Posted on 06/12/2010 7:01:19 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
A Cornell sociologist is launching a new study to develop methods of identifying covert social networks, including terrorists who are preparing attacks, human traffickers and drug smugglers, among other groups.
Matthew Brashears, assistant professor of sociology, has received a three-year, $797,000 grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for the study that aims to help the U.S. government thwart terrorist attacks.
"We're very excited to have a chance to do this kind of work," said Brashears, who wrote the grant proposal with sociology doctoral candidate Michael Genkin. "It's becoming very difficult in the modern age to interdict decentralized criminal activities. Developing better and more reliable ways to identify terrorist activities ahead of when they carry out an attack is something that everyone would like to see happen."
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, social scientists have received more funding for counter-terrorism research because, Brashears noted, "It's fundamentally a social problem, not in the sense of how do you find terrorists to stop them, but in the context of why does transnational terrorism emerge in the first place? How can we cut off the supply of terrorists, not just find them once they become terrorists?"
To answer these questions, Brashears will begin by examining a data set of teenagers in American high schools "because we have all kinds of network data on them," he said. "We're going to try and detect hidden networks within these high schools under conditions in which we don't have to worry about the subjects trying to hide," he said. After that, Brashears' team will collect data specific to terrorism.
Brashears' goal is to develop techniques to uncover covert social networks that could be used by terrorists, human traffickers or drug smugglers -- "any group of people who have to link up to achieve an objective and don't want to be detected by the wider society," he said.
He continued, "Essentially, we're trying to replace the profiling techniques that are in use now with much better, more reliable methods for detecting terrorist cells that are preparing for a weapons of mass destruction attack. The idea is to pick up indicators that can be detected with passive information collection mechanisms, things that don't require expensive or advanced intelligence capabilities, and use those to tip off intelligence agencies that somebody's planning one of these destructive attacks."
The government and researchers face the needle in a haystack issue: how to track down small numbers of terrorists among millions online.
"The hardest thing to do is to find the first person, and from there it gets comparatively easier," Brashears said. "But methods for finding those first people are not very well developed at this point, and we're hoping to change that."
So, basically, we have the Obama administration and a college professor teaming up to figure out how to infilitrate the internet to find "terrorists"....anyone else think this is going to be used to go after, I dunno, tea partiers, Freepers and anyone else that King Hussein the First finds objectionable?
Are the Cornell sociologists going to explain to us about the muslims who hanged a 7-year-old boy in Pakistan to punish his grandfather? Was this a socially acceptable act for holy muslims? Perhaps a sacrament of Islam? Or was this just culturally motivated and acceptable?
Yes. They will blame Bush, western imperialism and the jews.
I stopped reading at “A Cornell sociologist..”
Seems like an airhead. Interesting that he's getting what looks like a monster-sized grant.
three-year, $797,000
$266,000 a year? Taxpayer’s money wee-weed away big time!
I tell you what, send me $50K and I'll tie up the whole research project up in a big bow. With my vast research tools at my very fingertips, I have just collated all of the past 100yrs. of social networked, demographically connected and theology based terrorist acts, and I have come up with the sole, common denominator.
Heck, keep the $50k, you get the answer for free - it's Islam! Unbelievable you say? I know, I was upset to find that it wasn't Freepers, Tea Partiers, Republicans, military veterans, Christians, Libertarians, or even white dudes. (Knock me over with a feather...)
bookmark
“any group of people who have to link up to achieve an objective and don’t want to be detected by the wider society,” he said.”
Sooo...our freedom of association is now acknowledged by the Federal gov’mt as a terrorist threat?!!!!
800k over 3 years isn’t that much. It pays for 2 people or so, ~60k of salary + benefits + office overhead etc...
Precisely.
Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09
_____________________________________________________
"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:
Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
_____________________________________________________
"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
_____________________________________________________
'Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,' he [Ayers] said."
August 2001, Chicago Magazine (article: No Regrets)
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/
"So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? 'I don’t want to discount the possibility',he said."
New York Times, September 11, 2001:
"No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
_____________________________________________________
Ayers: Obama was 'family friend'
New afterword to 2001 book, Ayers describes Barack Obama as 'family friend'
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1278532,bill-ayers-barack-obama-book-111308.article#
_____________________________________________________
"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English..."
--B.H. Obama
YouTube Video:
The O'Reilly Factor confronts Bill Ayers:
October 24, 2008:
(note the red communist star on his shirt)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP3uvK9gTIY
And I had really hoped to make it through life without having to experience “interesting times”...silly me...
I remember when $800,000 was real money. Guess I’m getting old.
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