DHS Chief Wants Better Algorithms For Analyzing Intelligence Data

coondoggie writes "Better algorithms to spot patterns and trends within the mass of information the Department of Homeland Security sees everyday are key to national security. That was but one of the talking points DHS chief Janet Napolitano focused on in a lecture on the role of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today. 'DHS is part of the nation's Intelligence Community, which receives more terabytes of data each day than the entire text holdings of the Library of Congress. The National Counterterrorism Center's 24-hour Operations Center receives 8,000 to 10,000 pieces of counterterrorist information every day. We receive data about all of this, and it is clearly too much to suggest that the simplistic "connect the dots" analogy accurately represents what an analyst must do. Very quickly, you can see that "Big Data" – more so than the lack of data – becomes the most pressing problem. At the same time, the threats implicated by the data are not static.'"

Comments

Yeah right

[Pseudonym Authority]

More like he wants to be able to sift through more people data and make files on every citizen faster, am I right?

Re:Yeah right

[M. Baranczak]

Who's "he"?

Re:Yeah right

[click2005]

I suspect they want algorithms that will find more links between people. Guilty by association and all that.

Hmmm. I wonder if 'six degrees of separation' works with terrorists. With better algorithms they can reduce it to five or even four.

Re:Yeah right

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Well. I don't know why they spend all this money to fight an imaginary enemy, when they could save more lives by using the same funding in securing the US nation's swimming pools.

Re:Yeah right

[rtb61]

That points to the heart of the matter. Incompetent political appointees want computers to do their job for them so that they can take the credit.

Better algorithms to sort filter and collate the data, how stupid can they be. The bigger and more complex the database the easier it is to poison it with false data. Once that false data is in, it make all sorts of false connections, and more false connections based upon those.

Intelligence services do no need better algorithms, they need to dump contractors who make a living out of creating false data, they need to get rid of political appointees and most of all they need to quality manage data entering the system.

The insanity of working from the basis that everyone is guilty and, stupidly thinking that somehow computers will sort that planet full of evidence you have created with the idiot's assumption that everyone is guilty, well, it just really points to what kind of fuck up the DHS chief is as well as the DHS itself.

better agorithms

[theheadlessrabbit]

Well, if the DHS Chief wants better algorithms for analyzing intelligence data, maybe he can have the department's funding cut, so more money can be put to use educating a generation of better students.

Here's an idea for you DHS geniuses

[GodfatherofSoul]

Step One: cut down on the clutter. That means stop chasing after everyone in a turban or every angry blogger named Mohamed or Assad who criticizes your government or sticking GPS monitoring devices under their cars.

There are two major reasons we've historically said NO to dragnets. They violate civil rights and they...surprise surprise!...clutter your intelligence channels with worthless drivel.

Re:Here's an idea for you DHS geniuses

[jdogalt]

+1, my gut reaction as well, with the addition that there is a multiplication effect as the added violation of rights increases terrorist recruitment and motivation, with a corresponding increase in the amount of drivel and non-drivel entering your intelligence channels.

It's the prisoner's dilemna as clear as day. If you don't start with trust and have a system that encourages more trust/liberty/privacy and the benefits of such, you don't end up with anywhere near the optimal outcome.
 

napolitano hates democracy as much as terrorists

[Dan667]

policy after policy is implementing her dream of a police state. traffic revenue cameras in Arizona when she was there. Naked scanners for the tsa. Pretty sure she is abusing patriot act powers. US Citizens need to take back their government

Too much funding, not enough results

[Darkness404]

The DHS has far too much funding if they have too much data and can't analyze it with current algorithms. And really, why do they need all this data in the first place? Chances are the vast majority of it is unconstitutional and shouldn't be collected to begin with.

Re:Too much funding, not enough results

[plover]

What would "enough results" be? Ten planes blown up? Five schools? Three office towers? That way next year we could try for only eight planes blown up, three schools, and one office tower. Gotta show "enough results", after all.

I'd say that whatever powers they're abusing, the results are that they've not let a lot happen.

