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Newly Declassified FBI Docs Reveal Predictive Data System
An anonymous reader writes 'Newly declassified documents show that the FBI is developing a data-mining system to uncover terror sleeper cells. Among the 1.6 billion records in the National Security Analysis Center — tens of thousands of travel records, including hotel and airline records. Other revelations in the documents uncovered by a Wired.com FOIA request show that the feds want to expand the system for use in cyber-crime investigations, and it's already been used to scrutinize helicopter pilots and Philly cab drivers. The system has eerie resemblances to DARPA's once-banned Total Information Awareness program."
How about a data mining application to scour through political speeches and legislative records to identify politicians most- and least-likely to support such a scheme?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You know what, after all these years in IT, I say... give 'em as much data as they want. They'll choke and drown on it. The FBI is the most massively disorganized organization in the US Government. I would not worry about your privacy... they have trouble figuring out how to dress themselves in the morning.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Reminds me of the crap the DHS is pulling with gathering travel information...
Bite my shiny metal ass!
You didn't really think TIA was going away, did you?
The federal government (especially those under the executive branch) will do whatever the hell they please, and scandals only force them to whitewash and restart unpopular programs under different names. /rant
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Ignore that silly bit of domestic surveillance you see over there. Look over here at this funny video of a white kid pretending to be a pimp and getting tax advice!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Someone has to feed the conspiracy theorists;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Do something out of the ordinary, once or twice a day. Deviate from your normal routine in very absurd and unusual ways for no apparent reason.
Twinstiq, game news
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/get-your-fbi-sp/
While i'm not too keen on this, I do have to ask: how is this different than Target teaming up with Citibank and Visa to track your habits and personalize your advertising exposure?
Not that I'm happy with corporate tracking schemes, it seems to me as the accuracy of pattern matching increases, so does the value of commercially compiled databases to governments as an outright buy (rather than a govt DIY project).
As Bob Gates has suggested, off the shelf parts can make for a cheaper option. As American culture gets increasingly digitized, so does the availability of information that can be abused.
The question remains : does it deliver ? And how many false positives ? How many real positives *before* they act ?
The number is 1-800-ALQ-AEDA.
Have they backtested the predictive system on the policies and actions of BushCo Inc.?
Yours In Domodedovo,
Philboyd Studge
And how much does it ruin your life if you come up as a false positive?
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
What's a Philly cab?
A better solution: offer anybody who's a member of al Qaeda $10 million to knock it the fuck off.
Judging from the CIA's released estimates of membership, we'd wind up a couple billion ahead at that rate. That's what I call a "free-market solution"!
It'll look something like this...
Maybe the winning team(s) could predict terrorist activity.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/21/2312245/BellKor-Wins-Netflix-1-Million-By-20-Minutes
that for years many of us took for granted that we would always live in a free society and left a trail behind us. Now its too late.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know what, after all these years in IT, I say... give 'em as much data as they want. They'll choke and drown on it.
Nah; they'll just follow the model of the RIAA and other "business" firm that they love. Pretty soon we'll be reading about the FBI busting a terrorist ring - of 2nd graders in Hobunk. They'll have lots of "evidence" - the testimony of other 2nd graders in the school, including a couple that are FBI informants.
They'll also be prosecuting grandmas, though in that case, there might be some real reasons that granny has joined a terrorist organization. Or is it a sewing circle? It's hard to tell the difference, y'know, especially inside a multi-terabyte database.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Last night the Vermont Attorney General spoke to a small group of good Democrats and me about his various ongoing efforts. He's the guy who was suing the phone companies a few years ago for cooperating with Bush on spying on us, so generally on the bright side of things. But he ended his talk by claiming that the same file sharing software his college-enrolled sons are likely using is also being used to spread "millions" of child porn images.
I almost raised my hand to ask him if he was aware of the difference between public file sharing and the darknets, but it didn't seem wise to imply that I had any idea about such stuff to the state's chief law enforcement officer. He has this notion that he can force ISPs to stop file sharing, all in the name of stopping child porn distribution.
Someone should probably tell people like him about how the international terrorists can also use P2P, right? Because if you're drawing up massive terror plans, you're going to be just as likely as a serious child sex abuser to put the evidence where anyone and everyone can find it, right?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Based on what exactly?
But no, you're probably right. Best just let them do whatever they want. It's in all our interests. Or so they say. But I'm sure they're right.
