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[Frumple]

They do get a ton of tips, but, to a large extent specifically and as far as I'm aware, investigations into ones that involve potential shooting violence are more or less bloody hobbled. Same bullshit largely neutering the ATF.

Unfortunately, I'd probably wager if they do get loosened restrictions (not that they particularly need any if it doesn't involve firearms or maybe rich people, iirc), it wouldn't be in ways that would help. Mealy-mouthed shits in the GOP won't dig their hand out of the ATF and firearm tracking in general's digestive system, and a decent means to track and correlate purchase and ownership with violence tipoffs is pretty much exactly what is needed to potentially stop the oversight that happened... and exactly what the GOP would rather see hundreds to thousands killed instead of allow to be implemented.

[Jopax]

Thing is, this wasn't just some random comment on YT (because they got a report about it too it seems), it was someone that knew the dude IRL. If you get a call saying that someone is armed and not entirely mentally healthy, as well as making disturbing comments on the topic of murdering people with said guns I fail to see how that doesn't trigger some sort of followup. Surely the number of mass shootings in the US is high enough that the law enforcement agencies would take these things a bit more seriously.

I mean, if you tip them off of a potential terrorist attack my bet is they get on that shit right the fuck away. So how is something that can potentialy claim just as many lives not a priority for investigation then?

[Reelya]

Sure, but if such leads are being buried it's probably because the FBI receives a ton of such leads, and that one didn't especially stand out at the time. It's only after these events that they go "oh yeah ... apparently that's the lead we should have followed up from this huge pile of leads". And I don't think that's generally because the FBI are dumb and us armchair detectives are so clever.

[Jopax]

It's their bloody job to follow up on them, even if it's slowly because they're undermanned for the volume of work. Why the hell is it a standard procedure to follow up if they're not going to be doing that? Close it up if you're not going to use it, otherwise you're just wasting everyones time and giving them false hope that things will be looked into.

[Dorsidwarf]

What sort of warning was it? Cause if it was just "my friend owns a gun and is really unstable" then I don't blame the FBI for not following up on it immediately. That probbably describes a couple hundred thousand people in the state alone

[Gizogin]

Sure, but if such leads are being buried it's probably because the FBI receives a ton of such leads, and that one didn't especially stand out at the time. It's only after these events that they go "oh yeah ... apparently that's the lead we should have followed up from this huge pile of leads". And I don't think that's generally because the FBI are dumb and us armchair detectives are so clever.

I'm definitely with Reelya on this one. It's really easy to say, "Hey, someone told you about this guy, why didn't you do anything about it?" after the fact. But even if the FBI were to take every such report seriously, what could they actually have done with forewarning in this case? You can't arrest someone just for being a creep with access to firearms.

[Starver]

Especially with Trump having now tweeted "Must always report such instances [of 'signs' of danger] to authorities, again and again!". Reporting levels will go up, detection levels will go down if there's not enough capacity to correctly shelve increqsing numbers of false-positives. (And then complaints when a false-positive is hurridly filed away, only to end up being a false-false-positive, and there'll still be instances that creep under everybody's radar, because of a "good ol' boy" who is just a standard 2nd-Amendment fan of guns, right?)

[birdy51]

All it accomplishes is spreading further fear and paranoia, which in turn helps him 'prove' that the evil world is out to get the U.S.

[misko27]

The thing is the FBI did follow up the tip: the comment declared his intention to be a "professional school shooter", and had his real name: but the FBI were unable to trace the commenter or connect them with the real life person.

And yes, the mass of tips the intelligence agencies get is as harmful as it is helpful. Just like how being a professor of physics draws the attention of crackpots, the intelligence services are without-a-doubt submerged in a tide of questionably useful tips (and if its that bad for the FBI, imagine how bad it is for the NSA; its hardly surprising they find so little of use with so much to sift through!). If we use analysis software, people decry the loss of human intelligence overseeing the process and the 1% failures of a 99% effective software; but if we don't use the software, or worse, use such a software and then require a human eye anyway, we're doomed to investigating an endless mass.

[PTTG??]

99% effective software is a really bad metric.

If you didn't do anything, and there's 300 incidents that could concievably be stopped by monitoring everything, then 300 bad things happen.
If you arrest everyone in the USA, than there will be 299,999,700 wrongful arrests.
If you monitor everything and have software that is correct about the target 99% of the time, then you will stop ~297 actual bad things, and you will wrongfully arrest 2,999,997 people, for a total of 3,000,000 bad things.

Clearly, false positives are much worse than false negatives on a statistical level. You need to be 10,000 times better at detecting innocence than you are at detecting guilt, in this example, just to make it so half of the people you arrest are actually guilty. Considering the USA's prison system is so barbaric, it would be much better to have 100,000x or more sensitivity.

[Rolan7]

Such systems aren't meant to make arrests, of course.  Just to reduce the workload by highlighting cases of interest.

There's probably a massive FP rate, but that's relatively okay.  FPs are work for the investigators to clear up.
FNs are theoretically worse, but they only actually matter if the investigators are able to wade through all the positives.

[Hanslanda]

This lack of posts for 12+ hours makes me feel like something awful is going to happen. >.>

[RedKing]

This lack of posts for 12+ hours makes me feel like something awful is going to happen. >.>

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[misko27]

Such systems aren't meant to make arrests, of course.  Just to reduce the workload by highlighting cases of interest.

There's probably a massive FP rate, but that's relatively okay.  FPs are work for the investigators to clear up.
FNs are theoretically worse, but they only actually matter if the investigators are able to wade through all the positives.

That's my point! Thank you.

My whole point isn't that we should rely on 99% effective software (and I'm only using 99% as a statistic I saw on reddit the other day, don't take it seriously), my point is that the alternative is wading through legions of tips by hand, knowing that almost all of those tips are likely false positives (and at a much, much higher rate than 99%). Using a software you can cut down the numbers to something manageable precisely so that the FBI can do a better job of investigating individual tips, knowing that those tips are much more likely to be an actual problem. It's not taking the human element out, or the investigation, or due process, just the part where the FBI spends all of its days chasing ghosts.

(Incidentally, the book "Chasing Ghosts" deals with precisely this topic. One interesting anecdote: The FBI have a paper of every single possible threat to America that the director reads every day and submits to the President every morning. This paper almost never refers to anything that actually is about to happen, but produces in the mind of its readers this vision of a horrible, amorphous, shapeless mass of terror activity ready to strike at any time. They say it keeps the director up at night; who can blame them?)

This lack of posts for 12+ hours makes me feel like something awful is going to happen. >.>

Well let's fix that then.

Trump continues reacting to the Russian indictments in odd ways: now he is denouncing everyone. Well, everyone but Russia In recent tweets, he is on record attacking the FBI, Obama, Rep. Schiff (the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee and noted Trump antagonist), CNN, the DNC, and his own national security adviser Gen. McMaster.

Also, a classic Trump tweet for you all:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Source.

[smjjames]

It's like he thinks the FBI focuses on the Russia investigation to the exclusion of everything else.

You know, given how he is so sensitive about legitimacy and the idea of his election being helped along by Russia than on his own merits, perhaps an argument could be made to him that he should try to help that by stopping foriegn actors from meddling in the elections, that way it would be clean for sure. Maybe that will spur him to action on stopping Russia. Then again, he very well could take it in utterly the wrong direction.

About the only reason that Putin hasn't really been up to mischief (other than what's already happening) is that he has the election coming up next month. After that, then definetly be on the lookout. Putin is eventually going to do something that would require Trump to directly condemn, so, like, what the heck is it that makes him to refuse to attack Russia? Wanting better relations doesn't work as a reason.