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Data Mining In Law Enforcement
jcatcw points out a blog entry by Scott McPherson, CIO for the Florida House of Representatives. McPherson condemns the state of data sharing and data mining in law enforcement, saying that the US causes itself a great deal of trouble by focusing more on "antiterror armor and nuke-sniffing devices" than a useful information distribution network. He discusses a few such projects, and how they could have directly affected the events of 9/11. Quoting:
"One of those ingenious things that actually worked, Seisint founder Hank Asher's brilliant MATRIX system, remains mired in controversy and politics. Hank showed me MATRIX just a few short weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Using law enforcement data and commercial data, all of the commercial data available in the public domain, Asher's query produced [hijacker Mohamed] Atta's photo -- and about 80 others, many of them fellow 9/11 hijackers, many of them associates of the 9/11 hijackers. It was simple data mining and algorithms, and none of the information was obtained illegally."
I keep watching the bar for spying on people get lower and lower.
First it was suspected enemy agentz.
Then it was suspected associates, even though separation may be 3-4 people away in a chain.
Now its anyone suspected of a crime.
How long until everyone is dumped in this database for not just intel or law enforcment, but potential employers, stalkers, and violent criminals data mining for easy marks?
It was simple data mining and algorithms, and none of the information was obtained illegally. 1. He doesn't tell us what the "Asher's query" was, leaving us with the impression that anyone could magically ask the right question and stop crime.
2. I wonder what he means by "commercial data available in the public domain". Either it's commercial and you have to pay for it, or it's public domain. My long distance calling patterns are commercial data (and is sold by the phone company for marketing), but they're not "public domain" in the way that most of us would understand it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Exactly. "Connecting the dots" is always easier when you know the connections. Discovering them is a lot harder.
This guy also doesn't seem to have much knowledge of intel gathering. The idea that forward projection isn't happening is...uh...wrong, and that's all I'll say on the matter (disclaimer: I'm ex-NSA)
He also doesn't seem to comprehend the concept of misdirection, as the term is used by performance magicians.
I'd guess he can't even pronounce the name, "Sun Tzu", let alone have read the writings.
I have a lot of issues with the various things in this article, but I'll keep it to one for now. Maybe Atta could have been arrested because of better coordination between local law enforcement. But his arrest almost certainly would NOT have prevented 9/11. Moussawi was supposed to be there that fateful day, and it still went down. One person arrested, even one of the many masterminds, would not have prevented it.
Also, no local law enforcement officer would have been able to piece together this plot from looking through one car BEFORE the event. Piloting multiple planes simultaneously into various landmarks was just too implausible to be believed before it happened. Even if John McClain himself figured it out, he wouldn't be able to convince anyone to help him stop 19 other people from boarding planes in multiple airports.
Sharing information sure beats what we're doing now, both in law enforcement and the intelligence community where I work, which is holding everything close so no one else can take credit. But let's not exaggerate the benefits here.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"It was simple data mining and algorithms, and none of the information was obtained illegally"
It's a shame more of the public doesn't realize that it's not necessary to either break the law or pass laws to legalize violations of one's rights, to provide reasonable protection for the public good.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You often hear about the police pulling over some guy for whatever reason and finding out he had an outstanding warrant or something. I've always wondered why they don't equip police cars with a video camera and the ability to OCR every single plate that comes into view. License plates all use the same font, so they should be easy to OCR, and in theory they use a high-visibility color scheme (though that's not always the case.) The camera would scan, read the characters, and compare it to a big list of stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, vehicles that fled accident scenes or other crimes, vehicles that belong to people that have warrants, Amber alerts, etc., and any "interesting" plates would pop up on the laptop that's now in most police cars.
I'm not saying it would put up a big "pull over and detain!" notice, but it could pop up the plate, the vehicle it should be on, the owner, and why it's of interest, then the officer would decide what to do. I.e., if a car pops up as belonging to a wanted 22-year-old male but it's obviously someone else in the car (too old, wrong gender, etc.) then they would ignore it.
Of course, like anything, there is the potential for abuse, but before you freak out about privacy, remember that driving, by definition, is a very public act. We're not talking about millimeter-wave radio or looking behind closed curtains with an infrared camera, we're talking about reading the required-by-law several-inch-high unique identifier on a hunk of steel with unobstructed windows on the public roads. If you're wanted and don't want to get caught, it's your responsibility to not go out in public with a visible unique identifier.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This guy also doesn't seem to have much knowledge of intel gathering. The idea that forward projection isn't happening is...uh...wrong, and that's all I'll say on the matter (disclaimer: I'm ex-NSA)
If you're ex-NSA, then you also know that the difficulty isn't in writing the algorithms, it's in getting somebody to stitch together all the goddamn databases that are strung out all over creation.
Shit, *I* can write the social networking algorithms, anomaly detection, etc. But it doesn't do any good if you don't have the data integrated, and despite what's happened the last 8 years we still don't have it.
I also don't get the false dichotomy the author uses to rag on sensor-based detection.
The fact of the matter is that most "innocent" civilians aren't at all "innocent". We all break the law, on a daily basis. Be it five over the speed limit, downloading music, misreporting income, littering, whatever, we almost all break some part of the law. It's left up to the officer's discretion to enforce or not enforce. And giving him more information with which to make that decision isn't a bad thing. You can't say we can't have more efficient tools because they can be abused more efficiently. You obviously don't live anywhere where there's a real crime problem. The same analysis tools that are used in this database could be applied to the police force and used to examine the cops for abuses. This should increase transparency, and that should decrease abuse.
Oh honey look... How cute... an angry slashdotter!