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US Monitoring Database Reaches Limit, Quits Tracking Felons and Parolees

Posted by timothy on from the paid-by-the-row dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Thousands of US sex offenders, prisoners on parole and other convicts were left unmonitored after an electronic tagging system shut down because of data overload. BI Incorporated, which runs the system, reached its data threshold — more than two billion records — on Tuesday. This left authorities across 49 states unaware of offenders' movement for about 12 hours." As the astonished submitter asks, "2 billion records?"

21 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Now.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They just need to upgrade it so they can track the other 4 billion properly.

    Damn sick criminals! ALL OF THEM.

    1. Re:Now.. by gmack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I really doubt space was the actual problem because TFA says "BI Incorporated, which runs the system, reached its data threshold - more than two billion records - on Tuesday. " The max value of a signed 32 bit int is 2 147 483 647. It is much more likely that someone set an index value on the database to int years ago and then forgot about it.

    2. Re:Now.. by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To quote some lyrics from one of my favorite bands "Ain't it funny how the school doors closed, round the time that the factory doors closed, round the time that 100,000 jails cells opened up to greet you, like the reaper". Considering in this country one can be busted for a sex offense for pissing on a bush, sexting pics of your own body to your GF/BF if you are under 18, or even words on a page or drawings in a comic book, the fact that we allow private contractors to do these jobs (thus giving an even greater incentive for bribery and worse laws) just makes me sick.

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    3. Re:Now.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

      I was on electronic monitoring for the US BOP (bureau of prisons) through BI incorporated for about 3 years. I had to pay my own monthly bill for monitoring services, which went to BI incorporated in Colorado somewhere.

      How the system works is like this: Your federal probation officer comes to your house and installs a box that looks kind of like a cable TV box. It connects to your telephone line (you must have a land line phone to be on electronic monitoring) on one end and also plugs into power. The box is pretty heavy because it has some rechargeable batteries in it so it can operate for some time if the power goes out.

      You get an ankle bracelet installed that is pretty permanent - rubber band with a steel core around your ankle, and a pager-like device attached to it. Now, the device is pretty simple. Whenever you go out of range (about 100-200 ft.) of the box, it dials one of BI's modems and reports that you left. Whenever you come back in range of the box, it dials out and reports that you arrived home. If you disconnect it from power, or the power goes out, it also dials in and reports the power outage (you are never supposed to unplug it, but sometimes power outages happen). When the power comes back on, it dials in and reports the power is back online. Even if you never leave your house at all that day, it still dials in once a day to report it's status.

      The purpose of this EM (electronic monitoring) system is to allow people to be on home confinement and still leave the house to go to work, get groceries, etc, but not be out at all hours of the night committing crimes.

      I can easily see how 2 billion records are in the database. There are not 2 billion criminals. These are just 2 billion date/timestamp entries saying prisoner #X left their house, prisoner #X returned, etc.

      I found the entire 36 month or so experience pretty surreal. The most difficult thing was wearing baggy pants to hide the ankle bracelet at work. For obvious reasons I didn't want to advertise to the world that I was a federal prisoner. It also says a lot about a society and judicial system where there are so many prisoners that they need to outsource the imprisonment of non-violent offenders to a corporation. But who am I to complain? I'm just a felon who committed a victim-less drug crime.

  2. Well no wonder by Fry-kun · · Score: 5, Funny

    MS Access can't possibly handle 2 billion records, no matter how much hardware you throw at it.

    --
    Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
  3. Thereby solving the problem... by Adambomb · · Score: 5, Funny

    BI increased its data storage capacity to avoid a repeat of the problem.

    ONCE AND FOR ALL.

    --
    Ice Cream has no bones.
  4. 2 billion... by onion2k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Assuming that's a normal "US" billion, and assuming it's a journal of historical data going back a few years, I don't think it's unreasonable to think there could be information in there on a couple of hundred thousand people each of whom has been track for an average of at least 6 months. So, approximately and with some guesses, that's around 55 records per prisoner per day. 1 update every 30 minutes? That sounds about right, maybe a little on the low side if anything.

    What is surprising is that they were running some sort of database process that maxxed out at 2 billion records, and that it just stopped once it hit that limit rather than failing over to a backup process. But then, this is a government IT contract, so maybe it's not too surprising.

    --
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    1. Re:2 billion... by Statecraftsman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you track 16000 people and store their location once per second, you'll only need 1.55 days to reach 2^31 records. Once per minute only gives you 90 days. Once every 10 minutes, less than 3 years... I wonder if anyone is on the user end of this system that can comment.

    2. Re:2 billion... by bertok · · Score: 5, Informative

      it just stopped once it hit that limit rather than failing over to a backup process.

      "just over 2 billion" is almost certainly 2^31 (2 147 483 648), or the maximum number representable by a signed 32-bit integer. People usually think of "over 4 billion" (2^32) as the integer limit, but that's for unsigned integers only, which are rarely used, especially in databases. I'm willing to bet that they used an "int" as a primary key in one of their tables, and simply overflowed the maximum possible value.

      This kind of bug has impacted lots of systems in the past. If it happens, there's no "fail over" that could possibly save the system. The replica would have the same data, and hence the same issue, and would have failed as well. The usual fix is to extend the key type to 64-bits or longer (e.g.: GUIDs), but for a 2 billion row table, that's going to take hours at best, probably days.

      Most database systems do not provide a warning when the keys start to approach large values, so it's easy to miss.

    3. Re:2 billion... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

      I was on electronic monitoring for the US BOP (bureau of prisons) through BI incorporated for about 3 years. I had to pay my own monthly bill for monitoring services, which went to BI incorporated in Colorado somewhere.

