News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on A Digital Rumor Should Never Lead to a Police Raid. Parent comment

Re:A Digital Rumor Should Never Lead to a Police Raid by ekianjo on Friday September 23, 2016 @01:52AM (#12562597)
> But the probability that a random person in the relevant demographic is the perpetrator is now 0.001%. The demographic contains 100,000 people and one perpetrator.

That's still a much higher probability than 1/(2 000 000) so I am not sure what is your point there to use numbers.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Digital Rumor Should Never Lead to a Police Raid by rtpg on Friday September 23, 2016 @04:16AM (#12563086)
the point is that it's not a useful indicator for stopping random people.

"Oh, to catch the thief we are going to stop 100000 people" sounds absurd, after all.

Of course you can use the clue to exclude a bunch of people, but were you going to go around arresting random people on the street without this? Of course not, so why do it after.

[ Parent | on HN ]