[LINK] lies, damn lies, and 31,000 pages

[Stilgherrian]

On 12/7/07 8:11 AM, "Craig Sanders" <cas at taz.net.au> wrote:
> for the last week or so, Ruddock has been going on about "31,000 pages
> of documentation to be reviewed" in relation to (and justification for)
> the Indian doctor being held in Queensland.
> 
> i read in The Age this morning, the story has changed slightly:
> 
> http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/indian-doctor-going-nowhere/2007/07/11/
> 1183833599463.html
> 
>    "But Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said more than 120 gigabytes
>     of information had to be reviewed - equal to 31,000 pages of
>     documents."
> 
> so, what that probably means is that they've got a laptop or desktop
> computer with a 120GB hard disk...and it's convenient for the
> government's scare campaign to misrepresent that as "31,000 pages" of
> secret terrorist documents that need to be reviewed.

The other day a senior policeman said they'd seized a computer with "more
than 12,000 files" -- with the obvious implication that this was some vast
treasure-trove of documentation. Totally misleading for two reasons, one
direct and one indirect:

  * A "file" in and of itself is neutral. "Having files" is not a
    crime. And yet the average person thinks "I only have a 'a few
    photos' and my family letters," and imagines they have only a
    handful of files.

    Someone with "thousands" of files now becomes "different" and
    suspicious -- we're automatically programmed to link "different"
    with "suspicious" as a survival instinct, and this presses that
    button without rational cause.

  * A "file" is a technical term, meaning any data object on the
    hard drive. The Windows box I have for testing -- Windows XP
    with MS Office 2003 Pro and a fairly basic set of utilities for
    general use -- plus a couple GB of data belonging to clients as
    we've copied stuff from old computer to new -- has 93,643 files
    on it. So 12,000 files is... well, nothing really.

Still, all we hear is [big number] -> [lots of work] -> more jail.

Magic, really.

Stil


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