      How the system works is like this: Your federal probation officer comes to your house and installs a box that looks kind of like a cable TV box. It connects to your telephone line (you must have a land line phone to be on electronic monitoring) on one end and also plugs into power. The box is pretty heavy because it has some rechargeable batteries in it so it can operate for some time if the power goes out.

      You get an ankle bracelet installed that is pretty permanent - rubber band with a steel core around your ankle, and a pager-like device attached to it. Now, the device is pretty simple. Whenever you go out of range (about 100-200 ft.) of the box, it dials one of BI's modems and reports that you left. Whenever you come back in range of the box, it dials out and reports that you arrived home. If you disconnect it from power, or the power goes out, it also dials in and reports the power outage (you are never supposed to unplug it, but sometimes power outages happen). When the power comes back on, it dials in and reports the power is back online. Even if you never leave your house at all that day, it still dials in once a day to report it's status.

      The purpose of this EM (electronic monitoring) system is to allow people to be on home confinement and still leave the house to go to work, get groceries, etc, but not be out at all hours of the night committing crimes.

      I can easily see how 2 billion records are in the database. There are not 2 billion criminals. These are just 2 billion date/timestamp entries saying prisoner #X left their house, prisoner #X returned, etc.

      I found the entire 36 month or so experience pretty surreal. The most difficult thing was wearing baggy pants to hide the ankle bracelet at work. For obvious reasons I didn't want to advertise to the world that I was a federal prisoner. It also says a lot about a society and judicial system where there are so many prisoners that they need to outsource the imprisonment of non-violent offenders to a corporation. But who am I to complain? I'm just a felon who committed a victim-less drug crime.

      Another thing to mention is that what you see on TV or in the movies is pretty false. These are not GPS enabled tracking devices that can pinpoint your location on a map so they can hunt you down anywhere in the country. These are dumb radio devices that only have a 100-200 ft. range and the box uses dial-up modem technology from the 90s. I wouldn't be surprised if they ran the entire monitoring center on a few old PC servers.

    4. Re:2 billion... by bugsbunnyak · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not a, uh, user - but here's an interesting background article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/prison-without-walls/8195/

  5. about 16000 by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Prisons and other corrections agencies were blocked from getting notifications on about 16,000 people, BI Incorporated spokesman Jock Waldo said on Wednesday.

    - interesting number. Anyway, it's not about the number of people in the database, it's about some number of records associated with each person presenting their location, so probably GPS coordinates taken at some time intervals.

    Also note that they are still logging the data, they just can't read it, so it's an application for displaying the coordinates that is failing. Quite possible that the actual problem is in filtering the data, maybe they are just trying to view data for an entire time period per person rather than looking at latest records, something like: 'last month only'. But this is, in the words of infamous W, 'speculaaation'.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
  6. 1 in 31 US Citizens in custody or parole by mykos · · Score: 4, Informative

    "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): "In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults."

    This doesn't make me feel safe.

    1. Re:1 in 31 US Citizens in custody or parole by GMThomas · · Score: 5, Informative

      Right? You shouldn't feel safe. Not because of the "criminals" but because of the reason why there are so many "criminals." Have a joint on you? You're a criminal. Do you know how many people are in jail because of simple drug-related offenses? Be afraid. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/crime/index.html Look at that. 25% of federal inmates are in there for drug possession. I bet you a good amount of these people wouldn't rob you at gunpoint. Good luck, America!

      --
      You are now manually breathing.
    2. Re:1 in 31 US Citizens in custody or parole by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      25% of federal inmates are in there for drug possession. I bet you a good amount of these people wouldn't rob you at gunpoint.

      Not before their incarceration, no. But after surviving lock-up in a Darwinian environment in which "fittest" equates to "most dangerous", then re-entering a society in which convicts are denied the right to a good job, there's a pretty good chance they will. We have a criminal justice system that develops criminals.

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      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  7. CSV To The Rescue! by WidgetGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    The actual data was only about 500K. The rest was XML markup.

    --
    One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
  8. 32 bit signed integer strikes again by Co0Ps · · Score: 4, Interesting

    2 billion? That's awkwardly close to 2147483647... This is why your ID field should be BIGINT and not INT.... They where probably logging coordinates etc.

  9. Slashdot had this problem by Chris+Snook · · Score: 5, Informative

    Anyone remember when Slashdot hit 16,777,215 comments, and overflowed MEDIUMINT? The ALTER TABLE statement that fixed it took hours to run. I shudder to think how long it'll take to fix this, even with the problem diagnosed.

    --
    There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
  10. Re:Oh dear oh dear oh dear by Ironhandx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And you are clearly completely unaware of the accounting world.

    I have yet to meet an accountant that knows much of anything about access or any other database system. On the other hand the majority of them have complained about the 65000 line limit in excel.

    They ALL do this. You're telling thousands of accountants to change how they do things, and honestly, not for the better. They know how to use excel and know how to make things balance with excel.

    A large portion of them took accounting because it was supposed to make them a lot of money, these people don't even use 1/10th of the functionality provided in excel, lets not try to make them learn another entirely different software skill set, ok?

    Even if you're currently working in IT and are like "Oh, no, our accountants have access to all this stuff in our system and they would never do that". Trust me, they do. It all ends up in an excel sheet somewhere eventually.

  11. Maybe the answer isn't better software by assertation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe the answer isn't better software, but fewer criminals to fill up the database with.

    I keep seeing articles here and there how the U.S. has more people imprisoned than China. A large chunk of the prison population are inmates convicted of drug crimes and a large portion of that set of people were convicted on marijuana laws.

    I don't smoke, but as a tax payer I would rather see the government make marijuana into a tax revenue generator instead of a huge expense to paid for with taxes.
     

    1. Re:Maybe the answer isn't better software by WinstonWolfIT · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Chinese use a simpler, more lethal solution to prison overcrowding.