Techdirt. Stories filed under "screening"

How Much Would It Cost To Pre-Screen YouTube Videos? About $37 Billion Per Year...

Glyn Moody — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:00:45 PDT

Last week we reported that videos were currently being uploaded to YouTube at the rate of 72 hours every minute, and asked how anybody could expect Google to pre-screen such a deluge. Techdirt Insider xenomancer has gone a little further by working out how much it would cost to screen that material for potential copyright infringement, doubtless something the media industries would love to see imposed.

Most of the calculation is straightforward, but there's one key variable: the kind of person who will do the screening. You can't just use random people off the street, or starving artists, or bored software engineers, because the crucial question they must answer is: does too much of this video infringe on somebody's copyright? Only one class of person is qualified to answer that, and hence to take on this job: judges. Or, more specifically: horribly underpaid judges who happen to be extremely efficient at determining the copyright status of each video they watch and choose, of the little free will they have, to consider all video uploaded.
Using the fact that the average pay for a judge in Silicon Valley is apparently $177,454, and that based on the volume of uploads and number of hours in a working day, a mere 199,584 judges would be required as screeners, this gives us the final figure for the cost of checking properly those 72 hours per minute: $36,829,468,840 per year.
Interestingly, Google's revenue for 2011 was $37,905,000,000.

Absurd as this calculation may be, it does reveal the key problem with unthinking calls for YouTube videos to be pre-screened for possible infringement: only suitably-qualified individuals can do that, and eventually you run out of them. In other words, attempts to police rigorously online materials are doomed to fail by the nature of the copyright system itself. Basically, copyright does not scale.

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YouTube Uploads Hit 72 Hours A Minute: How Can That Ever Be Pre-Screened For 'Objectionable' Material?

Glyn Moody — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:24:00 PDT

YouTube has announced that 72 hours of video is now being uploaded to its service every minute. Earlier this year, the statistic was that 60 hours of video was uploaded to its service every minute:

In 2007 we started at six hours [of uploads per minute], then in 2010 we were at 24 hours, then 35, then 48, and now...60 hours of video every minute, an increase of more than 25 percent in the last eight months.

This year, a 25% increase will probably take around around six months. In other words, the rate at which uploads occur is accelerating. Presumably at some point things will level off, but there's no sign of that yet, and it's not hard to see YouTube video uploads hitting 120 hours a minute or more.

Now consider the calls from some governments that Google and others pre-screen user-generated material. Just how do they think anyone can do that when every second there's one or more hours of new material flooding in? The challenge is particularly acute for video, which does not lend itself to automatic screening, unlike text, say. Such machine-based approaches are still extremely rough, and will either let through material governments want censored, or else err massively in the other direction, blocking all kinds of harmless footage.

As Google's latest figures for YouTube demonstrate, the mismatch between what governments want and what is possible is only going to get worse, thanks to Moore's Law and its analogs for storage and bandwidth. It's not clear how this is going to be resolved, but with more and more politicians calling for "something to be done", the chances of a good outcome based on rational policy making don't look good.

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TSA May Announce New Behavior Screening Plans Soon

Mike Masnick — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:31:51 PDT

Apparently the TSA is planning to roll out some changes to its screening process in the coming months, including embracing at least some of the "Israeli method" of airplane security, which tends to focus much more on behavior, rather than what you have on you.

"I'm very much interested in expanding the behavior detection program, upgrading it if you will, in a way that allows us to….have more interaction with a passsenger just from a discussion which may be able to expedite the physical screening aspects," [TSA boss John] Pistole said during an appearance at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "So, we've looked at what works around the world, some outstanding examples and we are planning to do some new things in the near future here."

Pistole declined to elaborate on the enhanced behavior detection program but said it would "probably" be announced in August. During an on-stage interview with CNN's Jeanne Meserve, Pistole acknowledged that the Israeli techniques have been carefully examined.

"There's a lot--under that Israeli model--a lot that is done that is obviously very effective," he said.

Of course, the devil is always in the details, but it would be nice if the security practices were more focused on stuff that actually works, rather than pure security theater. Pistole also appears to have reiterated earlier comments about how the TSA may change its procedures so that little kids don't need to be groped so much, saying that it would have parents "more involved in the process of helping TSA personnel figure out why a child is setting off alarms."

Tough luck for the elderly, however, since apparently many of the people on the terrorist watch list are old, so you still need to get groped. Seems like a logical fallacy of course. Just because many terrorists are old, that doesn't mean many old people are terrorists. A bit strange that the TSA doesn't seem to recognize this.

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Lazy TSA Agents Let Thousands Of Bags Through Unscreened (But They Gotta See Us Naked)

Mike Masnick — Mon, 7 Mar 2011 04:37:58 PST

While the TSA and the US government continue to insist that it's absolutely necessary to see passengers naked before they can get on a plane, it appears that not everyone in the TSA is so committed to such thorough searches. Apparently, the feds are investigating a group of 27 TSA agents in Hawaii who apparently just skipped over the part of their jobs where they were supposed to screen luggage. Instead, they just tagged the luggage, saying it was screened and let it go on planes.

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New TSA Report: Every Test Gun, Bomb Part Or Knife Got Past Screeners At Some Airport

Mike Masnick — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:33:00 PST

While the TSA is still fighting as hard as possible to be able to either see you naked or touch your private parts, apparently it hasn't spent that much time actually figuring out how to look for people carrying weapons onto planes. A few folks have sent in this ABC story about a man who boarded a plane with a loaded handgun that had been in his carry-on bag. The guy noted that he normally carries the gun in his bag, but takes it out before traveling -- he just forgot to do so and was pretty spooked when he realized he had the gun on him (he reported the incident to the TSA upon landing).

But even more scary than that is the article notes that the TSA admits that it's really bad at finding weapons, saying that the "failure rate" of tests is reaching 70% at some major airports and at some airports "every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners." So, while scanners are looking at or touching your crotch, they're apparently not bothering to look for guns. Comforting.

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