Ah, but someone made a bundle of money, got to become super rich, have a lotsa toys, and own scenic acres of land with huge gated mansions and a swimming pool.

Only to get cancer and have to sell everything because the insurance company decided to screw you with litigation and better lawyers than you can afford.

Because there are a lot of false positives. They make mistakes.

For example, when a computer programmer named David Mery entered a tube station wearing a jacket in warm weather, an algorithm monitoring the CCTV brought him to the attention of a human operator as someone suspicious. When Mery let a train go by without boarding, the operator decided it was alarming behaviour. The police arrested him, searched him, asked him to explain every scrap of paper in his flat. A doodle consisting of random scribbles was characterised as a map of the tube station. Though he was never convicted of a crime, Mery is still on file as a potential terrorist eight years later, and can't get a visa to travel abroad. Once a computer ascribes suspiciousness to someone, everything else in that person's life becomes sinister and inexplicable.

[SOURCE: Cory Doctorow | guardian.co.uk |14 June 2013 ]

How many David Mery's are out there? How many innocent people do we improperly tag? How effective is this procedure? What is the ratio of intercepted events to non-intercepted events? How insulated is this from potential abuse?

There's a short video with examples of false positives that have life changing repercussions. Click here to see the short video

I do a lesson with my statistics students involving a test that is inaccurate ONLY one percent of the time for a rare disease. Because the disease is rare however, the one percent error rate of the huge number of non-diseased people will produce a large amount of false positives.

Say a test has a 1 percent error rate for a disease that occurs in 0.1 percent of the population. This means that out of 1,000 people, 1 person has the disease but one percent (the error rate) of the 999 who don't will get a positive test result nonetheless, which is 9.99 or 10 people. One percent of the diseased 1 person out of 1,000 will also get a negative test result because of the error rate, so only 0.99 of the 1 gets a positive (1 minus .01 times 1) test result. Adding the 9.99 false positives to the 0.99 true positives and you get the total number of positive test results, 10.98 out of 1,000. Notice that 9.99 out of 10.98 positive results is the percentage of false positives.

90 percent of the positive results are false.

Even if the error rate was 0.1% (99.9 percent accurate) the false positives would still be 50%. You can't rely on data mining to find suspects. You have to use search warrants after the proper police work, which is how almost every single terrorist was ever found or initially identified. Data mining isn't useful for finding terrorists.

But the number one problem with the data mining aspect of the Surveillance programs is too many false positives. How many lives will be ruined while we believe the illusion of security?

You have to respect the knowledge that Glenn Greenwald has. He gives this essentially impromptu speech and pulls out quotes off the top of his head. You can also tell that he is someone who is truly strong in his convictions by the elaborate and honest reasoning he gives.

Of course, I'm sure he's not a saint, but if there is any dirt on this man, it will be out there for them to find and broadcast loudly everywhere.

I suspect there isn't any, because Glenn has been good with civil liberties and the 4th amendment for more than a decade. He is reliable where others (I'm looking at you Josh Marshall and Dianne Feinstein) have shown themselves fickle and inconsistent on these matters.

Hattip to bartcop

And then what if one of Fox Corporations corporately owned entities uses a government NSA contractor to develop a list of ... hmmm.

How come these lists show up at inopportune times throughout our nations history?

Where have I been? Paramore is really good.

And here's a live performance



Hayley Williams has such an incredible, versatile, beautiful voice. She could sing to anything. I'm absolutely stricken with love at first sound. God bless this child. She really has an intrinsic sense at so many levels in so many ways.

I like Chris Hayes. He's sincere and he really cares about getting different opinions. He really wants to know how other people think about specifics and different situations. He's also really smart.

No I don't have a man-crush.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I just took a personality test, that asked 40 questions and then put you on 5 different scales (or axes).

Here's what it said about my axis of "Abstract to Concrete" :

You are intellectually curious, imaginative, and literary. I do believe the technical term is "artsy fartsy." When reading poetry, the images may move you until you quiver with delight, or perhaps quivering from all of the espresso that you've been drinking. Speaking of caffeine, it would not be a big surprise if you indulged in other substances to heighten your senses. After all, whoever heard of creative geniuses who were sober? Freud was a coke-head, Hemingway was a fall-down drunk, and Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil, probably while high on wacky tabacky. You have quite the active fantasy life and are often in la la land, earning you the well-deserved nickname "space cadet" from your loved ones. Mostly, you're a lot of fun to hang out with because you're always game for whatever idea your non-medicated (but should be) friend has in mind. The next time someone suggests that you streak naked in the dead of winter, do think twice, or at least wear some mittens.

