The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people

"Ridiculously optimistic" machine learning algorithm is "completely bullshit," says expert.

By Christian Grothoff & J.M. Porup

Feb 16, 2016

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 SKYNETprogramme. 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.

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