Secret Service Seeks Sarcasm-Detecting Software for Social Media

It's just amazing that simple common sense is completely null & void in todays society......let alone for the people whom are assigned to protect a "leader" of this country. Of course this makes perfect sense when you cut loose 5 of the most dangerous terrorists in exchange for a traitor, AND at the same time not help out an unjustly incarcerated decorated Marine who's been in a Mexican jail for the past two months........bizarre times we live in.
http://www.cnet.com/news/secret-service-seeks-sarcasm-detecting-software/
 
 
 
Decorated Marine story: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/31/wh-petition-to-free-marine-tahmooressi-from-mexico-prison-get-100k-online/

Seems to me they just want to be able to automate discerning people being sarcastic from people who might be a legitimate threat to the people they are assigned to protect.
 
I don't see the issue.
 
Now if only I had SW to automate detecting people conflating every news story, no matter how irrelevant, with whatever petty political axes they have to grind with people who have an actual point.

drewfx1
 
Now if only I had SW to automate detecting people conflating every news story, no matter how irrelevant, with whatever petty political axes they have to grind with people who have an actual point.

It amazes me how comments on almost every story I see on the web will include personal political opinions stated as "fact". I can't even go to sports sites without reading a bunch of comments about how "[insert hated political figure] is destroying the country followed by a bunch of regurgitated rhetoric from fox(for right-wing nuts)/huffingtonpost(for left-wing nuts).  I have no idea if this guy is a traitor or not. I'm sure if this happened under Bush the right would praise the move and the left would pan the move.  Just the nature of modern American politics.
 
  Considering how much territory there is to cover on the web, I'm sure there is much done via automation and if this helps to weed out some of the false positives, I don't see the big deal either.

We can't even invent anti-virus software that doesn't raise false positives. Human communication is vastly more complex and variable. They'll not only need a sarcasm detector, but also an exaggeration meter, a satire alarm and an exhaustive colloquialism/slang/emoticon/typo translator.
 
For myself, I just prefer to randomly insert one of the monitored phrases on a regular basis. If everybody did that, they'd have to give up in frustration. Wouldn't they?
 
Anthrax
Megadeth
Slayer
 
Ding! Ding! Ding! Alert!

I doubt any one solution will work and it will always come down to good ol' fashioned human legwork.  If software can weed out .5 % of false positives it likely saves tons of hours.  The cynic in me says that random violence is likely only to be caught at a random rate but who knows.

Really?  There's a big surprise...

Linear Phase
Really?  There's a big surprise...

 

 ^I wonder if the beta software caught that?

WAIT... I just realized that you said Secret Service. What? Does that mean the White House? Are they going to open a Torgau for people who dare to criticize the regime?? Couldn't they just read social media? It isn't hard to find sarcasm directed toward the government there. I guess they don't want to look, they just want names and addresses, huh.
Should I keep a bag packed? 

Of course this makes perfect sense when you cut loose 5 of the most dangerous terrorists in exchange for a traitor.
 

the media has certainly branded this guy as a traitor; it might be nice to hear his side of the story before we send him to the gallows.  

 

"In a stunning new development, the Government has decided that false positives are not their fault and have passed new legislation requiring anyone posting sarcasm on the net neutral internet to use [sarcasm][/sarcasm] tags..."