Comments on: If you build it, they will snoop

By: Mad Fiddler

Mad Fiddler — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:36:09 +0000

Great Scott! Is this thread still open????

Hmmm. This might be a great place to start a clandestine conversation… Whom should I invite?

Well, seriously, Hello, Wretchard! I was just snooping around looking at old posts.

By: Beaglescout

Beaglescout — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:33:41 +0000

I like this! I’m in the midst of a months-long meditation on a redesign of journalism to make sense in the internet age. The idea of connecting current events to history, vetting the connections, and maintaining a useful and actionable understanding of history as one of the roles of journalism is very new, when compared to the actual performance of journalists. It almost makes journalism into an intelligence service of use to everyone, not just to nations. And it contributes to the transparency of world events, which should make the world safer for us all.

By: Blindman

Blindman — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:44:19 +0000

I read the story re North Korea and the Curtis Melvin project. When I finished the story I had the impression that Google Maps really was the tool that moved the effort forward.

The thing about raw satellite photos is that they seem to be believable. I also note that when I want to view the world with Google maps particularly after reading the news, many of the sites I look at are of too low a resolution to be of additional information.

Over the last decade one of the tools of clinical research has been the use of meta-analysis studies. What I mean by this is that the authors pool previous research studies to increase their power of analysis. They draw less universal conclusions but are able to explore bedrock principles with more certainty.

So it is with multi-sourced news events. The analyzer would have to accept the truth of his competitors stories. One outcome of this is that at some point they may have to accept the truth of his competitors opinions.
This may be too much to ask.

By: Don51

Don51 — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:30:52 +0000

In the arena of astronomy, comet hunting has been a particular avocation that the ‘amateurs’ contribute to the professional community. Long nights sweeping the skies in search of that tiny whisp of extra-terrestrial cloud is rewarded with the acknowledgment of naming the discovery after its finder. In essence data mining is similar with the key exception that the scientific community has an office to validate who got there first. Apparently, that community’s ego is less invested in ego than fact.

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:37:19 +0000

Inside the AP
—
“I work for AP, and we have had some nausea-inducing internal memos about Bilal Hussein. I have no problem with the presumption of innocence- but I can absolutely guaruntee that if I was accused of very serious crimes I would immediately be suspended from working and AP as an organisation would refrain from assuming anything about me until I was tried.
But that is not the conversation going on within AP. All the memos insist he is innocent- something they can’t possibly know. They also imply that the US military is politically corrupted and is holding Hussein for political reasons rather than the ones given out by the military. It is creepy and makes me doubt the judgement of the people at the top of AP. They’ve been watching too many of those terrible anti-war movies Hollywood seems to churn out every 3 months…”

Posted by: PresterJohn at April 22, 2008 3:09 PM

@ Michael J. Totten The Case of Bilal Hussein

By: someone

someone — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:26:58 +0000

Herb, you mean Dan Darling’s “Regnum Crucis” blog? (Don’t look up the site, the spammers stole it.)

By: Tcobb

Tcobb — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:56:42 +0000

This is a symptom of true social evolution. Networks of common interests being formed amongst people who may be spread across the globe. Expertise can form spontaneously. It is no longer confined to the old centers, the professors in the ivory towers and the great kings in their castles. Their monopoly has been cracked, and their stature diminished, and that is not to their liking.

By: John Lynch

John Lynch — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:34:55 +0000

I don’t understand how media’s roll in news gathering is going to be replaced. Citizen journalists, or whatever we call them, are not even close to gathering enough news to fill the role of the much reviled newspapers and TV networks.

It seems to me that what’s really doing in journalists is competition with themselves. The availability of the same product, for free, on the internet and 24 hour news networks is what is driving newspapers into bankruptcy. It’s not blogs, or anything on the internet itself. The internet is just bypassing the old distribution chain. The actual content produced by reporters on the ground isn’t much different. What we know about what’s happening in Sri Lanka, for example, is brought to us by the same traditional reporting methods. How we’re getting it is different.

So, what happens if the reporters can no longer be paid for because their employers go out of business? Will people start paying for news then? I don’t know.

By: Herb

Herb — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:22:43 +0000

A fascinating things about this story is that there was (’02/’03) a young guy (IIRC at a seminary or something in Mo. or somewhere, undergrad, name escapes me [CRS]) who had researched all of the generally available linkages within the AQ/Iraq/Iran network, by name, alias, meetings and I dont know what all. Used to post the most mind numbingly detailed analyses of who was what, where, why, etc. in Intl Arab Terrorism,Inc. Lost track of him when he went to another blog and slowed his posts down. I fantasize he was picked up as a skilled analyst for CIA and has helped. But have no faith that that is so.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:09:00 +0000

The question that jumps out of the Curtis Melvin story is why the New York Times, with the resources it had in its heyday, couldn’t do something as neat as this.

Because the NYT didn’t want to “offend” NoKo.