Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 19 -- Because of
its proclivity for grinding out legislation at a rapid rate, the Russian Duma
has sometimes been called “the copier” or “the printing press.” But now the Russian
interior ministry is set to introduce the use of a robot to determine which
texts are extremist and which are not.
On the one hand, that may simplify
matters for the authorities by ensuring that there are fewer disputes among
experts over what constitutes extremism and that court decisions, which in
Russia do not constitute precedents, nonetheless will guide new investigations on
the basis of what earlier cases have found.
But on the other, by computerizing
and thus speeding up and making less costly the process of investigating
whether a text is extremist in terms of Russian law, this use of a programmed
robot will undoubtedly lead to more cases and more findings of extremism across
the country.
Yesterday, the interior ministry announced
that it will soon begin making use of a robot named FOB as a way of comparing
new materials suspected of containing extremist texts with texts that have
already been found to be such (ria.ru/society/20161018/1479503249.html and
The FOB robots will be continually
updated as new texts are determined to be extremist and thus “automate” the
process of determining what new publications are extremist and what ones are
not. At least initially, it will be used
in cases where texts are combined with sounds or video clips. Supposedly, experts can continue to handle
texts alone.
The system has been undergoing texts
and has been sent to regional units of law enforcement, but it has not yet been
applied in any major case. That
development, however, can be expected in the near future.
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