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FBI Data Mining For More Than Just Terrorists
jcatcw writes "Computerworld reports that the FBI is using data mining programs to track more than just terrorists. The program's original focus was to identify potential terrorists, but additional patterns have been developed for identity theft rings, fraudulent housing transactions, Internet pharmacy fraud, automobile insurance fraud, and health-care-related fraud. From the article: 'In a statement, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the report [on the data mining] was four months late and raised more questions than it answered. The report "demonstrates just how dramatically the Bush administration has expanded the use of [data mining] technology, often in secret, to collect and sift through Americans' most sensitive personal information," he said. At the same time, the report provides an "important and all-too-rare ray of sunshine on the department's data mining activities," Leahy said. It would give Congress a way to conduct "meaningful oversight" he said.'"
Nothing to see here. This story was on the front page less than 24 hours ago3 24211
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/11/2
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
Ha. Tomorrow the FBI will tell us that they're using that data to find pedophiles online, so it'll all be OK.
I mean, if they don't think of the children, who will?
from yesterday, almost word-for-word.
Maybe you can license their software to data mine this site for dupes.
ArcherB
Take it with a grain of salt.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
Again????
Dupe... http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/07/11/2324211.shtml
Slashdot could use some data mining of recent articles...
Computerworld reports that the FBI is using data mining programs to track more than just terrorists.
Is this really a shock to anyone?
This was just on SlashDot yesterday: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/11/23 24211
Do you even bother to look at the site, you know, just to check that the story hasn't been posted already?
I mean, c'mon... it's not like you're doing any real work.
To datamine their own news roll for dupes.
Latest Revelations on the FBI's Data Mining of America
Lately, the FBI has taken to posting multiple articles on the same topic on web sites in order to disrupt readers who think they already saw the same story.
I for one welcome our Democratic identity theft rings-supporting, fraudulent housing transactions-endorcing, Internet pharmacy fraud-protecting, automobile insurance fraud-defending, and health-care-related fraud-enabling Overloards? On behalf of all the criminals concerned with their privacy, a Big Thank You to Patrick Leahy!
In all seriousness, is the Senator aware that none of that info collected could be used to convict anyone, or that you cannot even use it to get a warrant, and all it does is tell the officers where to focus their limited resources for legal evidence collection? First Stevens with his internet tubes, now Leahy with his Criminal Privacy protections.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Something seems awfully odd about the last batch of F.B.I. press releases...
... no SHIT, Dr. Brilliance.
They datamine, and when something suspicious turns up they look for corroborative evidence and get a warrant. Nobody in the Pentagon is sitting there reading your email, just as nobody at Google is reading your GMail to figure out what ads to serve you.
i'd be surprised if they weren't doing this.
It's the FBI's job to look for domestic criminals. As long as they are doing their jobs without being intrusive into my law-abiding life, I am content with them. The second they cross that line (and I don't consider data mining to be crossing that line), I will be pissed.
I'm surprised that the FBI can pull off anything of this magnitude considering how they handled Virtual Case File
See why at Globaltics
Vere are your papers, citizen comrade?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I wasn't surprised yesterday. What makes you think I'll be more surprised today?
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Government conducting "meaningful oversight" over government? Oh boy, I feel safe now.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
"Surprise, surprise surprise!"
I mean seriously, did anyone think otherwise? Let's see... You've got at your disposal a giant database of every person in the country, their financial activities, their social security numbers, their purchases, their personal tastes, their locations, their income, their interests, their criminal records, their political leanings, their emails, IMs, personal communications, and most importantly their RELATIONSHIPS-- who they call, who their family is, where they travel, etc.
Amazon and lastfm use this kind of thing to figure what kind of music you're likely to like and/or what items you're gonna be most interested in. Do you really think with all this tasty information the government isn't going to use it for ALL KINDS of purposes?
They'll be able to do searches using probability and relationships to identify all kinds of commonalities between "undesirables"... who knows what it might be that puts you on the wrong list... maybe you share the same taste in "music PLUS shoes size PLUS income PLUS you leave too close to a mosque" and BAM, you light up as a 97% potential political dissident. Oh, and look, you're having an affair too. How convenient.
This shit is scary. I'm not surprised they're using this information for domestic crimes (which of course they're not allowed to do, not that it could possibly be admissible. How could a court accept evidence from a nationally secretive/illegal spying program? That is, unless they're getting tips from anonymous gov't sources that never show up in a courtroom...).
