Slashdot Mirror
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."
Still don't like it.
:)
:)
Just because they are searching for hash matches instead of plaintext doesn't mean profiling en-mass is right. It just means nosey companys who are being 'asked' won't know WHAT they are being 'asked' about.
Gee, bob the builder knowns mahek alzis. Mahek is a suspected link betwene so and so, and then he works for this manager, and then these people. Hmm, we better start asking alot of questions..see who else matches our '(personal network) search criteria'
What, you think i'm kidding?
(And yes, some of you are going to explode that this sort of search-and-peck is not profiling, when it really is. Look it up. Searching through personal *profiles* and *information* to find any people who match enough of the criteria = profiling.)
This sort of thing is bull, It really is. Instead of doing real investigative work, they can just whip up a list of 'possible hits',snatch them all up, and then queston and otherwise probably scare the shit out of all of them - hoping their deeper searches find a hit in the crowd.
Welcome to the nightmare, please don't choke on the red pill while the door is hitting you in the ass.
[/tinfoil-hat]
My new top secret key -> C>N|KB
There is really nothing new to this technology. It does not do what it claims. Hashing has been around for while, and so have techniques to defeat the attempted security of this type of system. Interestingly, I have seen around five stories from various forums reporting on SRD in the past week or so. It seems like some marketing department is working pretty hard.
You act like the Mafia has no competition, this isnt 1931, this is 2004. You have gangs, you have the irish, russian, jewish, spanish mafias, you have the yakuza, the triads, you have business men in the corporate world who are also in the criminal world, and you have gangs which are rich and powerful enough to get this information, the hells angels, the bloods, crips, latin kings, maybe some prison gangs. Basically anyone with money or influence can get this information. The casinos are run by the mafia, native americans, gang members, etc. Any of the people running these operations would likely sell your information to any other other organized crime group who has the cash. I'm not too concerned with the criminals having our information, generally they are out to profit and would sell guns to terrorists and drugs to our kids to profit before selling your credit history.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I thought the whole point of hash encryption was that it's not able to ever be unencrypted, even by the legitimate users?
In order to check if there is a matching telephone number, you would first have to run the encryption algorithm on the number and then match this against every encrypted number you have in your data store. So if the two encrypted strings are equal, you have a match. But there is no way to know what the encrypted number is unless you have something to test for in the first place.
But I'm not sure how much use that is. Wouldn't you then need to be able to see who's number that is, i.e. decrypt the person's personal data?
Also, it would be interesting to see what the reaction to this software would be in the EU what with its Data Protection directive. Storing personal details about someone is prohibited except for certain circumstances... long term storage of someone's personal data for distribution to companies is not one of them. Whether the encryption of the data would make this acceptable or not would make for an interesting argument.
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
I never said put all Arabs, I said put all people coming from those countries within the last 10 or so years. Theres a difference. Racist would be putting all Arabs including the ones born in this country, or who have been here for generations on that list. By the way, I don't think we should just put Arabs on the list, we should put ANYONE coming from those countries, white, black, asian, I don't care what race, anyone coming from the wrong countries within the last 10 years should go on that list. We SHOULD watch those people because they come from the countries we are at war with, DUH. If you are arab and you've been here for your whole life, you shouldnt go on the list. Racist? no, Nationalist? maybe. If you want to be fair, fine, anyone who is not a US citizen should be put on the watch list.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
And then there's the problem of extra data hidden in the hashes - some of the signature algorithms, for instance, can carry a bunch of hidden "subliminal" bits, like the one that says you're a Jew or black or Dues-Paying Republican or a Federal Agent or a Known Troublemaker.
Spelling is a real problem. I have enough trouble because my ancestors or their relatives were either illiterate or at least using names like "Stewart" "Stuart" "Steward" and "Steuart" before English spelling became relatively standardized. But Americans munging the names of people who use other alphabets, like Arabs, or who don't use alphabets at all, like Chinese, can't just use simple hashes, because any misspelling can either let somebody whose name is the same as a Real Suspect not get flagged, or let some non-suspect whose name is close to a Real Suspect get flagged, and any terrorist smarter than the Shoe-Bomber knows to use an alternative spelling of his name or get some fake ID. You probably know Chinese people who use different names in English and Chinese, either as immigrants or kids of immigrants; I knew a Hakka Chinese family from Vietnam who also had Vietnamese names, and in at least one of their languages, they had an alternate set of names for use within the family (approximately "Number One Son" etc.) And then there's the problem of exactly which name parts to use if you've got more than three, and nicknames, etc.
And then there's the problem of people whose names are the same as Real Suspects' names, and people who ever had their wallet stolen. Just spend a day in traffic court listening to DMV-screwed-up-and-I-got-arrested-by-mistake cases some time if you weren't already worried, or read any news article about identity theft.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Zero problems, but how many innocent people wrongly flagged as being unsavory?
How does this SRD system measure the accuracy of its conclusions?