Brazil all over again...
it's already been used to scrutinize helicopter pilots and Philly cab drivers
This sounds a lot like the plot of the movie Conspiracy Theory where Mel Gibson plays a paranoid cab driver who publishes a newsletter of various conspiracy theories jumbled together from random public sources (this was before the age of blogs) and is chased by personnel from a shadowy government agency in black SUVs and helicopters (ala the USSS).
Obligatory Minority Report goes here...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Although I am sure many have said it, for me the most memorable instance of it was by Robert Anton Wilson: "Government organizations never die, they simply change names".
-Oz
I remember hearing a comment back after the 9/11 attacks that the FBI database couldn't be searched like Google provides it's search queries. From that standpoint of modernization and capability, I say cheers to the FBI for making such a rebound (smells like Carnivore) 8 years later. Interestingly, or rather unsurprisingly, "The FBI declined to comment on the program."
Now on to the AI accusations.
"That could change if the FBI gets it hands on the data sources on its 2008 wish list. That list includes airline manifests sent to the Department of Homeland Security, the national Social Security number database, and the Postal Serviceâ(TM)s change-of-address database. There are also 24 additional databases the FBI is seeking, but those names were blacked out in the released data."
The results of such a query aren't too far off from that of a true prototype AI, which in it's operationally completed state would provide the best prediction bang for the buck there ever was in the history of mankind. And how best to employ that fledgling AI but in law enforcement pursuit of known terrorist criminals.
Where were they, what did they do and where are they now?
This is using Pascal's Wager as an argument to continue black budget funding. There have been several thwarted attacks like the liquid bomb plot in the UK, and these haven't been causing full blown panic. Do you think there will ever be another shoebomber, or did the very public incapacitation of John Walker Lindh by concerned, untrained passengers suddenly furnish a very real deterrent on any future flight?
John Walker Lindh was the "American Taliban," Richard Colvin Reid was the "Shoe Bomber."
I prefer Johnnie Walker Gold, Green or Blue, personally...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Isn't the point of a Sleeper Cell to sleep (aka no communication)?
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Too bad today's politicians are so cowardly.
Free Martian Whores!
no one batting an eye except for /. commentators.
and the ACLU.
"To stop the terrorists."
Most of the FBI's cases involve criminal conspiracy! (leaving aside the abuse of conspiracy laws or even the rare case where somebody is convicted of conspiring with themselves...)
Conspiracy Theorists are not all paranoid nutcases. Not all religious people are nutcases. Not all politicians are crooks (just most US ones.)
Just because some religious people think the world is going to end in 2012 (because 2000 didn't happen) or that Jesus is coming back in their lifetime or evolution and global warming is a scam... does not make the rest of them crazy nuts. A great number of them might have poor logic skills but not all of them.
A great number of conspiracy theorists may seem to be paranoid; but I would say that its probably not as large as you are led to believe by the stereotypes. One has to look at what paranoid actually means and how common conspiracies are before one can start labeling those who look use that common pattern and decide they are paranoid.
Any agreements / planning between politicians and lobbies to screw citizens is a conspiracy (many are legal too) and it is a huge problem its so commonplace. One could say conspiracy is the job of politicians (Why do think governments are designed to distribute power? The premise is that large conspiracies are harder to setup and maintain.)
Conspiracy "nuts" have said:
The healthcare industry is bribing our officials to stop reform (much more evident today.)
In 1999/2000, Bush was going to start war in Iraq, some even predicted Afghanistan!
Wiretapping of all Americans! (mostly proven; government attempted legal justification many times)
Forced confessions to fabricate testimony
Terror alerts exploited for political reasons
Play stupid and incompetent because Americans are tolerate if not reward it... (aka a front man)
JFK (I've never met someone from that era who fell for it; after the evidence was declassified in the 90s it became clear there was a fabricated cover up of something.)
In one of Frank Herbert's novels -- I forget which, one of the lesser-known books, not the Dune series -- there's a character who is a government assassin, whose specialty is assassinating members of other government agencies. The assassin and the victims are on the same side, but the assassin's department is charged with keeping the other departments from becoming too organized and powerful.
-kgj
As if that wasn't enough, the National Research Council datamining report said the same thing. From the summary:
The FBI obviously has seen these studies and knows what they say. So I can't help but assume their real motivation isn't to catch terrorists. Whether they're doing it to get information to blackmail/defame political opponents, to look like they're trying to catch terrorists, or something else - I don't know. But they're not dumb and they know this doesn't work for its stated purposes.