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False Flags

How accurate should government surveillance be?

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False Flags

How accurate should government surveillance be?

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How accurate should government surveillance be? In 2013, it was revealed that the U.S. government was secretly monitoring its citizens’ phone calls and internet traffic through a program called PRISM. The goal was to identify potential threats and catch would-be terrorists.

In this lesson, students calculate conditional probabilities to determine the likelihood of false-positives and false-negatives, and discuss the tradeoffs between safety and accuracy.

REAL WORLD TAKEAWAYS

  • United States National Security Agency (NSA) conducts a global surveillance program called PRISM in which they collect online communications, including from Americans who weren’t/aren’t aware.
  • At some points in time, this government surveillance has been controversial: It’s intended to flag dangerous individuals and monitor their communications to keep America safe, but it may also flag innocent individuals.

MATH OBJECTIVES

  • Model related probabilistic events using Venn diagrams
  • Apply Bayes Theorem given conditional probabilities
  • Use probabilities to predict the consequences of a real-world policy

Appropriate most times as students are developing conceptual understanding.
Algebra 2
Probability (Adv.)
Algebra 2
Probability (Adv.)
Content Standards
Mathematical Practices

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