contrived confirmation photos.
While the MIT team succeeded in
quickly collecting balloon-sighting
data, it relied on human analysis of the
data to detect inconsistencies or patterns reflecting attempts to mislead
with false sightings. Analyses exposed
bogus balloon sightings, resulting in
identifying the accurate sightings by
process of elimination.
the team so anyone spotting a balloon
would be more likely to report it to the
team. Besides activating the team Web
site three weeks before launch day, it
leveraged mass media coverage of the
team and search engine rank optimization for the Web site to make its participation in the Challenge readily discoverable. This approach capitalized on
its longer lead time advantage by starting early to prepare for the contest. The
team also declared it would donate all
prize money to charity, appealing to
the intrinsic motivation of altruism to
encourage people to help the team.
While the GTRI team also had to
validate the accuracy of reported sightings, it believed its charitable intentions deterred submission of false
reports to the team.
11 The strategy focused on personally confirming balloon sightings. Where possible, the
team had a direct conversation with
the balloon spotter to verify a report,
creating a social situation whereby it
was more difficult to fabricate balloon
sightings. If the team could not personally contact a balloon spotter, it called
nearby businesses to solicit help validating sightings. Such cold calls produced mixed results; some were oblig-
GtRi team
In contrast, the GTRI team (also known
as the “I Spy a Red Balloon” team) was
one of the quickest to launch a Web
site and start recruiting a network of
participants, eventually growing to
about 1,400 people. It even explored
partnering with a major shipping company to leverage its network of drivers
covering the U.S. to find and report balloon locations. Ultimately, the company declined over “concerns about driver safety and focus on the job.”
12 The
GTRI team instead promoted its own
Web page, registered a Google Voice
number, and formed a Facebook group
to communicate with participants
searching for balloons for the team.
A major aspect of the GTRI strategy was to promote the visibility of
ing, while others simply dismissed the
request. In essence, the GTRI team
largely relied on social persuasion of
strangers, either of potential balloon
spotters or of people in the vicinity of
a balloon sighting, to validate balloon
locations.
While the GTRI team correctly identified nine balloons, it had no record of
a report of the tenth balloon (in Katy,
TX) being submitted to the team. The
mechanism for personally validating balloon sightings (and perhaps its
charitable intentions) seemed to engender more social cooperation, but
the effort fell short of eliciting a report
of all 10 balloons.
Figure 5. Fabricated photo posted during the challenge (left) ( http://twitpic.com/s9kun) and
photo taken by a pre-recruited observer in albany, ny (right).
Figure 6. Photo mapping with Google maps and Panoramio (Location: Chaparral Park,
scottsdale, az); photo report from twitter ( http://twitpic.com/s9ffv) (left);
Google maps with Panoramio photos (center); and view-in image from Panoramio (right)
( http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2412514).
ischools team
The iSchools team formed about two
weeks before the launch date, recruiting observers from member organizations for direct search for the balloons
and employing Open Source Intelligence methods8 for cyberspace search.
Confirmation techniques were a key element of the iSchools team’s ability to
locate six of the 10 balloons, helping it
claim tenth place. Most of the six were
located through the cyberspace search
approach, using humans as sensors in
a participatory sensing experiment,
2
whereas directly recruiting them as
observers in advance of an event is often problematic or impossible.
The team tried using the wide geographic footprint of its member organizations. Since it included colleges
and universities from across the continental U.S., it had a good chance of
recruiting observers wherever DARPA
placed balloons. Current students,
faculty, and staff, as well as alumni,
were recruited through messages sent
to email lists, Twitter feeds, and Facebook groups, when available. Only a
handful of pre-registered observers actively participated during launch day,
yielding only a single valid balloon location through direct search.
In the cyberspace-search approach,
a group of analysts sought evidence of
balloon-sighting reports that were accessible on publicly available Internet
sites, including public Twitter feeds,
Web sites of competing teams, and any
other source they could access without hacking. This approach was the
primary source of data for finding the
other balloon locations. Evidence was
