Fighting Terrorists Through Software, Anonymously?

Silwenae writes "MSNBC has a story online from this week's Newsweek about Jeff Jonas, founder of System Research and Development. SRD's software attempts to verify a person is who he says he is, and then tries to determine who that person may be connected with. Originally used in casinos, the CIA has invested in SRD for use in the war against terrorism. Apparently, Jonas has developed a system that can anonymize the data being analyzed through hashing, so the government can share this information with the private sector to look for hits, without the private sector seeing the specific data."

Comments

Who has access to our data?

[myownkidney]

The question is, who exactly has access to our data?

The credit card companies, for example, have access to a LOT of data. People seem to be content with that.

And it is ridiculous how much information about your activities are already out there, though not publicly accessible, accessible to certain organisations.

I think the scariest bit about this article is that casinos have access to your, YES YOUR, data. And if casinos can do that, so can the mafia.

The government having access to all this information is only a part of the problem. The real problem is, how much of it is available to bad guys, like telemarketeers and the Russian Mafia.