It's Alive! It's Alive!
We were just tlaking today in class about supercomputers and what you could do with them. It was a little leftover from the State of the Union speech. I mentioned Total Information Awarness, a government program that was proposed, but never adopted because of public protest and misgiving. Well, guess who's back?
According to the Christian Science Monitor:
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. . .
"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.
Now it may be true that, ever since I read 1984 and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in the same year, I've become a little paranoid about government and computers. I don't use a CVS card or a Big Y card -- not because I'm a terrorist but because I don't want somebody (and who knows exactly who that might be) knowing what I'm buying.
ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection and pattern analysis."
But Mr. Sand, the DHS official, emphasizes that privacy protection would be built-in. "Before a system leaves the department there's been a privacy review.... That's our focus."
Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE.
"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy."
Others are less sure.
"It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its utility - and with provable privacy protection," says Latanya Sweeney, founder of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building privacy into ADVISE. "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology."
According to the Christian Science Monitor:
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. . .
"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.
Now it may be true that, ever since I read 1984 and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in the same year, I've become a little paranoid about government and computers. I don't use a CVS card or a Big Y card -- not because I'm a terrorist but because I don't want somebody (and who knows exactly who that might be) knowing what I'm buying.
ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection and pattern analysis."
But Mr. Sand, the DHS official, emphasizes that privacy protection would be built-in. "Before a system leaves the department there's been a privacy review.... That's our focus."
Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE.
"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy."
Others are less sure.
"It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its utility - and with provable privacy protection," says Latanya Sweeney, founder of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building privacy into ADVISE. "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology."
posted by Mr. Mac | 11:23 PM
6 Comments:
"Osama probably isn’t clicking around on Amazon. The bad guys are smart enough to adapt to the environment in which they live. They know when our satellites are passing over. They know that we monitor their communications and work to counter that. They’ll counter this too. I’m not saying that something like this won’t produce useful intelligence. I’m sure it will, but we’ll still be left with gaps."
-Defensetech.org-
To me this whole ADVISE data mining doesn't seem like it will ever be effective, if it even gets off the ground in the first place. Theres just too many loopholes, complexities and countless ways to evade ADVISE. One would think a "professional" terrorist would be smart enough to escape the detection of ADVISE rather easily.
Anyone else?
-Chris Sartori
Seriously....It sounds kind of stupid to me. What kind of trails would terrorists leave behind. I don't think they can buy things at a local supermarket to make a nuclear bomb. Money in this program could be better well spent.
Emily
I guess better safe than sorry.... but in this case it just seems like if the average 12 year old computer wiz can probably get around this stuff then I'm guessing a terrorist or anyone else can also. It was probably a good thought but I don't think it will actually work. Em had a good point...the money might be better used somewhere else.
~Betsy
Great comments, guys! I love this -- a little extension of class. (Of course, it means you don't even need me -- sigh -- but. . . )
I never said national security wasn't important or that I was completely against what they're doing..or that i'd rather see a man on the moon. Right now, to me, that specific idea doesn't seem convincing... from what I've read. But I'm even for the other plan they had with the listening to the phone calls and all that...so you clearly got the wrong impression from what I wrote.
Bets
What has always worried me most about the TIA program is the "false positives". Who knows what odd & innocent combination of items might mark you as suspicious? And what if somebody decides that they want to look for other "suspicious" things?
And to the person who took their comment down -- I don't think there was anything offensive in it. I'd love to get a dialogue going between the students in the class outside of class, and that will include differences of opinion. So long as it doesn't get nasty or personal. And I don't think that you did.
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