And here's my Cooperative to Competitive Axis:

You are such a nice person that people often wonder if there's something darker lurking beneath the surface. Your Eddie Haskell, "Gee, you look really nice today, Mrs. Cleaver" behavior may make some people wonder what it is that you're really after, but then they realize that you're the real deal and they plot to take advantage of your kindness. After all, you also tend to believe that most people are trustworthy and honest so you would fall for just about any ruse. I'll warn you now, don't give away any of your savings to phone psychics or in-laws with big plans to strike it rich. Your tenderness makes you a big sucker for anything that might tug at your heart strings. It would not be surprising if you've sent money off to Ethiopia to save the starving children or at the very least, donated to your local homeless person down the street. In short, you're a sweet, kind person and you should never change.

And here's the Neurotic to Unemotional Axis:

Some people consistently react emotionally to their environment and freak out over little things. You, my friend, are not among those people - at least not usually. Worrying and stressing are not your typical style. Even faced with absurd circumstances, you are calm and may pride yourself in your ability to use logic and reason. As a consequence of your Dalai Lama-like persona, you seldom experience the highs and lows of more emotionally reactive folks. Rather, your moods could be graphed like the flat-line of an ER patient. That analogy may seem grim, but *really*, who is more placid than the person who ceases to be? Anyhoo, if you're annoyed with my analogy right now, it's probably because you only scored medium high in the emotional stability trait and have some tendencies to be easily disturbed and offended.

And the Casual to Disciplined Axis:

Conscientiousness is not one of your defining traits, meaning that you are neither anal retentive nor anal expulsive. What does that mean? In a nutshell, you keep it together fairly well, but you do not suffer too much if you let things fall through the cracks every once in a while. If you make plans with a friend, chances are good that you will show up at the designated time. Then again, something better may come up or you just might forget. Either way, you're good. Another possibility is that you are very conscientious about some things, but more relaxed about other things. For example, you might demand the utmost rigor and discipline in your scholarly/work life, but keep your home looking like a garage sale gone terribly awry, with various articles of clothing and personal belonging strewn about. Where's Fido? Hopefully he hasn't been eaten by the alien life that has developed since the last cleaning.

If you want to do this yourself, it's at a site called youjustgetme.com

The thing about these tests, as with all tests absent the addition of human interaction, is that they are prone to projection errors. People will respond based upon how they believe about themselves, so you have to be careful with how you mix the questions, and be clever about using the differences between pairs of questions to mitigate the projection effect.

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UPDATE : 15 June 2013
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I took the test again this morning, just to see if there would be any variability. Everything was exactly the same except a slight difference in the "extroverted to introverted" axis and the "cooperative to competitive" axis.

About that "Cooperative" bubble... Your scores would suggest that you tend to be more agreeable than you are competitive. What does that mean? For starters, it means that you have a fairly strong tendency to believe in social harmony and cooperation. You are a nice person. You want people to get along and do the right thing - for each other, for the greater humanity. That's not to say that you are a total pushover, but that you believe in the niceties of life. This is probably why you are very popular with people and have many friends. The difference between you and someone who is very high in agreeableness is that you have a bit of an edge. Maybe you laugh when people fall down and hurt themselves, maybe you secretly occasionally think people suck. Whatever it is that's holding you back from winning Ms. or Mr. Congeniality, that's also what makes you more interesting.

About that "Extraverted" bubble... I have a friend who can strike up a conversation with anyone: Nobel Peace prize nominees and winners, muppets, sanitation workers, perfect strangers, my crazy uncle Harry. My friend is a bona-fide extravert. Your scores indicate that while you tend to be extraverted, you also have some degree of reserve. Perhaps in some situations, you prefer to say less or maybe you have duct tape over your mouth. Either way, you may save your high energy for the situations when you have a need or desire to be "on" and your quiet moments for those with whom you feel most comfortable.

I think the second time I took the test is more accurate, but I'm amazed at the authenticity of this personality test.

I wonder what personality would result from answering the questions at the extreme? Hmm.

Did you hear the story about how the Chechnyan operatives who were coaxed by their commanders into showing up at a marathon where they got blamed for explosives?

Yes, it's probably just another conspiracy theory. But what about Lee Harvey Oswald? Oswald goes to Russia working with CIA posing as a socialist, then returns to the United States and poses as a Free Cuban Socialist on the streets of New Orleans. Next thing you know he is in the Library of downtown Dallas and you know the rest of the story.