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The FBI's IT Expansion Plans
Lam1969 writes "The FBI is fast-tracking the hiring of IT professionals, reports Computerworld. Computer scientists, engineers, IT specialists and IT project managers are wanted to develop systems to support FBI analysts and agents working in the field. Large-scale database development projects are part of the FBI's IT expansion as well. From the article: "The FBI is also focusing on data warehousing as well as federated search technology, which allows a single search query to be deployed across a number of databases, regardless of whether those databases belong to the same protocol or platform.""
It's a government agency, what did you expect? They just let you in without any screening whatsoever?
The US government wants to make sure that, if you join their ranks, they know more about you than anybody else. IMO, a good thing.
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
> You mean google?
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no:
* Google is (primarily) a search engine for unstructured data (documents, web pages, etc)
* Data warehousing is a method of consolidating & distributing primarily structured data
* Federated searching of databases is a method of spreading a search across multiple databases
So, data warehousing would be used to consolidate explicit data from multiple sources like:
- financial, credit, and purchasing info
- legal history
- travel info
- demographics & psychographics
- personal relationship data (friends, family members, friends of friends, etc)
- organizational memberships
Once together within a data warehouse you can easily ship that integrated set of data to data marts for further analysis:
- trend analysis
- searching (not freeform like google with tons of false positives, but contextual)
- scoring - for degree of match between people & organizations and established profiles
This is considerably more powerful than google for this application, though a google-like solution would also be useful for all the unstructured documents. The warehouse could even incorporate links to documents with the integrated personal info.
Federated searching is a completely separate solution that overlaps warehousing: in which you use modern capabilities of db2 or oracle (but db2 especially) to create a virtual database that maps to possibly hundreds of databases behind it. One query will be sent to all that it applies to (the optimiser is smart enough to know which to send it to usually). The reason for federation is that it is supposedly easier to implement than warehousing (don't have to move data into another platform). The downsides though include:
- performance will generally stink
- aggregate operations like scoring or trending can't be done on large sets of data
- it's fragile, and prone to break easily
But perhaps as an initial deliverable it could allow you to provide narrowly scoped searches across a variety of databases very quickly.
I'm not surprised that they're planning to do this. Ok, well a little surprised that they didn't do it at least four years ago - the data warehousing at least is a set of very mature methodologies & technologies. But they'll probably blow it - remember the $170m fiasco with SAIC over their "Virtual Case File" project?
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/13/14
Note that the Virtual Case File project also included a data warehouse. That wsa probably flushed though, so no code reuse I suspect.
Well, you not entirely wrong, just mostly.
A passport does not "count for three" forms of ID. First, your birth certificate is not a form of ID, only proof of citizenship for the person named on the certificate. Your Social Security card is not a form of identification, only proof that the person named on the card has registered with the IRS and Social Security Administration. Your Passport is not a replacement for a driver's license, as you do not even need a driver's license to get a passport, and try whipping out your passport the next time you get pulled over for speeding. I also normally use my passport as a form of ID. I have never had a situation that called for two forms of ID, where they would accept the passport as more than one of those forms.
You are correct that a passport has "name, dob, sex, id number, image, address (also required to be physical " however, that address does not have to be verified. If you check the official U.S. passport site. You will see that you are required to bring proof of citizenship(Birth Certificate or Naturalization Certificate except under extraordinary circumstances), a valid picture ID (Driver's license, Government ID, or Military ID) with a picture in which you are recognizable, two photos, and the fee. When I got my passport a couple years ago it wasn't even mentioned that my permanent address on the form was different from my P.O. Box which was listed on my driver's license. On my latest driver's license, they did change it to my home address, but, since I don't have any "official" mail (bills, etc.) sent to my home address, they were content with the pile of junk mail with my name and home address on it. Amusingly, when I bought my new car recently, I had to take my second choice in lenders, because the first refused to accept my application without some "official mail" proving my residence. Even the (now proper) address on both my passport and driver's license was not acceptable to them.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Anyone they hire will oversee (*cough* do nothing) the contractor who will have to get cooperation from a different company's contractor to be able to access a critical network/computer/keyboard which will take ~6 months per, at which point the contractor(s) will be able to implement the design of the warehouse which was written up by analysts with no comprehension of the actual complexities of which they are writing, and be told it has to be done in 3 months.
I'm currently waiting on my pen and paper order. I think its at 8 months now. I'm not kidding. But if you think I'm going to office depot and spending my money on pens and paper that as soon as I bring it in will be raided by my coworkers / fellow contractors... you're sadly mistaken.
For the record, the "department" I work in (for lack of a better word) is 95% contractors, working from over a dozen different companies, all fighting for the same contracts. Nothing ever gets done
Transactions of more than $10,000 must be reported (see the Bank Secrecy Act, I believe)
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
No not necessarily. I know of a study started about 2 years ago that was meant to be the glue between multiple databases/platforms but so far the FBI hasn't finalized requirements and the prototype is barely surviving. Does Google work with databases hosted on mainframes? If not then it won't work for what the FBI would need it for.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address