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There are hundreds of terrorist sites on the web, in plain view, spouting vast quantities of murderous rhetoric and all hosted by U.S. ISPs and the government doesn't do anything about it.

I can't help but be a worried that some AI program searching for 'patterns' is going to get it all wrong.

JohnathanRGalt: There are hundreds of terrorist sites on the web, in plain view, spouting vast quantities of murderous rhetoric and all hosted by U.S. ISPs and the government doesn't do anything about it.

I can't help but be a worried that some AI program searching for 'patterns' is going to get it all wrong.

I think the government is allowing those sites to operate so they can track them and collect intelligence, hopefully.
I know what you mean about searching for key words and patterns. I read that before the 9-11 bombings they referred to the attacks as "weddings" and they use very innocous sounding code names, which is hard to pick out of the millions of electronic transmissions of people really talking about such events. But I think that is part of the purpose of the DARPA program, to try to take all that into account and see if there are some triggers, which combined with other info, would form a good enough screen, to detect the terrorists.