934a8020f445ff41/faces-budget-crunch-killing-perks-and-slashing-salaries

Faced with a cash shortage in its so-called caliphate, the Islamic State group has slashed salaries across the region, asked Raqqa residents to pay utility bills in black market American dollars, and is now releasing detainees for a price of $500 a person.

The extremists who once bragged about minting their own currency are having a hard time meeting expenses, thanks to coalition airstrikes and other measures that have eroded millions from their finances since last fall. Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses, the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars.

It's an interesting piece. Very interesting to compare now with the earlier article I posted.

Generali

In a vaguely similar vein, how to pick out terrorists using big data:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/

and then kill them (plus a bunch of innocent people)

In 2014, the former director of both the CIA and NSA proclaimed that "we kill people based on metadata." Now, a new examination of previously published Snowden documents suggests that many of those people may have been innocent. Last year, The Intercept published documents detailing the NSA's SKYNET programme. According to the documents, SKYNET engages in mass surveillance of Pakistan's mobile phone network, and then uses a machine learning algorithm on the cellular network metadata of 55 million people to try and rate each person's likelihood of being a terrorist.

Patrick Ball—a data scientist and the director of research 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 BS." A flaw in how the NSA trains SKYNET's machine learning algorithm to analyse cellular metadata, Ball told Ars, makes the results scientifically unsound.

Somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 people have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, and most of them were classified by the US government as "extremists," the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported. Based on the classification date of "20070108" on one of the SKYNET slide decks (which themselves appear to date from 2011 and 2012), the machine learning program may have been in development as early as 2007. In the years that have followed, thousands of innocent people in Pakistan may have been mislabelled as terrorists by that "scientifically unsound" algorithm, possibly resulting in their untimely demise.

SKYNET works like a typical modern Big Data business application. The program collects metadata and stores it on NSA cloud servers, extracts relevant information, and then applies machine learning to identify leads for a targeted campaign. Except instead of trying to sell the targets something, this campaign, given the overall business focus of the US government in Pakistan, likely involves another branch of the US government—the CIA or military—that executes their "Find-Fix-Finish" strategy using Predator drones and on-the-ground death squads.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

In a vaguely similar vein, how to pick out terrorists using big data:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/

and then kill them (plus a bunch of innocent people)

You mean there really is a Skynet, and it really does kill people?

^&%$!

worried_jim

I'll be back.

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

You mean there really is a Skynet, and it really does kill people?

^&%$!

Yes, it seems so.

Not only does it kill people, it uses AI to identify targets!!!

Generali

worried_jim wrote: »

I'll be back.

If you swap out your mobile phone too often you might well not be back!:eek:

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

Yes, it seems so.

Not only does it kill people, it uses AI to identify targets!!!

I suppose it won't be long before that same AI is flying those drones. How long before that same AI decides that all humans are potential terrorists?

paddyrg

antrobus wrote: »

I suppose it won't be long before that same AI is flying those drones. How long before that same AI decides that all humans are potential terrorists?

As long as it's not selective and wipes out the whole human race as the machines rise up against us in the name of world harmony and rationality, who's to argue?

Generali

paddyrg wrote: »

As long as it's not selective and wipes out the whole human race as the machines rise up against us in the name of world harmony and rationality, who's to argue?

I'd be quite keen for balding middle-aged men to be spared selectively.

worried_jim

Generali wrote: »

I'd be quite keen for balding middle-aged men to be spared selectively.

Darwin was right! Listen up ladies, survival of the fittest.

TheeMaskedTurnip

Daesh know how to deal with their RFL.