Reuters today released an interesting story about Google’s plans to build a probability machine that could detect whether politicians were lying. It’s a great idea, but there are several limitations to a system like this:

1. Google can only index existing records. It would be relatively simple, conceptually, to fact-check a President’s speech or documents like the 9/11 commission report. It would be impossible, however, to detect things like the Republican party’s cover-up of a child-molesting congressman, unless they somehow had all email and chat transcripts available to them. If that happens, then we’ve got bigger problems.

2. In another interesting case of the neural pathways being carved out online, Digg readers responded to this story almost immediately with a discussion of Net Neutrality. Time to break out those mesh networks, kids.

All that said, I think this is a fantastic idea.

In an insight that is probably mind-numbingly obvious to any economist, I just realized how much more efficient a company is, in terms of revenue over headcount, than a nation, even like the United States, is. Take Google, for example. Their 2004 annual revenue was $3.19 billion. They have 5680 employees, according to Yahoo Finance. So Google’s revenue / headcount is $561,619.72. Wow.

The GDP (maybe there is a better metric comparable to GDP?) of the U.S . is $11,750,000,000,000 (I left the zeroes for effect). The population of the US at last count was 295,734,134. Revenue / headcount here is $98.88. Double wow.

The Economist published a story about “negative databases” in their Science section. This article is worth a read for a few reasons. First, it highlights once again, the depth of the relationship between computer science and philosophy. The databases online that contain our most valuable information are nothing more than implementations of set theory, a broad-ranging field that influences mathematics, philosophy, art, and, of course, computer science.

Another reason the article is worth a read is that, without specifically mentioning it, it discusses a relatively new approach to information security known as translucence. I’m reading a book now by Peter Wayner called “Translucent Databases.” Wayner argues that the majority of the world’s databases are not secure because they don’t implement “translucent” practices. Some examples from the book of these practices are encryption (of course - but he recommends more usage of one-way algorithms to encrypt data), minimization (only storing zip codes instead of full addresses when possible), misdirection (add fake data to the db so that only qualified users will recognize what is “real” and what is not), and equivalence (substituting precise values such as measurements for ’small,’ ‘medium,’ and ‘large’). Taking these simple approaches can go a long to way to prevent identity theft, government spying, and data leaks. Jon Udell has written more than once about the need for organizations to take Wayner’s lessons seriously.

Philosophically speaking, it seems that taking the negative of an object results in a set of objects (required to define what the object is not) larger in quantity than the original object or set of objects. The article also alludes this paradox with this bit:

“Dr Esponda gives the example of a negative survey in which respondents are asked to tick the box of one sexually transmitted disease they do not have. He reckons that this would be sufficient to estimate the population frequency of each disease, without having to ask people whether they actually suffer from such diseases—which is intrusive and also invites lying. As he puts it: ‘In Hindu philosophy, to find out who you are, you ask what are you not. Then you are left with what you are.’”

“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush’s anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president’s judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president’s pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. “The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime,” the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.”

Full article at WashingtonPost.com

The “military and foreign policy decisions” that Gonzales is talking about is the legislation passed last week by Congress. The Constitution is an admittedly ragged-looking document these days, but it does indeed give the courts power to judge the constitutionality of a law.

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.