Companies Developing Crowd Analysis Programs To Detect 'Abnormalities' In Behavior And Match Faces Against Giant Databases

One of the reasons that the total surveillance programs of the NSA and GCHQ are possible is that computers continue to become more powerful and cheaper, allowing ever-more complex analyses to be conducted, including those that were simply not feasible before. Here's another example of the kind of large-scale monitoring that is now possible, as reported by Nikkei Asian Review: 

On Techdirt.

Wisdom of the Football Hooligans

Now here's a spooky story:

PicksPal is a free sports site where people “bet” on upcoming games. No money is involved. If they win, their point total goes up and they have bragging rights around the office. Since launching about a year ago over 100,000 people have joined the site, making daily picks on just about every kind of sporting event in the U.S. - boxing, NFL football, pro football, bass fishing, ultimate fighting, basketball, baseball, etc. The site makes money from advertising.

Recently, however, the PicksPal team noticed that a very small percentage of users tend to be correct in their picks significantly more often that they should be statistically. When they grouped these special users they found them to be a powerful predictive force.

I care not a jot for sports or betting, but what is interesting here is that the idea can be generalised. You set up a site devoted to a particular domain with uncertain results, and invite visitors to predict the future. You then analyse the patterns over time and try to find groups of people who consistently beat random guesses.