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Comment by asfdsfggtfd | Hacker News Reader

What is the advantage of obscuring the algorithms used to detect fraud? (I.e. is this not just security by obscurity?)

Fraud/spam detection algorithms have to be security by obscurity, or someone can just check if what they're doing trips the algorithm and then not do that.

I would compare such obscurity with secret laws that you are not allowed to break. It opens up a possibility for selective enforcement.

Fraud detection can be sagely done in obscurity, as long as any enforcement action is done on the open.

Filtering data to find who is breaking a law is different from the law itself and from penalizing people.

If you use an opaque machine learning technique to detect fraud, for the purposes of probity some kind of "parallel construction" could be employed to give a public exlanation; it's surely important to explain and justify to the humans involved. The analogy is with the person of a particular ethnicity who is always getting pulled over by the cops. This must be made transparent.

You don't need "parallel construction". You need to inform it was detected by some opaque means, and that you proceeded to verify it with a transparent and legal procedure.

What you can't do is detect it by opaque means and then proceed to sanction people or even gather some too elevated investigative powers.

The act of verification (of suspected fraud) is not costless to the various parties involved. So say I keep getting inconvenienced by this verification because of my behaviour ("was it really you who made this request?") then someone should be accountable for all those false positives. "Parallel construction" creates an accountability. I know it usually means something more sinister -- but just symtactically it's a good description of the requirement.

I do think we are trying to say the same thing. When I say that no unreasonable additional power should be gained by such detection, I intend that between a few things that the verification should not be costly to the investigated party (costs should be only on the investigators). Looks like you are naming that verification "parallel construction", and so, I do agree.

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