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| http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/...uspo.html?s=hns
Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will
it go too far?
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge
amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to
government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist
activity.
The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under
development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the
federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful
analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital
minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the
government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.
"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like
buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere,"
says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We
have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are
about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we
haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet
to come to grips with."
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination,
Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public
documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and
Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50
million in federal funding this year.
DHS officials are circumspect when talking about ADVISE. "I've heard of it,"
says Peter Sand, director of privacy technology. "I don't know the actual status
right now. But if it's a system that's been discussed, then it's something we're
involved in at some level."
Data-mining is a key technology
A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some call
it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds
that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group
the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look
for patterns of suspicious activity.
What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate
and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and
cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The
system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places,
things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS
conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough
to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If
each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high -
roughly double the height of the Empire State Building.
But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph
Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio. The key is not merely to identify
terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical patterns in data
that illumine their motives and intentions, he wrote in a presentation at a
November conference in Richland, Wash.
For example: Is a burst of Internet traffic between a few people the plotting of
terrorists, or just bloggers arguing? ADVISE algorithms would try to determine
that before flagging the data pattern for a human analyst's review.
At least a few pieces of ADVISE are already operational. Consider Starlight,
which along with other "visualization" software tools can give human analysts a
graphical view of data. Viewing data in this way could reveal patterns not
obvious in text or number form. Understanding the relationships among people,
organizations, places, and things - using social-behavior analysis and other
techniques - is essential to going beyond mere data-mining to comprehensive
"knowledge discovery in databases," Dr. Kielman wrote in his November report. He
declined to be interviewed for this article.
One data program has foiled terrorists
Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its
developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics
Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified,
he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the
lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."
As envisioned, ADVISE and its analytical tools would be used by other agencies
to look for terrorists. "All federal, state, local and private-sector security
entities will be able to share and collaborate in real time with distributed
data warehouses that will provide full support for analysis and action" for the
ADVISE system, says the 2004 workshop report.
A program in the shadows
Yet the scope of ADVISE - its stage of development, cost, and most other details
- is so obscure that critics say it poses a major privacy challenge.
"We just don't know enough about this technology, how it works, or what it is
used for," says Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in
Washington. "It matters to a lot of people that these programs and software
exist. We don't really know to what extent the government is mining personal
data."
Even congressmen with direct oversight of DHS, who favor data mining, say they
don't know enough about the program.
"I am not fully briefed on ADVISE," wrote Rep. Curt Weldon (R) of Pennsylvania,
vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in an e-mail. "I'll get
briefed this week."
Privacy concerns have torpedoed federal data-mining efforts in the past. In
2002, news reports revealed that the Defense Department was working on Total
Information Awareness, a project aimed at collecting and sifting vast amounts of
personal and government data for clues to terrorism. An uproar caused Congress
to cancel the TIA program a year later.
Echoes of a past controversial plan
ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection
and pattern analysis."
But Mr. Sand, the DHS official, emphasizes that privacy protection would be
built-in. "Before a system leaves the department there's been a privacy
review.... That's our focus."
Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE.
"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey
Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a
computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should
look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be
willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy."
Others are less sure.
"It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its
utility - and with provable privacy protection," says Latanya Sweeney, founder
of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking
on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building
privacy into ADVISE. "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy
technology."
She cites a recent request for proposal by the Office of Naval Research on
behalf of DHS. Although it doesn't mention ADVISE by name, the proposal outlines
data-technology research that meshes closely with technology cited in ADVISE
documents.
Neither the proposal - nor any other she has seen - provides any funding for
provable privacy technology, she adds.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/...uspo.html?s=hns
Do enjoy, Mr "Imperial Leader"!
Alan
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Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
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