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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.
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?
I know eh? Us guys in IT, we have to handle alot. All those log files, so little time to sift through them all. How do you find the problem? I mean if only there was a program to help us sort through it --
Oh hey, whats this ad for? Splunk?
Could that handle Travel, hotel, and airline records that the FBI have been gathering?
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.
amen. as a federal sector person myself, I honestly am amazed that any branch of the government functions at all. Fraud, waste and abuse are at every level-mostly due to the bureaucracy. They'll shove that data into some database, build a "new and improved" proprietary frontend for Oracle (check that-they'll contract it out, take the "lowest" bid, and spend the next five years patching it into oblivion), and browbeat the probies rounded up to operate it when all it can produce is that Americans buy lots of beer and that Hoover was a cross-dresser.
not that I'm a bitter federal employee managing a POS database or anything...
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!
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
they don't need to be omniscient to be a threat to the public. all they need to do is be able to go after enough people to make the public think twice about challenging them.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I wouldn't be so sure about that - I've heard there are machines available nowadays which are specifically designed to store and rapidly process information in vast amounts. They're called conpewters or something like that.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Mod this guy up. As someone from a field who tries to separate signal from noise and develop predictive models on a daily basis (in supposedly well-controlled conditions) I can say that they have their work cut out for them. I mean, I use proven methodologies in clear-cut and well-designed experiments and end up with data that is extremely difficult to manipulate (genome wide association studies). These guys/gals are trying to observe millions of humans interacting in indiosyncratic and complex ways with millions of input-points, and they think they can use that data? Talk about multiple-testing correction. Bonferroni is the tip of the iceberg in such a data-set. The scary thing is, if you set something like this up, you will get "answers". It might be the result of a random walk, but who in the "jury of your peers" is going to understand that defense? "But your honor, they didn't even define an acceptable false discovery rate!"
It isn't so much the privacy that is of concern (though that is a concern, too). The problem with so much data is false positives, and the abuse that results from them.
Look up how Bayes' Theorem relates to random drug testing, for example. You will easily see how such systems are prone to false positives. And in a case like this -- where many magnitudes more people are innocent than guilty -- it gets that much worse. You will end up prosecuting (and possibly punishing) hundreds or thousands of innocent people for every guilty party you find.
NOT GOOD.
The public challenging them isn't the problem. It's the guys after their 72 virgins and THEY ARE NOT "THE PUBLIC".
Making the public think twice does nothing but make our lives more of a hassle. Making the guys seeking an express check in to paradise think twice doesn't do much good either. They are planning to die, and that's if the operation is successful. Taking one for the sleeper cell and getting caught just means the guys in the next cell will be getting first choice in the afterlife.
Eventually terrorists won't have to actually do anything. They come up with a zany and half-baked plan, get caught, cause everyone to overreact and then they've caused more damage then if they actually did manage to blow something up.
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.
But then they'll be successful in their primary objective, which is self-perpetuation and a larger budget next year.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Sadly, we are never going to know the answers.
I am sure there has been at least one nearly successful action in the US since 2001 that is utterly classified because it would tend to cause a panic - or a violent attack on people of a certain religious faith. So we aren't going to be informed, probably for the better.
All we are going to hear about is a few misguided individuals that had maybe a 5% chance of pulling something off, if they were really lucky. And the American population just goes on thinking that (a) all this terrorist stuff is way overblown, and (b) our government is doing a really good job. Of course, neither of these is all that true.
I suspect if the truth came out about one or maybe even two close calls people would utterly freak out. So in this case, secrecy protects us all.
Target, Citibank, and Visa don't have the power to put me in prison for one....
Target, Citibank, and Visa won't lock you up in GITMO, bar your right of Habeas corpus, and let you rot for a decade because you went to Anarchy.com. But they will offer you 10% off of your next Molotov Cocktail purchase of more than $100!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
They come up with a zany and half-baked plan, get caught, cause everyone to overreact and then they've caused more damage then if they actually did manage to blow something up.
Seems to be the way it works now....
they can if they are the only ones with defensive weapons.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Heh! That's assuming you would even get to see a "jury of your peers". So far it's been mainly trial by oubliette.
I am sure there has been at least one nearly successful action in the US since 2001 that is utterly classified because it would tend to cause a panic - or a violent attack on people of a certain religious faith. So we aren't going to be informed, probably for the better.
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?
I think that sunlight is the best disinfectant in this case. by showing the true nature of domestic attacks or terrorist actions, we can clearly demonstrate who is operating on the side of truth and humanity. It is best to lead by example, not cloaking everything under secrecy and privilege. If the real information is not available anywhere and we are just told to "obey authority", that's not so much secrecy as it's forcefeeding denial. Tell us what the real problems are, not to buy lots of duct tape and pray.
Personally, taking a long view, I'd rather risk losing a city to a terrorist nuke than risk a Stalinist catastrophe.
I absolutely agree. However, it's worth recognizing that if a US city got nuked, it'd make a Stalinist catastrophe far more likely as panicked citizens would almost be begging government to take away their rights and exploit them.
I am sure there has been at least one nearly successful action in the US since 2001 that is utterly classified because it would tend to cause a panic - or a violent attack on people of a certain religious faith.
Which religion? Democrats or Republicans? More seriously, I've heard this kind of argument before. If government actually had stopped a nearly successful action in the US, they'd advertise it 24/7 *unless* it reveals relevant government agencies as acting entirely incompetent in the case.
The real shadowy agencies are much smarter than that. If someone finds a bit of the truth, they don't chase him down (which would tend to give him credibility), they leak that truth along with a bunch of obviously bogus and silly information just to discredit him.
Not posting anonymously because They will know who I am anyway.
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
From the effing article:
"It's unclear how the FBI got the records."
Geez, TIA has been in operation for some time now: all those gazillion government contractors supplying realtime data (from First Data to the clowns who operate the toll booth cameras to the Pay-for-view Viacom, etc., etc., etc.) with SAIC being the number one intel contractor, Mantech, etc., and who does the background checks for the federal government? Pearson Govt. Svcs. owned by Veritas Capital, the folks who used to own DynCorp, with the remainder done by XE (formerly Blackwater), and USIS (Carlyle Group).
Yes, that's exactly how they do it.
Also, I have evidence that aliens control McDonalds.
And Obama is really a woman.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
"I am sure there has been at least one nearly successful action in the US since 2001 that is utterly classified because it would tend to cause a panic"
Why would they hide panic inducing information while simultaneously filling the airwaves with panic inducing disinformation?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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]
They do just that and they don't check if your qualified enough to issue such evidence. Peter Donnely gave an example in his TED Talk called "How stats fool juries". This projects result's will be no more relevant than the MIT's gaydar's but it has the backing of the FBI. You're going to have a hard time disproving it in court.
This is the kind of view that makes me worry about the state of society. What kind of anarchist buys Molotov Cocktails?
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