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DHS Ends Data-Mining Program
ExE122 writes "The Department of Homeland Security has "scrapped an ambitious anti-terrorism data-mining tool." The tool, called ADVISE, was being tested with live data rather than test data without having proper security in place. This program had already been under criticism by privacy advocates and members of Congress. However, according to the article, a DHS spokesman assures that the program will be restarted once the security and cost are re-evaluated."
In other words, it will be revived when this blows over and people forget about it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
eom
Website Hosting
Tor like oatmeals!
I don't appreciate being denied access automatic checkin machines when I fly.
I don't why Im no longer allowed to use these machines, but I do appreciate being tipped off that the government is watching me.
From the summary above:
"However, according to the article, a DHS spokesman assures that the program will be restarted once the security and cost are re-evaluated."
From the article:
"DHS spokesman Russ Knocke told The Associated Press on Wednesday the project was being dropped.
"ADVISE is not expected to be restarted," Knocke said."
The next sentance in the article is the problematic one.
"DHS' Science and Technology directorate "determined that new commercial products now offer similar functionality while costing significantly less to maintain than ADVISE."
So they're not restarting it, they are dropping it. They are not, however, dropping the functionality. Just moving to another platform.
scrapped - adj. - Broken up into smaller pieces and leveraged across different layers of the bureaucracy. As in: Building a new prototype from scrapped metal.
I guarantee there will be barely-to-marginally recognizable chunks of ADVISE in some other, less scrutinized department soon.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There is no complete victory over this sort of thing.
--
Toro
FTA ... "ADVISE is not expected to be restarted," Knocke said. DHS' Science and Technology directorate "determined that new commercial products now offer similar functionality while costing significantly less to maintain than ADVISE." ...
Earlier, DHS said testing would resume once appropriate privacy analyses and public notices were completed. "ADVISE was one of the broadest of 12 data-mining projects in the agency."
One down, only 11 more projects to test with live data.
I don't care what data mining tool they use, as long as it actually works. The problem is that they have all this data to mine in the first place.
My work here is dung.
I think this program will really help out
FTA: "ambitious"
Who fucking wrote this, Fox News?
How about "illegal"?
WTF else do you think DHS is trying to do but keep vigilent to ensure Americans' freedom? This is their job.
A little healthy mistrust of the government is a good thing. But full-scale unsupported paranoia does no one any good.
DHS are the good guys.
When the Total Information Awareness program (the one with the odd all-seeing-eye logo) was closed down, people were happy... but it came back, and now we're to believe it's permanently killed this time?
The real problem is the supply of money. Without money no terrorist network can function, training and supplying insurgents of any sort costs a heck of a lot to do. It's not about whichever ideal people think they're striving for, it's political manipulation and money behind it. The US would make more ground investigating the US bank accounts of certain very rich nations who export petrochemicals and use profits to make this whole thing happen. Terrorism isn't a standard response, it's a political attack and must not be treated like petty crime.
I've not mentioned any brand of terrorism, many fit the bill -- please don't think I'm stereotyping here.
I can just visualize the scene, as the tired data miners head for home and a hot meal, pickaxes over their shoulders, all seven in a line singing "Hi Ho, Hi Ho!"
I hope Snow White cooked them a nice apple pie instead of tasting it herself.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
This program is like the Whack-A-Mole carnival game.
There it is, WHACK! It's gone. Then its head pops up again, WHACK! Wait, over there, WHACK!
And, on and on it goes.
They had operatives entering data from dumpster dives and the system got swamped with unprocessed rebate forms.
Squirrel!
i would like to know more about him (no not list the tor anonymizer, The person!!)
I'm sure the tapes are just getting flown by CIA charter planes to other places that it can happen in secret.
I say that half in jest, but seriously, how would we ever know?
I think I liked things better when data mining projects had the huevos to use as their logo an ominous Illuminati symbol scanning the globe.
There's something refreshingly honest about that, like a government putting WAR IS PEACE and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH on its buildings instead of pretending they're not a malevolent autocracy.
It's been proven already that their security is anything but security. At least that way it was (presumably) cheaper. It certainly wasn't any less secure.
There is no negative security.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Okay, firstly, this thing is never going to catch any terrorists. As a technology, it doesn't pass the laugh test. It was a joke when it was called Total Information Awareness, and it's a joke now.
This is not new, however - the military/intelligence apparatus in the US exists, in large part, to subsidize the development of high tech industry. Every marketing company in the country would *love* to have a tool developed that will aggragate and mine in the kind of data that this system treats. Furthermore, these firms can just trade data with eachother or get it from their clients, they don't need any kind of intrusive surveillance laws to get it.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
...the program will be restarted once the security and cost are re-evaluated."
You will be given a fair trial, followed by your execution.
It achieved sentience and disappeared into the infinite sea of networks. I believe it's currently seeking asylum in Japan.
Yeah, it's a terrible thing, violation of civil rights, but, ya know.. what's the hourly rate and skillset for this thing! Is there a soda perk, or, do we all get our complimentary terror fighting machine gun!
This is my sig.
It would be nice to say that "If we're lucky, it won't start up again until the Bush Administration is out of office", but that's not realistic - the folks who are doing this kind of thing won't stop unless there's a major restructuring of the National Security Apparatus, and I don't hear any of the major Democratic candidates saying they're going to fix it. Stuff like this was going on when Bill Clinton was in office (though not quite as rabidly), and Jonathan Edwards in particular was generally pro-surveillance during the 2004 elections debates.
Meanwhile, Moore's Law just keeps cranking away. The computer databases of the 1960s and 1970s that had everybody worried about privacy ran on machines with a lot less horsepower than my cellphone or iPod. This not only means that they can collect a lot more data, but queries that used to take a year's development work and a staff of a hundred people feeding the computers are now something an average employee can do on a whim at lunch hour (e.g. build an SQL query to find out how many Guatemalan immigrants lived near known activists.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe we should call it data trawling. Just throw out a big, wide net and see what you catch.
What?
Sometimes while surfing for asian pron, I will inexplicably visit "Scary Squirrel World", just to give fits to the DHS's ADVISE data-mining algorithms... JH http://www.scarysquirrel.org/page1.html
If Big Media is the Harvester of Eyes, does that make Apple an arms dealer?
...the program will be restarted once the security and cost are re-evaluated."
this is like saying:
"You will be given a fair trial, followed by your execution."
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck the chances are pretty good that its a duck. It could be a duck billed pladypus but what are the odds ? That is exactly what data mining is. If the data on which data mining algorithms are being run, is collected by legal means then data mining is a fair. If the data was collected by invasion of privacy in any way even running a sorting algorithm on it is unfair. It is the data collection that is good or evil. Data mining is neither good not evil.