Data-Mining for Terrorists Not 'Feasible,' DHS-Funded Study Finds

Data-Mining for Terrorists Not 'Feasible,' DHS-Funded Study Finds

blog.wired.com

The government should not be building predictive data-mining programs systems that attempt to figure out who among millions is a terrorist, a privacy and terrorism commission funded by Homeland Security reported Tuesday. The commission found that the technology would not work and the inevitable mistakes would be un-American.

The committee, created by the National Research Council in 2005, also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of technology designed to decide from afar whether a person had terrorist intents, saying false positives could quickly lead to privacy invasions.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www8.nationalacademies.org
newsinfo.iu.edu
arstechnica.com
www.aclu.org

Well, at least this little bit of news shows us a a glimmer of light in these dark days we've been living through daily!

Kind of hard to believe the DHS would even allow this report to get out!

Obviously the Bush administration won't act on this information, but maybe if "the right" person comes into power in our next presidential elections, some of these kind of reports can be addressed, and changes can be made so that the government can't just spy on its own citizens, who the government works for, so easily!

The report included phrases like, the government "must follow the law" and that the government must "respect Americans' privacy"!

The report also stated that the US could exasperate the affect of terrorism "through our own inappropriate response to that threat".



blog.wired.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Here's another quote from the ACLU.

ACLU Hails DHS-Funded Report Condemning Data Mining

The report validates ACLU fears that the practice of data mining is not only vastly invasive to Americans’ privacy but is also ineffective.

“Data mining as preventative law enforcement is alchemy at its worst,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Given the administration’s steady creep towards a total surveillance society, this report could not be more relevant. It is a scathing rebuke of the Bush administration’s policy of vast and indiscriminate information gathering. A major pillar of the administration's post-9/11 policy has proven itself, as we said it would, to be wholly unstable. The systematic and broad-scale surveillance of Americans is doing nothing to keep us safe. With data mining, it is clearer than ever that the risk far outweighs the reward.”

“This report validates the ACLU's longstanding claim that data mining for anti-terror and law enforcement work is worse than junk science, it is pseudo-science,” said Timothy D. Sparapani, ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel. “Government agencies that are spending billions on data mining to fight terror would spend their money more effectively trying to discover a magical formula to turn lead into gold. The bloated watch lists are a special case in point. Applying data mining techniques like ‘link analysis’ to the million-person watch list casts a stain of suspicion on everyone who encounters someone on that list – and will quickly balloon it to a hundred million-person watch list. If not stopped now, data mining will turn us all into suspects.”

Maybe sometime in the not so distant future we just may see the government come to their senses and stop this unnecessary surveillance and data gathering on its own citizens!

Your presentation of this information was excellent.

Analysis: data mining doesn't work for spotting terrorists

Don't want them to close this thread so I am going to ask to have mine closed and redirected here...

Great job!

No one read my post anyway

[edit on 10-10-2008 by Maxmars]

They must already know that monitoring our instant messages and E-mails won't catch terrorists. Unless WE are said terrorists but they won't admit it?

I still stick to my opinion, in that they want full access to our every conversation with others, so they can make us 'enemy combatants'.

EDITED: to add, n typo

[edit on 10-10-2008 by LostNemesis]

I don't see this as stopping DHS from continuing to do so. It may not be feasible but DHS will continue to work to make it feasible. Similar to the way pentagon works on its projects, they just don't give up.

good post

How much did Taxpayers shell-out for this Study into the realms of Common Sense?

This goes to show that there are at least some cool people embedded within DHS.

Knowing a little history of Michael Chertoff, I wonder if those responsible will be (privately) chastised and demoted.



[edit on 10-10-2008 by FewWorldOrder]