The better question is: if they didn't have these abusive powers and massive budgets, what would their score be? Fifty blown up planes? Ten? Zero? We don't know, because those figures aren't made public. They are, however, shared with the politicians we elected, and whatever figures they are presenting are are compelling enough to get us to waste billions on proven useless and stupid ideas like backscatter scanners and virtual fences. And that's where I really get pissed off. The blown-up plane rate has been exactly zero since 9/11. Whatever they were doing for the previous nine years, they were doing without the half-billion dollars worth of backscatter machines, and it was quite obviously 100% effective.

So what I really want to know is which of my chickenshit representatives are wasting my tax dollars on these useless pieces of shit, and how to get them the hell out of office, because with those votes the only possible rational explanation is corruption. Under Bush, the only legislation that wasn't pure corruption was pure ignorance, and Obama has carried that time-honored tradition forwards in the finest spirit of fear-mongering and palm-greasing Washington has ever seen. The Paultards frighten me with their right-wing Christian equal-hatred-for-all-but-straight-white-people bullshit, and the Tea-baggers are nothing but the wholly-owned highly paid shills of Faux News Inc. And the useless Left couldn't wipe their own asses without forming a tax-gathering ass-finding commission, and then they'd filibuster themselves until they were ankle deep in shit anyway.

There isn't a single person in a Federal office that I want to be there any more. Not even the Supreme Court has my respect any more, not after granting corporations "free speech through election-buying". One-term-only term limits are sounding pretty damn good to me right now.

Re:I'm glad.

[Darkness404]

I'm sure it will help when they are sued by the RIAA for having that data or knowing where that data can be found, after all, if the Pirate Bay can be sued for linking to files that may or may not contain copyright infringements, why can't the DHS?

Been there, done that

[PPH]

We were working on some cool technology applicable to just this sort of problem back at a previous employer. Then 9/11 hit, management realized that the coming intelligence applications of this would put it on the ITAR list. Everything went into boxes and went offshore.

The next time you wonder how credit card, telecom and various other marketing concerns can find you, find your friends and figure out who is likely to buy what, you'll know who to thank. There's more money in pushing junk at you than keeping you from being blown up.

Re:Uh, how is this....

[PaulBu]

Because it's Big Sister, silly you! ;-/

And yes, do it slowly is apparently a sure way to boil a live frog without it noticing, as well as making American public accept DHS and beyond.

Paul B.

Less QQ, More pew-pew.

[faedle]

In all seriousness. DHS would do us all a whole better if they concentrated on conventional "police work" investigations, and less on fancy shit like warrantless wiretaps and X-ray backscatter arrays that don't work.

Our security apparatus had all the details they needed to make the connection before, and failed to see it not because they lacked some fancy algorithm, but people "in charge" didn't listen to the street operatives, and political infighting between organizations: which (hey, guess what Interplanet Janet!) DHS' very existance was supposed to solve.

So what she's saying is, "we suck, give us more money." Sorry, fix what you have first, Janet.

Re:napolitano hates democracy as much as terrorist

[SuricouRaven]

There won't be a revolution. America has televisions. It's just so much easier to grumble about the government online than it is to actually do something that matters.

law enforcement types

[Weezul]

If there's one fucking thing we've learned recently, it's that law enforcement types are god awful fucking gullible when they think they're listening to their own kind. We've hard proof that the Egyptian secret police carried out two major terrorists attacks inside Egypt and blamed their own country. And western intelligence services just blindly believed their lies. We understand how the evidence for chemical weapons in Iraq was entirely & purely focally fabricated by Iraqi ex-pat living in Germany. We even had some asshat put his wife on the no fly list when she was outside the country.

We obviously cannot trust our law enforcement and intelligence services without serious judicial oversight. In particular, we cannot trust the buffoons hoping that 'better algorithm' will give them some pre-crime detector. Instead, they'll just harass more innocent people based upon imaginary plots and connections.

Naturally!

[cocoajunkie]

Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity