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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
During the reception of a piece of information, we are never passive. Depending on its origin and content, from our personal beliefs and convictions, we bestow upon this piece of information, spontaneously or after reflection, a certain amount of confidence. Too much confidence shows a degree of naivety, whereas an absolute lack of it condemns us as being paranoid. These two attitudes are symmetrically detrimental, not only to the proper perception of this information but also to its use. Beyond these two extremes, each person generally adopts an intermediate position when faced with the reception of information, depending on its provenance and credibility. We still need to understand and explain how these judgements are conceived, in what context and to what end.
Spanning the approaches offered by philosophy, military intelligence, algorithmics and information science, this book presents the concepts of information and the confidence placed in it, the methods that militaries, the first to be aware of the need, have or should have adopted, tools to help them, and the prospects that they have opened up. Beyond the military context, the book reveals ways to evaluate information for the good of other fields such as economic intelligence, and, more globally, the informational monitoring by governments and businesses.
Contents
1. Information: Philosophical Analysis and Strategic Applications, Mouhamadou El Hady Ba and Philippe Capet.
2. Epistemic Trust, Gloria Origgi.
3. The Fundamentals of Intelligence, Philippe Lemercier.
4. Information Evaluation in the Military Domain: Doctrines, Practices and Shortcomings, Philippe Capet and Adrien Revault d’Allonnes.
5. Multidimensional Approach to Reliability Evaluation of Information Sources, Frédéric Pichon, Christophe Labreuche, Bertrand Duqueroie and Thomas Delavallade.
6. Uncertainty of an Event and its Markers in Natural Language Processing,
Mouhamadou El Hady Ba, Stéphanie Brizard, Tanneguy Dulong and Bénédicte Goujon.
7. Quantitative Information Evaluation: Modeling and Experimental Evaluation,
Marie-Jeanne Lesot, Frédéric Pichon and Thomas Delavallade.
8. When Reported Information Is Second Hand, Laurence Cholvy.
9. An Architecture for the Evolution of Trust: Definition and Impact of the Necessary Dimensions of Opinion Making, Adrien Revault d’Allonnes.
About the Authors
Philippe Capet is a project manager and research engineer at Ektimo, working mainly on information management and control in military contexts.
Thomas Delavallade is an advanced studies engineer at Thales Communications & Security, working on social media mining in the context of crisis management, cybersecurity and the fight against cybercrime.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 Information: Philosophical Analysis and Strategic Applications
1.1. Introduction
1.2. State of the art in philosophy
1.3. Information warfare
1.4. Conclusion. Comprehending information in order to evaluate it
1.5. Bibliography
Chapter 2 Epistemic Trust
2.1. Introduction
2.2. What is social epistemology?
2.3. History of the discipline
2.4. Social epistemology and externalism
2.5. Realism and constructivism in social epistemology
2.6. Believing other people
2.7. Reductionism and antireductionism
2.8. Trust and communication
2.9. Conclusion
2.10. Bibliography
Chapter 3 The Fundamentals of Intelligence
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Information evaluation in the language of intelligence
3.3. Attempt to formalize generic models appropriate for the new issues facing the intelligence services
3.4. Conclusion
3.5. Bibliography
Chapter 4 Information Evaluation in the Military Domain: Doctrines, Practices and Shortcomings
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Presentation of the existing situation
4.3. Illustrative scenario with multi-sourced information
4.4. From an inaccurate definition to an attractive but unusable concept
4.5. A few suggested refinements to information evaluation techniques
4.6. Conclusion and future prospects
4.7. Bibliography
Chapter 5 Multidimensional Approach to Reliability Evaluation of Information Sources
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Multi-criteria aggregation by the Choquet integral: application to the evaluation of the reliability of sources
5.3. Reliability of sources on Twitter
5.4. Multi-criteria model for the reliability of Twitter accounts
5.5. Conclusion
5.6. Bibliography
Chapter 6 Uncertainty of an Event and its Markers in Natural Language Processing
6.1. Introduction
6.2. State of the art
6.3. Model for representing the uncertainty of an event
6.4. Linguistic resources
6.5. Realization
6.6. Conclusions and perspectives
6.7. Bibliography
Chapter 7 Quantitative Information Evaluation: Modeling and Experimental Evaluation
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Formal framework used: possibility theory
7.3. Proposed architecture
7.4. Experimental study
7.5. Conclusions
7.6. Bibliography
Chapter 8 When Reported Information Is Second Hand
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Domains involved and related works
8.3. A logical model to decide whether reported information is credible
8.4. Taking account of uncertainty. A model for estimating the degree of credibility of a reported piece of information
8.5. Use of the logical model to generate hypotheses about the information sources
8.6. Conclusion
8.7. Supplements
8.8. Bibliography
Chapter 9 An Architecture for the Evolution of Trust: Definition and Impact of the Necessary Dimensions of Opinion Making
9.1. Introduction
9.2. A perspective on trust
9.3. Dimensions of information evaluation
9.4. General evaluation of the source: reliability
9.5. Contextual evaluation of the source: competence
9.6. General content evaluation: plausibility
9.7. Contextual content evaluation: credibility
9.8. Global expression of trust
9.9. Architecture of information evaluation: characteristics
9.10. Architecture of information evaluation: a description
9.11. Personalization of information evaluation: modeling levels of gullibility
9.12. Conclusion
9.13. Bibliography
List of Authors
Index
First published 2014 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
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© ISTE Ltd 2014The rights of Philippe Capet and Thomas Delavallade to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952601
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-84821-659-4
Foreword
One of the distinguishing features of the 21st Century is the extraordinary expansion of information in all its forms. The possibilities that each and every one of us now has at our fingertips for acquiring knowledge and for keeping track of events would, only a few years ago, have been utterly unimaginable. Long gone are the days of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, or of the humanist scholars at the University of Paris, who dazzled their contemporaries with the extent of their erudition. Today, with the help of the Internet and a few good technical practices, any student is capable of throwing up open sources of information which would enable him to adequately respond to nearly all the questions posed to those academic giants of yesteryear.