It's also kinda sad that the voting public has the feeling that they can't do anything about it. You can say "well, that's what happens when you give up your rights.
I can understand the angle of not wanting to lose your property and thus, being more willing to deal with crap (as most people are, if we got uppity at every turn in the road, the road would be jagged, torn, and probably wouldn't work that well). The past 6 or so presidencies have been really shitty IMO,; with each passing administration corruption increases; money is stolen, rights are taken away, and our country is torn apart brick by brick. Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, and now Bush Jr, all slowly taking away our rights accept for Bush Jr, who is putting a new definition to the term of "rocking the boat".
Eventually something's gotta give. My prediction is that people are going to begin losing their incomes, and with those their livings. It was the robber-barons that caused the great depression, and eventually the stock market will collapse. I don't see buisness law becoming regulated any time soon like it was in the 50'a or 60's. Couple this with tremendous debt to other nations, a whole lotta weapons, a whole lotta enemies, devaluing currency, and corruption widespread in the high level goverment and in most lower level goverments and you've got a powder keg waiting to blow.
Simply put, people will lose their patience. And with that loss of patience we'll see a revolution. The guys with the guns are already on the brink of it themselves.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
BTW, definitely a book everyone should read, worth it just for the anecdote of the guy who has been flying around the US using a photo ID which says he is the martian ambassador, and only had a problem when they started checking for an expiration date. Wouldn't want the Ex-martian ambassador on your plane!
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
This is just an opinion but it seems like the war on terrorism isn't a problem, it's a solution. How so? Politicians use it to much their agenda in the name of the "solution". Re-elect Bush Jr for the war on terrorism! This software is part of the "solution". In truth, the war on terrorism is about effective as the war on drugs. Look at a country with real terrorist problems like Israel -- responding with force just leads to more bloodshed on both sides. Americans write Osama off as being a wacky insane loon but his version of truth isn't so different than ours. Until America wakes up and realizes why people hate us and DOES something about it we're going to lose the war on terrorism. We can't become allies to people one second, train and arm them, and then turn our backs on them when we get what we want. Maybe we need peace with terrorists instead of war against them.
Basically, we have another instance of the current government administration taking advantage of the fact that our "freedoms are threatened" by terrorism to implement some sort of control and monitoring device on the entire population. I'm almost immune to the talk of it by now though, as we've had countless instances of things like this being proposed.
My favorite recent John LeCarre quote
(from the constant gardner i think_)
"in a civilized country one never knows"[who is watching you]
My personal opinion on the matter is that you can't fight a war against terrorism without looking at what the root causes of that terrorism are
True enough, but most people that say so aren't really interested in finding out - they *think* they already know. They'll cite poverty, or income inequality, colonialism and western arrogance. Yet in their own example of patronizing western arrogance they refuse to take the terrorists own statements about motives at face value. Apparently they believe brown people are incapable of self-knowledge and must be deciphered by enlightened western intellectuals to discern their "real" motives. In this regard the conservatives grant the terrorists more dignity as fellow humans - they take the terrorists at their word regarding motives and goals and find no room for compromise.
The islamist terrorists want an end to western colonialism, including not only the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the abolition of Israel (and the withdrawal of Spain from Andalusia) but also to be free from the imposition of western values regarding the status of women in society and quant western notions about "human rights". They want to establish a pure islamic society governed by sharia law as interpreted by the most extreme wahhabi doctrine. Their religion teaches an absolute morality, it teaches that man is not fallen, nor is he good, but that man is weak and needs the help (control) of the theocratic state in order to live a virtuous life. Their doctrine also teaches that those outside of the helpful control of the theocratic state must someday be brought in to it (for their own good of course). Any loss of territory is cause for jihad - holy war to recover land and peoples that had once been under submission to God. The theocratic state must ever expand - never shrink.
The people that believe this and that join al quaeda are NOT the poor and downtrodden but members of the ruling and middle classes. Well educated, reasonably wealthy, even quasi-westernized believers of a triumphalist, extreme Wahabism. They feel humiliated by western success and Islamic failure and by the past and present wrongs of colonialism and the decline of their culture currently and most shockingly represented by westernized women freely going about uncovered against all tradition and religious doctrine.
It doesn't take "six degrees" to separate W and Bin Laden. The Bin Laden family was a major investor in W's first company, Harkin Energy (of which he was CEO). That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it does show what a small world we live in...
Yeah, especially given that Bush and bin Laden are connected by much fewer than six degrees...
Consider how nicely the bin Laden family was treated in the days immediately following 9/11, when the government allowed a plane to fly around and pick them up to take them out of the country after only the most cursory FBI screening. (No one else was allowed to fly at the time except the military.) I mean, normally the relatives of a suspect in a murder will be questioned to see if they can lead you to the suspect or provide any evidence that he either did or didn't do the crime. But Bushes and the bin Ladens go way back, and they got off the hook. Way to be "strong on terrorism", Bush.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.