Schneier on Security: Why Data Mining Won’t Stop Terror
A good reference URL to cut-and-paste when “scanning internet traffic for terrorist plots” rears its head:
This unrealistically accurate system will generate 1 billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Every day of every year, the police will have to investigate 27 million potential plots in order to find the one real terrorist plot per month. Raise that false-positive accuracy to an absurd 99.9999 percent and you’re still chasing 2,750 false alarms per day — but that will inevitably raise your false negatives, and you’re going to miss some of those 10 real plots.
Also, Ben Goldacre saying the same thing: http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/datamining-would-be-lovely-if-it-worked/(tags: internet scanning filtering specificity statistics data-mining terrorism law nsa gchq false-positives false-negatives)
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The Prime Minister said today that he would stop the use of methods of communication that cannot be read by the security services even if they have a warrant. He said: “In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which […] we cannot read?” He made the connection between encrypted communications tools and letters and phone conversations, both of which can be read by security services in extreme situations and with a warrant from the home secretary.
Is this key escrow for the UK? 30 Fantastic Irish Beers to try in 2015
this is a great shopping list ;)
Personalization at Spotify using Cassandra
Lots and lots of good detail into the Spotify C* setup (via Bill de hOra)
(tags: via:dehora spotify cassandra replication storage ops)