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Data Mining, Cocaine and Secrecy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-they-probably-have-clusters dept.

hightimes writes: "Business 2.0 uncovers one of the world's most sophisticated IT network in where else, Colombia. According to the story, Colombian drug cartels have spent billions of dollars to build a huge infrastructure that's helping them smuggle more dope than ever before." Even though this is about a raid that took place most of a decade ago, it's an interesting example of the power (and potential abuse) of large-scale data mining.

1 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. This isn't real data mining by CySurflex · · Score: 5, Informative

    Searching for matching records in a database (phone call logs) with known values (phone #'s of known agents) is not data mining. It's simply setting up an indexed data warehouse and issuing queries.

    Data Mining is looking for UNKNOWN relationships between that data, not KNOWN relationships. So although referring to it as Data Mining may make it sound advanced and exotic, it's incorrect.

    - CySurflex