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RE: Tauchain: The Automated Webslueth? The Sherlock Holmes Bot concept for discussion
The tool can be used to any function, that's true.
But terrorism is usually used as an excuse to justify government surveillance and is really an insignificant threat to the average citizen (toddler with arms accidents account for more deaths than terrorism).
Terrorism is not a random act of madness, it has a vengeance component. You don't simply invade foreign countries, bomb them and then expect nobody to hate you.
So if the Tau is smart enough to investigate a terrorist act to the full extent then it would be able to pinpoint the very act of violence that caused a person to become a terrorist in first place, which may boil down to an order to invade a country.
I totally understand how you feel about government surveillance. Personally I don't like it either. Unfortunately the surveillance is here, it's not going to go away, so if we are going to be under surveillance why not use it for saving lives and protecting people?
If we are under all this surveillance why are terrorists still able to take many lives with so much ease? The reason is more surveillance simply means more sensors which means more data collection, but without the ability to process the data it is of no immediate value to have the data collected. The other issue with surveillance is data leakage, whether it be by hackers who break into databases or inside jobs, the data collected for the function of anti-terrorism should not be leaked in my opinion because that data is not owned by the public and is sensitive or perhaps even classified.
Better technology might be able to guarantee via cryptography and hardware that the data collected cannot be leaked and cannot be used for any other purpose than the purpose it was originally collected for. In other words, the code aligned perfectly with the law, and the processing of the data according to the permissions on the bits.
People become terrorists for many reasons. I don't think Tauchain will necessarily be able to pinpoint the reason. I do think Tauchain would be able to allow law enforcement to more efficiently and effectively direct their very limited resources.
It helps no one if law enforcement and governments spend lots of time putting you and me under intense surveillance wasting many thousands of dollars while the actual terrorists fall through the cracks. Technology which could help reduce the risk that innocent people would be harassed by law enforcement or the government in my opinion is good.
You mention terrorism has a vengeance component? But the terrorists don't always direct their attacks at military units. Terrorists often attack civilians (not troops). It's one thing if you were to say the terrorists attacking troops are doing it because of warfare and I could believe that. That is counter-insurgency but it's not the only kind of terrorism and not the kind which puts civilians under the most threat.
Civilians are under threat when terrorists (often domestic) attack civilian targets such as mosques, churches, schools, or other so called "soft targets".
Even if some people can agree with some of these terrorists politically and think it's revenge or "justice", it's still illegal, it's still murder. In my opinion we do not have the authority to take justice into our own hands for political ideology, religious ideology. The people who think it is somehow justice are merely creating a sense of injustice in other people who may have had nothing to do with any of it.