In France, the awareness of the advantage of having the maximum possible amount of data available in order to make the best possible decision has gradually progressed from the military to other spheres since the publication of the Livre blanc de la défense et de la sécurité nationale (White Paper on Defense and National Security). In numerous domains of activity, the reading of Sun Tzu’s work and the methods and practices of competitive intelligence have revealed that which seemed obvious: mastery of the cycle of selection, acquisition and processing of knowledge useful to a decision-maker provides a defensible – and, above all, long-lasting – competitive advantage. From sporting intelligence to judicial, touristic or cultural intelligence, the provision of information, which has become a reliable fount of knowledge because of processing, opens up untold possibilities in the worldwide competition which has become our daily diet.
Therefore, the notion of information provision, and the way in which it is perceived by the general public, are undergoing major alterations, acquiring positive connotations and breaking out of the “ghetto” to which they have hitherto been confined by our cultural history and certain ideologies. However, this proliferation, which means all now have easy access to information which had previously been the preserve of a select few, carries with it a major risk: some of the information circulating around our various networks is false, incomplete or biased. Furthermore, certain players now have no hesitation in circulating untrue information, to give their side the upper hand in operations of influence, exploiting the faults in our system to their own advantage. For this reason, certain experts estimate that 20% of all information available is incorrect, be it deliberately or unwittingly.
It is undeniable that the mass presence of media in today’s world has changed the role of journalists and other information providers. Forced to move fast so as not to be overtaken by his competitors in the publication of the scoop or comment, a journalist no longer has the time to check the reality of the information. He trusts the press agency which provided the initial information, which he supplements with a comment, which will then be added to with other successive comments. All together, these nuggets of information form a highly structured and very interesting multi-faceted whole, the only problem with which will be the lack of trustworthiness of the reality of the initial information. If that information is incorrect, the house of cards collapses. In this case, we have to wait for the completion of the lengthy tasks of investigative journalists, researchers, university students or judges before a clear idea of the initial reality comes to light.
That which has become acceptable in terms of communication, sometimes stemming from misleading of the consumer, is not only unethical; it is unusable for a professional when decisions need to be based on that information for warfare, international politics or business strategy. At that stage, the information needs to be crosschecked and verified, which takes time. Beyond identification of the sources, evaluation of those sources and traditional techniques for valuation drawn from military experience, a multi-dimensional approach is needed for the evaluation of the reliability of those sources. We need to integrate the level of uncertainty of the events into our thought process, and practice creative doubt in order to deal with the changes in level of trust or mistrust.
These procedures, which are necessary – if not absolutely imperative – cause a delay before transmission and diffusion, which puts professional intelligence collection at a disadvantage. Its credibility suffers because of the rapidity of diffusion of the media, whose influencing capacity will often lead a politician or CEO of a company to form a false idea. This may also lead the professional, when faced with the obligation to react quickly, to base his reasoning on erroneous or unconfirmed information. In a world which is constantly reducing reflection time in the interests of immediacy and direct action, analysts therefore have to develop procedures and find tools to help reduce his intervention time without renouncing his fundamental integrity.
Today, in addition to Clausewitz’s factors of political and military conflict, economic conflict is a never-ceasing reality in the worldwide competition between the different poles which will structure the world of tomorrow. Faced with this ever more real situation, we are becoming aware of the importance of evaluating information. That is where the merit of this book lies – a book written by recognized experts which forces us to take note of the advantages, constraints and techniques relating to information evaluation. It is time to integrate into all of our organizations and services charged with reflection and preparation of the decision of those in power the requirement that the reliability of the information used be verified.
It is important to remember that information is forged from raw facts, which are untreated and therefore objective data. On the basis of these true or false data, the information is constructed which will circulate between interested parties. Yet it must not be forgotten, in view of the conditions and actions mentioned above, that that information needs to be crosschecked with other information, and it will be necessary to evaluate it in order to draw from it an affirmation, i.e. a credible, identified and evaluated piece of information which can then be used in our reasoning and our strategic and tactical constructs. To remain at the level of the raw information, against the advice of the fervent partisans of total transparency, opens us up to a multitude of errors, whose consequences may sometimes be disproportionately far-reaching.
For reasons probably relating to the individualism and Cartesianism of its citizens, France suffers from a lack of culture of information control, which means that the French are insufficiently inclined to doubt the information given to them. Trusting in their own intellectual capacity, they favor reasoning over information seeking. They have a tendency to take any information given to them as gospel, so long as it is consistent, logical or, worse still, if it supports their philosophical and political convictions. The recent examples of the Arab Spring and the dreadful errors in interpretation to which it gave rise serve as an unfortunate reminder of this.