I AM worried about what else they're using it for (breaking up political adversaries, busting government bids, economic manipulations, blackmail, etc.) that we won't find out about for 50 years, if at all.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This to me is the core question. Are less of these schemes actually happening now that these huge powers have been given? Because the government has some pretty extraordinary powers now, and my world world somehow still seems more dangerous than it used to be!
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Who wants to bet that political dissident groups are being monitored through this program? I mean, it kind of goes without saying, since their primary domestic target is environmental activists. The FBI and the US government in general has a long history of using ostensibly crime-focused programs to infiltrate and neutralize political enemies (see the American Indian Movement [and Leonard Peltier], Martin Luther King Jr., United Slaves, the Black Panthers [and Mark Clark, Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Alex Rackley, H Rap Brown, Geronimo Pratt], the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Liberation Army, groups struggling for Puerto Rican independence, Students for a Democratic Society, Earth First! [and Judi Bari], various militia groups, even church peace groups and smaller political parties like the various socialists. Not to mention nonaligned activists like individual environmentalists who've been set up or entrapped in recent years.
For those who don't know, COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) was an FBI initiative targeting American citizens engaged in "objectionable" political activity. Instead of arresting and prosecuting criminals, this secret and illegal program sought to neutralize targets by:
- creating a culture of fear and paranoia (psychological warfare) through whispering campaigns, surveillance, illegal search, seizure and entry;
- infiltration, provocation and entrapment;
- legal harassment (such as repeatedly arresting leaders of targeted organizations for minor infractions, keeping them behind bars while they awaited a hearing or scrambled to make bail; also including falsified show trials such as the "tennis court murders", where Pratt was convicted of murders that were committed while he was, according the FBI's own surveillance records, 400 miles away);
- violence and murder (notably the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark).
While the COINTELPRO moniker has been disbanded, its methods extend into FBI practices to this day.
I hope that your FBI has better success with Data Mining than junk mailers. How may credit card offers have you had this week? Responded to any?
These companies are big-time users of Data Mining and your name was no doubt picked as a 'likely to respond'.
I work for a bank that is a heavy user of 'Data Mining'. Often the best we can do is 2 or 3 percent better than 'no mail' (lift over control for those of you in the industry).
If you can build a model that results in five percent response above 'no mail' you are looking at a 'Great Success' to quote Borat.
I think the best approach to finding potential terrorists is ground-level intelligence myself. Just my two cents . .
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" - John Lydon, San Francisco 1978
Would you Americans mind telling me how it feels to live in a Capitalist Dictatorship?????
This isn't a true "If I've got nothing to hide, why should I worry" idea, but TFA doesn't mention that they are doing any sort of cracking or decrypting. If you're a criminal stupid enough to make your activities known in a public, obvious way, then I say the FBI should have at 'em.
That was openly discussed when the idea of a Department of Homeland Security was being talked about.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Expecting the Democrats to pull away powers from FBI aftersuch blatant abuse will NOT happen.
There will be a huge cry, brownie points scoring, a few low-levels at FBI who were unfortunate enough to track their ex-spouses will be fired...but seriously this concentration of power in Executive will continue.
The Democrats are not willing to seriously bring the constitution back to balance, because when their Dem (and dumb) president takes charge in 2008 they need that power.
Good or Bad, Bush and Cheney showed the way to the nomads Democrats that Executive Privilege is something you can use and abuse at will.
Once elected, a president never needs to worry about popularity contest since he will never be unseated except when he gets a Monica...
If the dems were really serious about the welfare of soldiers and countrymen, they would have raised a BIG cry in newspapers about kicking cheney out of office first and would have brought and failed maybe atleast 3 impeachment resolutions now.
Bush has acknowledged that Plame's cover was blown by someone in his admin. We know who did that.
So explain why dems are hemming and slowing down...
The next decade will see more of power thrust in hands of a president who is unwise and unfit to wield them.
Ron Paul was right in questioning the right things: Unfortunately the press has frozen him out since he questions their profits ultimately.
If the Dems were serious about fellow citizens they would have done the following by now:
1. Passed a law forcing Free Medicare and state-subsidized medical insurance like MA has done.
2. Voted to impeach Cheney over abuse of power and leaking the identity of agent.
3. Censured Bush for commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby.
4. Refused to pass any funding which will help the war and bring the Govt to a screeching halt: same like the republicans did in 1990s to Clinton (even though he balanced the budget).
