Why Requiring Social Networks To Monitor Posts To Spot Terrorists Will Make It Even Harder To Catch ThemThe problem here is twofold:
1) First of all it's just ridiculous for social networks to be responsible for this sort of thing. It's just not their proper roll. Citizens should not be forced to be law enforcement agents. That's what totalitarian regimes do. That sort of thing should never be allowed to happen in a country which cherishes freedom.
2) False Positives: For every actual criminal identified, dozens of non-criminals will also be falsely identified as being likely suspects. Although one could argue that this would force individuals to choose their words more carefully, the reality is that it would have a chilling effect on free speech with individuals not participating in the free exchange of ideas out of fear that they might word something in a way that might be misinterpreted by the idiots in charge or the algorithm they use to find suspicious communications.
Data strategist Duncan Ross set out what would happen if someone could create an algorithm that correctly identified a terrorist from their communications 99.9% of the time -- far, far more accurate than any real algorithm - with the assumption that there were 100 terrorists in the UK. The algorithm would correctly identify the 100 terrorists. But it would also misidentify 0.01% of the UK's non-terrorists as terrorists: that’s a further 60,000 people, leaving the authorities with a still-huge problem on their hands.
LINK:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141203/09501829313/why-requiring-social-networks-to-monitor-posts-to-spot-terrorists-will-make-it-even-harder-to-catch-them.shtml