This is the major difference between French culture and that of the English-speaking world, which includes a high degree of caution, constructed over centuries of practice, and a realism far removed from any sensitivity. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Americans, for instance, work on the different facets of the profession of an analyst to orientate, search for, select and then evaluate the pieces of information that are useful for a decision-maker’s thought process. It is interesting to note that in Britain and in the United States, analytical works are very popular, whereas in France, the emphasis is placed on vigilance, playing down the importance of using perspective to define the boundaries of the search, and disregarding evaluation of the pieces of information to filter them by their value and their usefulness.
In the face of the burgeoning torrent of information, the problem is no longer one of finding information, but rather one of being selective about the information we use from the veritable ocean of data at our fingertips. We need to trust in the expertise of an analyst to break down this barrier by zeroing in on what is essential. A far cry from simple deduction, which usually involves extrapolation of the past, the task of an analyst is to use other logical forces based on a process of induction/deduction, broadening the field and the possibilities available to him. Drawing upon a perfect knowledge of the basic dossier created over time and constantly updated, an analyst is capable of interpreting weak signals and detecting changes and trends which facilitate the effective practice of anticipation. At this stage, cognitive software which mimics the behavior of the human brain, and the potential of cyberspace – of which we have only begun to scratch the surface – are extremely promising for the coming years.
The quality of the information selected is dependent on the perfect definition of the context for the search. The efficacy of the evaluation of that information is crucially important for the trust of the people that use it. The speed of transmission is often a determining factor in the successful construction and implementation of a winning strategy. All of this is founded on effective teamwork both in terms of the gathering of information and in terms of its exploitation and use. An analyst will be well aware of this, because his success depends on the availability of good information, the use of effective tools and above all, exchanges and confrontations with other analysts so as to prevent errors caused by his unique thought process and his inability to make a creative breakthrough.
In a world which is increasingly dominated by machines intended to replace human beings by working more quickly and more cheaply, it is comforting to see that in the field of intelligence, the analyst is still irreplaceable. Regardless of the qualities of the tools used, the analyst remains the keystone in the evaluation of the information, without which no serious work can be done. The strength of this book is that it brings that fact home to us, using a methodical and in-depth approach, making it impossible not to become aware of it.
Alain JUILLET
Former Senior Director of Competitive IntelligenceOrrick Rambaud MartelDecember 2013
Introduction
I.1. An information society?
The “information society” to which we all now supposedly belong immerses us – or submerges us – in a constant and historically-unprecedented torrent of informational data, whose origins and topics are so different that they become incomprehensible, or at least impossible to organize, memorize, utilize… Nowadays, we spend our entire lives receiving and sending information by telephone, e-mail, Web consultation or SMS…
There is no need to labor the point, so let us now leave aside this type of consideration, and other trivialities that are poorly defined but are bandied about by so many of our thinkers. Assuming it is indeed true that today’s society is an information society, then of which other form of society is it the successor? In terms of traditional chronologies, our predecessors lived in an industrial society, whose advent is often qualified as a revolution that took place in the 19th Century. If we greatly simplify the changes that were brought about, the revolutionizing factor in yesteryear appears mainly to be the simultaneous development of techniques stemming from scientific discoveries immediately preceding them: the steam boat, the locomotive, the electric light bulb, the telephone, the motor car, etc. Significant advances in medicine or agriculture can also be seen to coincide with these new technical means. These inventions, and a great many other scientific breakthroughs, caused considerable changes in demographics, transport, communication and public health services.
Yet, it is noteworthy that with these two sets of factors – technological innovations and practical results – we can systematically associate measurements. A steam boat is revolutionary because of the far shorter time it takes to cover a given distance than a sailboat. Similarly, a change in healthcare can be measured by the reduction in infant mortality, increased life expectancy or other quantifiable criteria. A light bulb provides better light over a longer period of time than a candle does (measured in light intensity and seconds), and the evolution in the demographic can be measured overall in terms of numbers of people per unit of time and space (density, population growth, etc.). Put differently, the new society was industrial because of factors which are all, to a greater or lesser extent, measurable.
What can now be said of the “information society”, and what would we measure it by? The time each person spends glued to their telephone each day? The power of computers? The number of billion bytes exchanged per day? These measurements would offer absolutely no indication of the switch from one society to another: they still demonstrate a purely industrial evolution in what is called ICT (information and communication technology), and this is not what we mean by “information”. The subtext, in fact, is entirely different: we have passed from being a society where material items predominated to another, where the immaterial has – if not overtaken the material – at the very least been shown to be on the rise. However, the question of how to measure that immaterial commodity is, a priori, unanswered, and therefore presents a challenge.
I.2. From raw information to its evaluation
Yet what is the advantage, and wherefore is there a need to obtain information? Moreover, what is the need to evaluate it?
To the first question, it appears legitimate and natural to respond that everybody needs information. In passive terms, being informed and gathering information is part of a vital necessity shared by all creatures, and could almost be called our seventh perceptory sense. In a very general sense, information is of crucial importance for understanding of the world and for survival within it. An animal is alerted to a danger, to a need to find food or to any situation where its survival is at stake. That alert is delivered to the animal by way of a certain piece of information (a predator in its field of view, a bodily indicator telling the animal of the needs which it has to rectify, etc.). In terms of an active pursuance of information, seeking to be informed, going in search of information, represents a precursor to the passive sense. This precursor is usually sufficient but not necessary: it is possible to be informed without wishing to be, i.e. without seeking out information.
Now to the second question, the answer seems even more obvious. In the broadest sense, evaluation seems to be indispensable: a piece of information which has not been evaluated, quite simply, holds next to no interest. When faced with a ferocious predator, the animal’s reflex needs not to be identical to that experienced when faced with a seemingly harmless creature that might be a less dangerous potential predator or might even be potential prey. The hunger of which the animal is made aware may be slight or may be critical. In more general terms, the appropriate reaction to the information received stems from evaluation of that information.
