Jeff White
October 25, 2003, 01:36 AM
I think TIA is going to be harder to kill then the zombies in the thread over in S&T. There are a lot of people who WANT to be big brother
National Journal's Technology Daily
October 22, 2003
Data-Mining Backers Fan Momentum After Anti-Terror Project
By William New
Congress last month halted funding for the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project, an effort to create technology to search massive amounts of data for clues about terrorists, out of concern for citizens' privacy, but supporters of the research project see the defeat only as the result of bad public-relations handling of a good idea.
While privacy advocates to some degree have targeted other matters, TIA supporters are speaking publicly about the need for data-mining technologies like those proposed in TIA to protect the nation from terrorists. Former Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, Brandon Milhorn, a majority counsel on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and representatives from several former contractors to TIA are among those who have offered praise for data mining in recent weeks.
At a Tuesday conference, Clarke said, "TIA was a good idea, a good objective, but had lousy execution." Milhorn said at another Tuesday conference that the intelligence community needs the capability to catch terrorists.
Even Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, a primary Senate sponsor of the language that ultimately killed TIA, said he would support data-mining technology developed with sensitivity to privacy concerns.
Robert Popp, a former deputy director of the Information Awareness Office that was developing TIA, on Tuesday continued to make the case for information technology and "knowledge-management tools" to fight terrorists. Popp works at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where TIA resided.
Popp, who was second in command to retired Adm. John Poindexter at DARPA, said the intelligence community should be able to access all information in a single database if necessary. "We shouldn't deny the community to be able to technically, efficiently access information to which they have legal access to," he said.
The issue, Popp said, is who has access to what databases and for what purposes, and the intelligence community should not be denied access to telephones, e-mails and other forms of communication.
Brian Sharkey, of TIA contractor Hicks and Associates, told the TIA advisory committee recently that information analysts spend too much time finding data and writing reports and not enough time analyzing it. They are "becoming overwhelmed" by the amount of data and need new technology to help them, he said.
David Jensen, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, noted that the TIA work was kept public, and said it would weaken research to have it pushed into the private, confidential realm.
Latanya Sweeney, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said her group was asked to address privacy issues only well after the TIA controversy exploded.
TIA contactors said they were working on technologies that would hide categories of personal data so that identities could have been protected while unusual behavior such as certain purchases could have been tracked.
But Sweeney told the TIA advisory committee that a test linking a voting list and medical data in which only date of birth, gender and five-digit ZIP code are searched revealed 87 percent of all identities in the test. "It's very powerful," she said.
National Journal's Technology Daily
October 22, 2003
Data-Mining Backers Fan Momentum After Anti-Terror Project
By William New
Congress last month halted funding for the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project, an effort to create technology to search massive amounts of data for clues about terrorists, out of concern for citizens' privacy, but supporters of the research project see the defeat only as the result of bad public-relations handling of a good idea.
While privacy advocates to some degree have targeted other matters, TIA supporters are speaking publicly about the need for data-mining technologies like those proposed in TIA to protect the nation from terrorists. Former Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, Brandon Milhorn, a majority counsel on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and representatives from several former contractors to TIA are among those who have offered praise for data mining in recent weeks.
At a Tuesday conference, Clarke said, "TIA was a good idea, a good objective, but had lousy execution." Milhorn said at another Tuesday conference that the intelligence community needs the capability to catch terrorists.
Even Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, a primary Senate sponsor of the language that ultimately killed TIA, said he would support data-mining technology developed with sensitivity to privacy concerns.
Robert Popp, a former deputy director of the Information Awareness Office that was developing TIA, on Tuesday continued to make the case for information technology and "knowledge-management tools" to fight terrorists. Popp works at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where TIA resided.
Popp, who was second in command to retired Adm. John Poindexter at DARPA, said the intelligence community should be able to access all information in a single database if necessary. "We shouldn't deny the community to be able to technically, efficiently access information to which they have legal access to," he said.
The issue, Popp said, is who has access to what databases and for what purposes, and the intelligence community should not be denied access to telephones, e-mails and other forms of communication.
Brian Sharkey, of TIA contractor Hicks and Associates, told the TIA advisory committee recently that information analysts spend too much time finding data and writing reports and not enough time analyzing it. They are "becoming overwhelmed" by the amount of data and need new technology to help them, he said.
David Jensen, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, noted that the TIA work was kept public, and said it would weaken research to have it pushed into the private, confidential realm.
Latanya Sweeney, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said her group was asked to address privacy issues only well after the TIA controversy exploded.
TIA contactors said they were working on technologies that would hide categories of personal data so that identities could have been protected while unusual behavior such as certain purchases could have been tracked.
But Sweeney told the TIA advisory committee that a test linking a voting list and medical data in which only date of birth, gender and five-digit ZIP code are searched revealed 87 percent of all identities in the test. "It's very powerful," she said.