DHS Data Mining Program Suspended After Evading Privacy Review, Audit Finds

[Newsjock]

Source: Wired

A controversial Homeland Security data mining system called ADVISE that dreamed of searching through trillions of records culled from government, public and private databases analyzed personal information without the required privacy oversight, may cost more than commercially available alternatives and has been suspended until a privacy review has been completed, according to an internal audit.

The Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement program, one of twelve DHS data mining efforts, hit the trifecta of civil libertarians concerns about data mining programs – invasiveness, secrecy and ineffectiveness, according to a recent DHS Inspector General report (.pdf).

... Started in 2003, the program has gotten $42 million in funding through 2007.

But the data-mining program faces a troubled future, due to revelations that its tests did not simply use fake data as the DHS Science and Technology section publicly said they did.

"The pilots used live data, including personally identifiable information, from multiple sources in attempts to identify potential terrorist activity," the report said.

Read more: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/dhs-data-mining.html

[onewholaughsatfools]

1. of course data mining included

anyone who said bush is an idiot and so forth.......blessings

[PSPS]

2. So now the government is giving its records to private industry?

trillions of records culled from government, public and private databases analyzed personal information without the required privacy oversight, may cost more than commercially available alternatives

So another bush contributor gets to benefit from bush "outsourcing" my private data? Is this another Choice Point debacle?

I can just feel another "strongly worded letter" eminating from our muscular democtats about this!

[aquart]

4. Privatized data mining? I feel so secure.

[hootinholler]

7. Do you use the discount card at the grocery?

Or in a big box store? Or...

It's a huge industry, look for data wharehousing jobs in the tech sector.

-Hoot

[pushycat]

9. If the gov gives this data to a private contractor what restrictions

are in place to insure the contractor isn't also using it for commercial marketing? Sheesh, and I try to rip/burn my credit receipts..

[aquart]

3. How many American citizens are terrorists?

It's time they mentioned a figure. How many of us are committing treason daily. (Don't count the White House, it skews the figures.)

[seafan]

5. Similar to Total Information Awareness: "The dream of database diving..... lives on."

DHS Data Mining Program Suspended After Evading Privacy Review, Audit Finds, August 20, 2007



It's not limited just to data mining of individual persons..... this program metastasizes through interwoven relationships of people, entities and locations.

A controversial Homeland Security data mining system called ADVISE that dreamed of searching through trillions of records culled from government, public and private databases analyzed personal information without the required privacy oversight, may cost more than commercially available alternatives and has been suspended until a privacy review has been completed, according to an internal audit.

.....

"The pilots used live data, including personally identifiable information, from multiple sources in attempts to identify potential terrorist activity," the report said.

For its part, the DHS Privacy Office did not know that S&T had proceeded with implementation of the ADVISE pilot programs with live data, but without addressing privacy matters. In a July 6, 2006, report to the Congress, the Privacy Office stated that the ADVISE tool alone does not perform data mining. <…> Unbeknownst to the Privacy Office, the ADVISE pilots had been implemented at least 18 months prior to its July 2006 report.

.....

ADVISE is now shut down until after privacy reviews are completed.

The Science and Technology Directorate hoped its system would tap into 50 DHS databases and 100 other data sources. A DHS Workshop paper said the system would be engineered to handle 1 billion structured pieces of data and one million unstructured text messages per hour. The Inspector General found however that access to data was never lined up and that commercially available products like i2's Analyst Notebook were cheaper and more effective for small data sets.

.....

The Total Information Awareness program, a similar research effort started by the Darpa, the Pentagon's high-tech research arm, was largely shuttered by Congress in 2003.

But the dream of database diving to identify would-be terrorists using super-smart algorithms lives on.

We knew TIA would never die. It went back under the rocks and emerged as a $42 Million program at the Department of Homeland Security.


Madam Speaker, refusal to initiate impeachment proceedings against this administration is now approaching that of criminal accomplice.

[tom_paine]

6. Does anyone really think these Nazis are going to obey the courts

If so, I have got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Hardly been driven over.

Nazis and Bushies, alike in so many ways, are also similar in that the simply don't take "no" for an answer, ESPECIALLY not from Liberals whom BOTH Bushies and Nazis believe would be better off dead (though the Bushies seldom speak their deepest hopes aloud yet).

Data mining lives. THIS data mining program, LIVES.

It is foolisha dn naivbe to believe any other way in the case of Bushies or Naizs, given the past track records of each.

[rodeodance]

8. Pentagon to scrap controversial anti-terror database

Forum Name General Discussion

Topic subject Pentagon to scrap controversial anti-terror database (TALON) Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1631310#1631310 1631310, Pentagon to scrap controversial anti-terror database (TALON)
Posted by The Straight Story on Tue Aug-21-07 12:05 PM

Pentagon to scrap controversial anti-terror database
By Robert Burns, Associated Press August 21, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon said Tuesday that it will shut down an anti-terror database that has been criticized for improperly storing information on peace activists and others whose actions posed no threat.

It will be closed on Sept. 17 and information collected subsequently on potential terror or security threats to Defense Department facilities or personnel will be sent by Pentagon officials to an FBI database known as Guardian, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman.

Keck said the Pentagon database is being shut down because "the analytical value had declined," but not because of public criticism of how it was used. Eventually the Pentagon hopes to create a new system -- not necessarily a database -- to "streamline such threat reporting," according to a brief statement issued Tuesday.

The decision to end the program, which had been recommended in April by the Pentagon's new intelligence chief, James R. Clapper Jr., was approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Keck said.

The program, known as TALON, was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and was designed to maintain a base of information on reported potential threats to military facilities and personnel.

In December 2005 it was disclosed that the system included data on anti-military protests and other peaceful demonstrations.

Anti-war groups and other organizations, including a Quaker group -- the American Friends Service Committee -- protested after it was revealed that the military had monitored anti-war activities, organizations and individuals who attended peace rallies.

Pentagon officials have said the program was productive and had detected international terrorist interests in specific military bases. But they also acknowledged that some officials may not have been using the system properly.

The TALON reports -- collected by an array of Defense Department agencies including law enforcement, intelligence, counterintelligence and security -- are kept in a large database and analyzed by an obscure Pentagon agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity. CIFA is a three-year-old outfit whose size and budget are secret.

Keck said that after the TALON database is shut down in September, a copy of the data it contains will be maintained at the Pentagon "in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements."

Last year, a Pentagon review found that as many as 260 reports in the database were improperly collected or kept there. At the time, the Pentagon said there were about 13,000 entries in the database, and that less than 2 percent either were wrongly added or were not purged later when they were determined not to involve real threats.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press
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[sarcasmo]

10. What a bunch of crooks.

Kick