Throughout this book, we shall restrict our discussion to the information transmitted and received by a human being. Although non-human elements can deliver information (the appearance of the sky informs us about the time of day, a radar informs us about the passage of a missile, the mewling of a cat informs us that it is lost, etc.), in such cases both the transmitter and the receiver will (except with conceptual consideration of the information and with exception made for military intelligence of non-human origin) belong to the species Homo sapiens. For this subset of the animal kingdom, information acquires a more special status because of the specific nature of communication, cognition and social life amongst humans. The exchange of information between one individual and another occupies a particularly important place. In such circumstances, one is informed and seeks to be informed, but also informs those around him in return. He then looks for confirmation that the information given has been received and understood, and this to-ing and fro-ing, tacit or otherwise, creates knowledge or belief which is not only shared between the interlocutors, but is common to them.
However, this exchange of information does not always take place: it may be deliberately cut short. Understood in the typical sense rather than in Shannon’s theoretical sense, and excluding some of the nuanced meanings of the word, information certainly engages at least two individuals. Information is created, obtained, sought, in the wake of a move to inform another, or to be informed. With regard to the first verb here – “to inform another”, an active construct – a source, a transmitter, informs somebody else about something. The information thus created and possibly received therefore gives rise to an addressee who, if the attempt to inform is even partially successful, is in fact a receiver. Yet with the second verb – “to be informed”, a passive construct – both the transmitter and the receiver already exist: the agent being informed seeks out a piece of information, and thereby becomes the receiver or seeks to be so, and this quest is accompanied by a search for transmitters who hold the piece of information in question. To read the daily newspaper is to inform oneself (to be informed) about the news or events which have happened, of which the journalists are the transmitters, in the same way as looking for the definition of a word in a dictionary is aimed – with a more specific intention – at informing oneself by consulting the compiler of that book. Thus, an agent who informs or who is informed is alternatingly a transmitter or a receiver – the informer or the informed. It is important to take account of this nuance in an age when the amount of transmitted and received information has undeniably burgeoned. It is for this reason that we can indeed speak of an information society, although this absolutely does not mean that the industrial society has been left behind – far from it, in fact: it is the unwavering persistence of the industrial society which has facilitated this increase.
As an example which is constantly but legitimately repeated, the development of the Internet – by way of personal or institutional Websites which it has become childsplay to create, its microblogging gateways and other associated social media – favors democratic diffusion and reception of information. Practically anyone can contribute equally – be it a government or an individual. The explosion of the Internet also amplifies the quantity of information, because the number involved in its promulgation is reaching similar levels to the population of the planet. In a military context, which is where this book primarily fits in, a subtle ploy by the exchange of falsified information becomes easier, and perhaps more tempting: not only in State-to-State conflicts – i.e. symmetrical or dissymmetrical conflicts – but also in confrontations between non-governmental entities (sometimes only one individual) and a State – i.e. conflicts which were originally asymmetrical (e.g. cyberterrorism in support or indoctrination of physical terrorism) but which are becoming symmetrical because of the sudden equality between the competitors. By contrast with the biblical fable, David’s defeat of Goliath would seem triflingly easy. However, this democratization of access to, and especially of creation, exchange and promulgation of information, however propitious for equality it may initially seem, presents the opposite of an in-differentiation of information sources: now nothing at all is certain a priori; we know neither the intention nor the aim pursued by a source in the field where a piece of information is expressed. Quite unlike that which might have been expected, the pieces of information received – because of the very way in which they are received and the amplification of their volume – inspire doubt rather than confidence. When information is received, the value of its sources as well as the quality of the information those sources are actually giving, are more or less unknown. Therefore, if an active or passive receiver wishes to make gainful use of that information, it has become a prerequisite to evaluate its quality in one way or another.
I.3. The precedence of the military world
Quite apart from its humorous aspect, the classic saying that military intelligence is “the second-oldest profession in the world” is most appropriate in terms of emphasizing the antediluvian nature of the practice, and its place in the history of the human race. It is even more crucial to obtain information about the enemy in the context of a conflict or a war than it is in more peaceful situations: the military capabilities of the enemy, their intentions, priorities and goals are factors, knowledge of which is invaluable and must be acquired as fully as possible if we want to win the battle. However, this set of information is of very little interest if it conveys only estimations tainted with inaccuracy. In particular, information fed to the person making decisions to direct the conflict needs to carry a certain weight, and to be comparable in some way with a different piece of information, which may contradict the first one. We shall see in this book that modern-day armies have attempted to circumscribe certain concepts associated with these necessities, related to the usage which must be made of the information. For a given piece of information, the terms “reliability” of the source and “credibility” of the content have, for several decades, been used as standard within the armed forces; the quantification of these notions is called information evaluation. It is important that the reader become familiar with this terminology now in the introduction to the book, as it will appear on nearly every page thereafter.