5. Talk tough just like Bush and state publicly that this president is violating the people's trust and misleading them.
6. Drag Colin Powell to a Subpoena and ask him to explain under oath to the senate why he recommended war and who twisted intelligence.
7. Order the Wash DC mayor to arrest and produce aides of president who refused to obey a subpoena instead of going to courts.
8. Reopen the 9-11 commission to discuss discrepancies.
9. Censure NSA and pass a law prohibint it from listening to US citizens anywhere in the World.
10. Pass a law that preserves liberty and prevents the FBI from issuing gag orders to libraries.
Am betting $1,000 (which will be donated to ACLU if i fail) that the dems will do absolutely none of the steps described above, or even remotely challenge Bush or Cheney.
These Dems are puss!es of the first order and am waiting to see a Republican President reelected thus pushing the dems further into obscurity for failing us.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Abuse something? Invade privacy? *Insert shocker into American citizens*
But which title in the referenced postings makes it more clear as to what is going on?
1) "Data on Americans mined for terror risk" - Yahoo (AT&T, SBC...etc)
or
2) "FBI data mining programs target more than just terrorists, DOJ says" - ComputerWorld
Which headline attracts your attention and makes you want to read it?
Would suppliers of government information (AT&T running to give our phone records to government), have any interest in "burying" minor details from the phone information they regularly "give" (Sell -- may not be money, but they get payback, believe it) to the FBI? Would such an information provider have a vested interest in having Americans not probe too deeply at the lies that were told about the information "only being used to fight the War on Terror"? Did anyone really believed it would stop at that? Welcome to the evolving police state. Will we fall as low as the citizens in the USSR before the wall came down. We going to be like East Germany where 1 in 7 were "spies" for their secret police (isn't that sorta how the FBI is operating)? How low will Americans sink before they stand up and retake the government?
Any "ill-gotten" information gotten by the FBI (or any government agency) should invalidate any evidence obtained as a result of that information. Victims and their property should be held harmless from from government retaliation, enforcement or confiscation.
Anything short of these protections will entice the FBI to hold onto the info to use in future investigations when they need some more easy arrests or property to confiscate.
New police overlord-wanna-be's motto: "To Punish and Enslave" (via arbitrary and increasingly severe law prosecution with long sentences where the prisoners must perform work for private companies or the government). Oh, prisoners don't have rights? Isn't that convenient.
You people are paranoid...
Understandable given its history, and 20/20 hindsight. I work at this place and they can't read your email, know your secret lover, etc. They can only know what you tell Uncle Sam - other more sensitive, more private info, they have to get subpoenas. Then there's the technical, it's not trivial to hook up a new data source.
Isn't this what the swedish secret police has been doing for about twenty years? I don't see what all the hubbub is about. Perhaps the americans should get used to the idea of being watched...
What's all this talk of patterns? Everyone knows it's three psychic albinos in sensory deprivation tanks!
America, Home of the Brave.
"And who will guard the Praetorian Guard?"
Indeed!
Ah, we see, the 'privatized industries'
(Read: HIRED MERCENARIES HERE)
will sort out all that data -
and save everyone from Katrina?
LOL!
REPENT!
The end is neigh!
IT IS ALL FUD!
WOT? Nevermind.
RR
If you're interested in reading about some of their current practices, read Craig Rosebraugh's "Burning Rage of a Dying Planet". Rosebraugh was the de facto "spokesman" for the ELF (back before 9/11, when they still existed), but committed no actual crimes. He discusses at length the tactics the FBI/ATF/NSA used to try to get him to snitch... it's a decent read.
I was really hoping to click on this link and read a summary akin to "FBI uses technology to try to mine for fish. l4mz0r n3b5."
Congress has shown that it will do jack shit about the Bush Administration's trampling of our laws, and will do jack in the future about it. They are all crooks. Period.
No, they're in Afghanistan. You're not fighting them there. Or anywhere, really. Your government's just bending you over a barrel.
An oil barrel.
Lies about crimes
It could be worse: he could be a Republican. And we all know how Republicans loves them some corruption somethin' fierce!
Personally, I say we test this data mining, and start at the top: create a database of all politicians and everything they do. Add in their families, friends, associates, throw in every lobbyist who does business with the government, and every company which does so.
We can then use the data mining info to search for corruption, fraud, kickbacks, bribes, conspiracies, etc. Something like that would probably put every Republican in the country behind bars! OMG, that would be the victory for America since Yorktown.