Data Mining - Menace or Salvation?

[Syzygyone]

What say you to this information?

Link to the report itself- http://www.darpa.mil/body/tia/tia_report_page.htm

"New Name of Pentagon Data Sweep Focuses on Terror

May 21, 2003
By ADAM CLYMER

WASHINGTON, May 20 - Saying they are worried about
Americans' privacy, Pentagon officials announced in a
report today that they were changing the name of a
projected system to mine databases for information to help
catch terrorists to Terrorist Information Awareness from
Total Information Awareness.

The officials said the name was changed because the earlier
version created a false impression that system was being
created "for developing dossiers on U.S. citizens."

The report, which Congress demanded 90 days ago as a
condition for allowing further research, said the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency was complying with all
federal privacy laws as it developed the program. The
report said the Darpa was not tapping into government or
private databases, but was using synthetic or artificial
information generated for the program "to resemble and
model real-world patterns of behavior."

The Pentagon said it would be up to agencies that would use
the program with real information to comply with privacy
laws.

Privacy advocates said that was not good enough, because
federal laws had huge national security loopholes. Senator
Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who pushed through the
legislation that required the report and barred using the
system without new legislation, said it was insufficient to
promise that the system would deal only with "legally
collected information."

"Legally collected information," Mr. Wyden said, "includes
just about everything. There really isn't much with teeth
to protect lawfully collected medical records, travel
records, credit records and financial data."

The executive director of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, James X. Dempsey, said: "They basically admit
that there are no laws limiting, in any meaningful way,
what they can do with data."

The report called the system an effort to "integrate
information technologies into a prototype to provide tools
to better detect, classify and identify potential foreign
terrorists." It includes biometric recognition from faces
to styles of walking, known as "gait recognition," or in
this report, "human kinematics," and examinations of
transactions that may relate to planning terrorist
activities.

A list of useful information that the Darpa had on its Web
site, darpa.mil, until December included Communications,
Country Entry, Critical Resources, Education, Financial,
Government, Housing, Medical, Place-Event Entry,
Transportation, Travel and Veterinary. A spokeswoman for
the agency, Jan Walker, said the relevance of veterinary
information was that some biological warfare weapons
attacked animals before humans.

The report said, "Safeguarding the privacy and the civil
liberties of Americans is a bedrock principle." It added
that the Defense Department would make them a "central
element" of the Terrorist Information Awareness program.

But Mr. Wyden said, "The name has been changed, but it's
very clear that the architects of the original program
still want to do the kind of pattern analysis, sweeping
examinations of individuals, whether it's how they walk or
whatever, that involves law-abiding Americans without the
procedural protections a suspect gets."

Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, also
rejected the promises of privacy.

"Our current privacy laws," Mr. Feingold said, "are
inadequate to deal with new techniques of data mining,
which have the ability to access extensive files containing
both public and private government records on each and
every American. The administration should suspend not only
the T.I.A., but all other data-mining initiatives in the
Departments of Defense and Homeland Security until Congress
can determine whether the promised benefits come at too
high a price for our privacy and personal liberties."

Describing how the system is intended to work against
terrorism, the report said that teams "would imagine the
types of terrorist attacks that might be carried out
against the United States at home or abroad."

"They would develop scenarios for these attacks," the
report added, "and determine what kind of planning and
preparation activities would have to be carried out in
order to conduct these attacks."

Then the teams would determine what activities would be
needed to carry out the attacks like "the purchase of
airline tickets for travel to potential attack sites for
reconnaissance purposes, payment for some kind of
specialized training or the purchase of materials for a
bomb.

"These transactions would form a pattern that may be
discernable in certain databases to which the U.S.
government would have lawful access."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/21/international/worldspecial/21PRIV.html?ex=1054524115&ei=1&en=9e1f739580ba3845

[gofaster]

Well, if they mined my data, they'd see that I've developed a sudden fascination for 1/72 scale German armor models, model kits of Messerschmitts, and how I spend far too much time on a flight sim BBS talkin' 'bout how there should be less violence in the media and less concern about nudity!

Conclusion: I'm a naked Nazi pilot!

[Saurdaukar]

I dont mind sharing porn.

[hawk220]

The report said, "Safeguarding the privacy and the civil liberties of Americans is a bedrock principle."



BWAAAA HAAAAAAAA HAAAA!

[SLO]

control thru the back door.......


shhhh ya not supposed too know there IS a back door:D

or more likely since ya don't see it.....you don't care:)

[gofaster]

Hey, keep your eyes off my back door!

[Sandman]

So... exactly what was the purpose of the Department of Homeland Security again?

[Syzygyone]

Originally posted by Sandman_SBM
So... exactly what was the purpose of the Department of Homeland Security again?

I'd like to hear your verision.  I'm sure it will be highly informative and enterta.... er enlightening!