As follows from our opening discussion about the advent of the Internet, when any piece of information is received, it goes without saying that the question of its credibility and of the reliability of its source is posed, and there is nothing at all new about this attitude on the part of an information receiver, whatever the context may be. In the context of information-gathering with a strategic, diplomatic or military goal, this question is posed with far more acuity, and historical examples are plentiful. However, it is only very recently that a degree of confidence has been given as a result of that evaluation, based on a scale which needs to be determined at the outset. There is an almost explicit mention of this technique in a spy novel, an extract of which is given below. The protagonist has a stolen encoded diary from an individual involved in a vast geopolitical operation to spark off the First World War. Once he has decoded the diary, his observation is as follows:
“He stuck down his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving them all a numerical value and then striking a balance, which stood for the reliability of each stage in the yarn. The four names he had printed were authorities, and there was a man, Ducrosne, who got five out of a possible five; and another fellow, Ammersfoort, who got three.”
The author himself employs the words “balance”, “reliability” and “numerical value” – they are not terms of our invention. From this extract, we can see that the protagonist understands immediately from this single reading that these scores correspond to the value of the person in question – rather than, say, his importance within the network, which might (at first glance) appear more natural. It is as if the scale representing the reliability of a source were fully developed even at that time, and an astute observer were able at once, in spite of the scant indications, to see what it referred to.
However – and this is particularly surprising – the novel in question dates from… 1915. John Buchan is the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, from which this extract is taken1 – the novel which inspired the well-known Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. To our knowledge, this is the first historical reference – a century old – to such a scale for the reliability of a source. It is far from inconsequential that it is to be found in the context of military intelligence operations; more than the general world, the “world” of information evaluation historically regards intelligence-gathering as being the single oldest profession.
This historical antecedence and the necessities peculiar to the military domain lead to a conceptualization of information evaluation that is more advanced than in any other domain, and that inspires certain domains. For instance, competitive intelligence, which is extremely active and current, has undeniably borrowed from concepts and methods in the world of defense, from whence the main proponents of these new approaches in economic strategy also come. In line with the origin of information evaluation, this book may be considered to be “military-centered”: the examples and solutions offered in its chapters refer mainly to a use context in defense. However, this is absolutely not to say that the reader needs to be familiar with a military context or come from a military background: it will be perfectly easy for him to simply transpose the discussion to his own areas of interest.
I.4. The French project CAHORS
CAHORS (Cotation, Analyse, Hiérarchisation et Ontologies pour le Renseignement et la Sécurité – Information Evaluation, Analysis, Hierarchization and Ontologies for Intelligence and Security) was a multidisciplinary project, funded by France’s National Research Agency and run between 2009 and 2012. It was spearheaded by the two co-editors of this book, written immediately in the project’s wake, with six partner entities from the spheres of industry, education and academic research.
Figure I.1.Logo of the CAHORS project
As suggested by the name, information evaluation constituted the origin and the heart of the project, oriented toward applications in defense and security. Although the dawn of information transfer and the new means, available to one and all, to play a part, largely justified the conception of such a project, these circumstances of our age were secondary, in the context of an attempt to resolve issues which predate these circumstances by millennia. A large portion of the project was, undeniably, rooted in the modern world, given the use of modern techniques, and neither the project’s premises nor its results are supposed to be applicable to former times; nevertheless, the three keywords in its name (information-evaluation, defense and security) correspond to concerns that go back a very long way beyond modern times.
From the very outset, and throughout its progression, the project has always been multi- and transdisciplinary. As philosophy, logic and linguistics play a pivotal role therein, supplemented by ageless military and security considerations, one facet of the project does not relate closely to new practices or current techniques. The other facet is based on the development of computer technology, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the military needs of the most recent decades, and in that sense it remains firmly anchored in contemporary society. One of the major challenges was to bring these two facets of the project together, and create harmony between disciplines and considerations that are not necessarily conflicting, but which ordinarily never come into contact with one another. In other words, with regard to the two facets mentioned here, CAHORS took a logico-philosophical direction to perform a sort of artificial intelligence, which here means semi-automation of the task of intelligence-gathering so as to relieve analysts from the field of tedious tasks.
I.5. A fictitious scenario to illustrate the chapters
I.5.1. Function of the scenario
For the purposes of this book, a fictitious scenario has been imagined, in which information plays a key role. The primary advantage to this scenario is that it establishes a guiding thread running through the book, for the benefit both of the writers and the readers: the illustrative or argumentative examples function on a common basis.
In addition, this scenario has been put in place in the interest of neutrality of the contexts mentioned. The scenario is devoid of any reality – although this does not reflect on the likelihood of such a scenario occurring – and through it, the chapters are more unified as a coherent whole than they would otherwise have been. The dates of the events and eras in the history fabricated here are left as indeterminate, which means the book has a perennial quality because it is timeless. Notwithstanding, the data in the scenario are easy to apply to a given situation in the present or the past in many corners of the world. The source of inspiration has been adjusted – amongst other reasons so as to allow the use of contemporary means of emission and transmission of information, particularly via the Web. This basic scenario was communicated to the chapter authors at the very beginning of the writing of the book, although of course, they were given the full freedom to preserve it exactly as it was, to enrich it as need be depending on the subject and needs of the chapters, or to ignore it entirely if no use needed to be made of it.
I.5.2. Presentation of the scenario
Located in the Middle East, Ektimostan is a small, secular State, with the city of Dagbas being its capital. The country comprises a veritable mosaic of small, overlapping regions holding antagonistic religious convictions. The governmental regime has been able to subdue these previously violent blind conflicts, but beneath the surface they are still boiling – all the more so because neighboring countries ostensibly provide support to some of these religious factions, often leading to the ramping up of the religious conflicts. Therefore, for decades, there have been very real tensions setting Ektimostan against some of its neighbors – sometimes for religious reasons, but usually for political and strategic ones.
Of apparently benign capacities on a global scale, and apart from the aforementioned border micro-tensions, Ektimostan is the subject of sustained attention from foreign countries: its geographical position directly between areas dominated by major powers, and the diplomatic and geopolitical adroitness of its leaders have lent the country a crucial place on the global chessboard. Thus, it is strategically allied with certain large powers, and closely watched with mistrust by others. In economic terms, Ektimostan is rich in crude oil and natural gas reserves, but its industry is still dependent on other countries – particularly its defense industry.
Having held power for a great many years, Colonel al-Adel governs the country with an iron fist. His Minister of the Interior and chief of the secret police, Balldar, has become the Number Two of the regime. However, in the spring, the whole of the surrounding region experienced a violent and contagious period, with the incumbent leaders being challenged by demonstrations and then uprisings, and eventually being overthrown. Ektimostan, which was not originally affected by movements of this sort, is in turn beginning to experience instability: accusing him of authoritarianism, opponents of al-Adel sporadically stage revolts for various reasons. The situation is worsening, as other States offer their support – either openly or covertly – to one or other of the camps (the legitimate government or the factious fighters).
As these conflicts grow in magnitude, certain regions of Ektimostan begin to fall under control of the insurgents. In parallel, a mysterious group supporting this revolt emerges in a foreign capital. This group, under the direction of a man named Usbek – a dissident who left the country over ten years ago, claims to be a neutral pacifier of the insurrection, and creates a press agency, the Ektimostan Free Press (EFP), which soon becomes an authoritative source of information for certain countries: its communiqués are taken up in foreign fields without the local media appearing overly concerned about checking the reliability of the event that triggered their transmission. Usbek is suspected, by the Ektimostan regime, of being the true initiator of the revolts, and his neutrality is regularly called into question.
In Ektimostan itself, Captain Ixil is the leader of the heteroclite opposition coalition, called the Free Resistance of Dagbas (FRD), which is the opposition force tacitly recognized by Usbek and his EFP, and by several leaders of foreign powers. In addition to his role as leader, Ixil also acts as the spokesperson for his movement, and claims responsibility for its actions in video recordings on online filesharing sites, whose origin is masked. Ixil is also responsible for a sort of belligerent propaganda on the same Websites. According to Ektimostan’s official press and al-Adel’s discourse, the guerilla force is supported by Usbek and his group, who supply it with arms, ammunition, money and possibly military personnel providing training and tactical support. Usbek, via his press agency, has always denied these accusations.
In terms of the media and technology, there is no real freedom of the press in Ektimostan, while Usbek’s group claims to represent a diverse range of opinions and to be neutral in the internal conflict, the Press Ektimo-Agency (PEA) is the official press agency in Ektimostan, and Usbek’s Ektimostan Free Press (EFP) frequently contradicts the information diffused by the PEA. The activities of internet users are heavily monitored in Ektimostan by Minister Balldar’s teams, and certain dissident bloggers have already been arrested.
Figure I.3.Geography and political situation of Ektimostan
On 31 May, there is a bomb attack in the capital Dagbas, not far from the Ministry of the Interior, killing 26. Responsibility for the attack has not been claimed. For once, the FRD forces have not published a triumphant communiqué on the Web. Could this have been staged, with al-Adel himself being behind the operation? Is it possible that motives other than the political revolts are to blame for the attack, such as the settling of personal grievances? Is there a different group of opposition fighters – a splinter group from the FRD or a group newly created to carry out more radical actions? Could the bombing be the work of a counter-regime Ektimostanian terrorist movement that is not related to the uprising? There may be a very great many potentially-viable hypotheses, but al-Adel’s regime officially holds only one: the FRD is guilty, and therefore so too, indirectly, is Usbek.
On this reinvented planet, on a different continent, the news in another country seizes our attention at this point, precisely because it has nothing to do with the troubles in Ektimostan. The Republic of Realleo is constantly experiencing round after round of military coups d’état. General San-Gerio and General Quieto replace one another time and again depending on which military junta is in power. whenever one is in power, the other wages a guerilla war from the forests of the country to take it back. Terrorist actions are regularly carried out by both factions against one another. These keywords – attack and terrorism – which are common to the situations in two geographically distant areas, are not at all likely to lead a human observer reading his newspaper to error; is the same true, though, for natural language processing tools?
From an informational point of view, with regard to the attack in Dagbas, various reports are emitted, in chronological order, by diverse sources and through various forms of media:
I.5.3. A scenario adaptable to each chapter, and a guiding thread for the book
As we can easily see, the different elements of information are emitted with a greater or lesser degree of certainty: we may find adverbs or verbal moods which may be more or less categorical depending on the speaker or the date of a given speech act. The emitters of the information are far from neutral: a chief of secret police, an authoritarian leader and a renegade are liable to be suspected of partiality, or to use tricks of influence, disinformation, propaganda, etc. In addition, this news is, for the most part, not communicated directly to the populace: an intermediary channel is needed, such as a press agency, a newspaper, a more or less reliable Website or a television program to transmit the news, and these intermediaries are not necessarily neutral either: they may be in the pocket of power, as is the Press Ektimo-Agency, or possibly freer or even vigorously opposed to the regime. Other protagonists may come into play by other means, via social media or weblogs which may be more or less closely monitored by the regime in place. Thus, there are so-called open sources of information, meaning that they transmit public information that is accessible to one and all, but also covert sources such that espionage can use them, and they produce information intended for a specific receiver and (in theory) no-one else.
As we can see, the situations may be extremely varied, and involve any number of diverse agents, objectives and maneuvers. The “remodeling” that is therefore possible, and the enrichment of the basic scenario, mean examples can be constructed for any of the chapters as per the needs of the particular subject.
In all the cases used, whose basis we have just described, evaluation of the reliability of the source and the credibility of the information enter into the equation, in that when seeking to gain a genuine idea of the true culprit behind the 31 May attack, the origin and originator of the information, its taking up and relaying, its likelihood, the aims that it suggests, the patterns and ploys which may underlie it are all factors which could help in the formation of an opinion. Because of its diverse facets, the guiding scenario serves to illustrate how the information can be evaluated on the basis of these and other factors.
I.6. Division of the book
The book is divided into two main sections: firstly a theoretical part (“concepts and requirements”), and secondly a more practical and prospective part (“methods and perspectives”). The combination of these two viewpoints – which do not obviously appear to be mutually complementary – is achieved by cross-referencing between the chapters and shared bibliographical sources.
The book as a whole can be read in a variety of ways. To begin with, it presents a progression in the distribution of the chapters: the book moves from concepts regarding information to the need to evaluate it, before going on to discuss the methods by which we propose to serve that need; the whole therefore represents a set of perspectives, not only to fine-tune the methods discussed herein and to extend evaluation to other domains, but also to touch on other potential information processing techniques to be applied once it has been evaluated. In that respect, the book can be read with a certain degree of continuity. On the other hand, though, each chapter is largely intended and able to stand alone within the book: the reader may perfectly well choose to focus on chapters in those domains with which he is familiar first of all, or – on the contrary – by curiosity or a priori interest, choose those whose subjects are unfamiliar or totally unknown to him. Given that we have attempted to cater for both a specialized readership and a broader cultivated audience, the chapters should be read in whatever order the reader deems appropriate. However, in spite of this autonomy of the chapters, nearly all of them refer to other chapters in the book for an in-depth discussion of a topic which is deliberately only briefly touched upon. In that respect, we hope, the book escapes from any strict division, and acquires a certain harmony, which the fictitious example outlined above is only one means of achieving among others.
I.6.1. Concepts and requirements
The opening chapter deals with the initial question of information, as viewed by philosophers. Strange as it may seem, this concept was not subject to any philosophical reflection until the latter half of the 20th Century, in the wake of Shannon’s work. The chapter retraces this timeline, and explains the various positions adopted at different times, and contemporary developments. Then, information viewed as a weapon in a real or a virtual war is examined in the light of these earlier philosophical musings.
The second chapter stays with the area of philosophy, focusing this time on the notion of trust – in this case epistemic trust, i.e. trust relating to knowledge. The trust lent to an individual is very closely linked to the estimation of reliability attached to that individual, and the two terms could almost be considered to be synonymous. The chapter concentrates on the relationship between trust and information, between belief and knowledge. A secondary discussion highlights the patterns which can be used to award, if not a score, at least a place to the reliability of a source, based on the extent of the trust afforded to that source.
In Chapter 3, the focus turns to information evaluation from the professional point of view of intelligence. Contemplating the landscape of this profession where information evaluation alone only lies in a few points, the chapter outlines a model of intelligence in all the senses attached to it by military doctrines. Information evaluation is one stage in a phase of processing and exploitation of the information to render it usable in intelligence. Here it forms one of the various starting points for the development of the model.
Chapter 4 deals with a similar area, but focuses on information evaluation as part of a cycle of intelligence activities. Doctrines – both French ones and those stemming from NATO’s conceptual work – that are devoted to information evaluation certainly enrich reflection on the subject, but quickly become frustrating for an attentive reader because of the insufficiencies or even contradictions (so as not to say absurdities) they contain. The aim here is to establish a cogently-argued list to open the way to a more-or-less coherent definition of information evaluation and the methods it involves.
I.6.2. Methods and perspectives
In Chapter 5, we focus on how to measure the reliability of information sources. There is an abundance of academic literature on this subject, if we look at it from a formal perspective. The chapter proposes a different method: aggregation by the Choquet integral of dimensions which give a reading of reliability, borrowing from applied work in a number of fields; here, the originality lies in the taking into account of multiple factors and analyst preferences when estimating reliability. One application of the method could be an examination of Twitter accounts, which is the example used here.
The sixth chapter answers some of the theoretical and technical questions surrounding the quantification of the semantic uncertainty expressed in a sentence, a paragraph, a text, attempting to establish this by semi-automated means. Natural Language Processing (NLP) has become a recognized discipline in its own right, which offers methods by which to overcome the difficulties introduced by languages, not to a person but to a machine designed to learn how to detect and process the underlying uncertainty in a vernacular text. A tool which combines computer science and linguistics is presented by way of example.
The seventh chapter discusses the fundamental results of the original project. The formal stages are described with a view to segmenting the process of information evaluation, with the aim being to provide a response other than a binary (yes/no) one to the question “Did a particular event take place?” by supplementing the response with a degree of confidence. Overall, the chapter gives a discussion of the theory employed in the project – possibility theory – and the reasons why this theory was chosen. An experimental evaluation of the model is also presented, using a new protocol. The whole of the process constructed may have applications other than in defense and security, and may be enriched and experimented with by specialists in the potential domains.
Next, Chapter 8 deals with a crucial issue in a world where reported speech occupies a very important place: the term media is not without implication – there is indeed a medium which is intercalated generally between an initial source of information and us as receivers. The reliability of the man who has heard the man who heard the source of the information cannot be reduced to the combination of the reliability scores of the intermediaries. Here we need to study the levels of reliability which stem from these intermediary relations.
The ninth and final chapter looks at the formalization of the process of building confidence, and then its evolution. In response to Chapter 4, and to resolve the problems manifesting themselves in the most clearly established military doctrines of all domains of application, the chapter discusses how we can trust a piece of information, and the way in which we form an opinion of it, irrespective of the truth of the fact which it reports. A model for the construction and evolution of trust is therefore put forward.
I.7. Acknowledgments
First and foremost, we extend our thanks to those French state organisms which helped us to bring the CAHORS project to fruition. Next, the writing of several chapters by authors who were not involved in the project has enriched the book, enabling it to provide a broader view of the issue of information evaluation, not only facilitating the exploration of multidisciplinary avenues, but particularly extending the range of domains which still remain to be explored. We are very grateful to these collaborators.
We owe heartfelt thanks to Jean-Charles Pomerol for accepting this book into the ISTE–Wiley collection. We also wish to thank Ben Engel, who translated each of the chapters - which cover a wide range of fields with specific vocabulary - quickly and efficiently.
Finally it must be made clear that those people mentioned above should not be held responsible if ever the reader, in disappointment, gives this book a poor score in his evaluation of the information transmitted by the collection of chapters. We and we alone are responsible for its content.
1 BUCHAN J., The Thirty Nine Steps, House of Stratus, p. 35, 2001.
Introduction written by Philippe Capet and Thomas Delavallade.
Chapter 1
Information: Philosophical Analysis and Strategic Applications
1.1. Introduction
Nowadays, it is commonly considered that we live in an information society. Our civilization is abundantly fed by information and communication technology (ICT). In the military context, information has always been an invaluable and sought-after commodity to which special services are devoted. Leaders in all sorts of contexts – particularly military – have, for centuries, been aware of the importance of information. It is all the more paradoxical that in the area of philosophy, thinkers have largely ignored the concept of information. It appears only incidentally in philosophers’ writings. It was not until thermodynamics, cybernetics and mathematical theorization of information took off that philosophers finally became interested in it, and even then, it was difficult to find a structured theorization centered on the notion of information.
In this chapter, we shall focus primarily on two aspects of this topic. To begin with, we shall look at the definition of an operational concept of information. In order to do so, following a brief state of the art on current thinking about the notion of information, we turn our attention more specifically to the genealogy of the term, before going on to discuss two of the three thinkers whom we believe are the most important in the area of philosophy of information: Paul Grice and Fred Dretske. The work of these two philosophers will help to sculpt the precise definition of what information is, which will then be used in the second part of this chapter.
In this second part, we shall focus on the military domain, and see how the concept of information is used in that domain. In doing so, we shall present and critique the ideas of the third great contemporary thinker on information: Luciano Floridi.
Let us make it clear right now that while these philosophers help us to refine the concept of information which we shall use throughout this book, our ideas differ from theirs on a crucial point, because we reject the alethic conception of information – i.e. the idea that information must necessarily be true.
1.2. State of the art in philosophy
It is noteworthy that in the esteemed French reference dictionary of philosophical vocabulary – the Lalande – the term “information” does not appear. The work includes only the entry “to inform”, which is given in the scholastic sense – that of “giving shape to, organizing matter”. This view of the term comes directly from Plato’s Timaeus, where the demiurge imposes order on a disorganized physical world by giving it a form reflecting the order reigning over the world of Ideas. Apart from this primary meaning of the verb “to inform”, the Lalande recognizes a derived meaning, which is: “making somebody aware of something”. Granted, the Lalande dates from 1927, but none of the later editions, including that from 2006, have the entry “information” – at least not in the body of the text. It is only half a century after the Lalande first appeared that the tenth edition included a separate supplement containing the entry “information”. It is given a meaning derived from cybernetics: “an element of knowledge conveyed by a message which is its vehicle and of which it constitutes the meaning” [LAL 06]. In this definition, we can see the hallmarks of the work of Shannon. The persistent practice of affording only a very limited place to the concept of information in a philosophical dictionary which is highly influential – at least in the French-speaking world – highlights the recent and underdeveloped nature of the philosophy of information. It should be noted that this neglect of the concept of information is not specific to the French-speaking world. If we look at Simon Blackburn’s Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [BLA 08], we discover that even the second edition, revised in 2008, does not contain an entry for Information. It only has an entry for Information theory. This gives an indication of why philosophers gradually lost their indifference toward the concept of information during the latter half of the 20th Century. The domain known as “philosophy of information” first developed thanks to cybernetic research and the Mathematical Theory of Communication (MTC), then moved forward in the wake of philosophical explorations of the concepts of meaning and knowledge, and finally flourished due to the current development of the so-called “information society”.
1.2.1. History
The Lalande shows that, historically, the word “information” arose later than the verb “to inform”, from which it is derived.1 In the work of both Plato and Aristotle, there is the idea that information is necessary for the passage of the materia prima from pure potentiality to actuality. This would remain the prevailing definition from Ancient times until the 17th and 18th Centuries, with the British empiricists (John Locke, David Hume). It is thanks to these empiricists that the verb “to inform” lost its original meaning and came to be understood in its current sense. The empiricists, abandoning the rationalistic credence whereby our minds come into this world already holding some innate ideas, attempted to explain how these ideas come into being. If the mind is not informed in advance, i.e. if it is not molded into a form
