"Food for thought" More war philosophy-

[Designer 0]

Nicely Done!Like your thinking.

[SpeedRacer 1]

re. Dumpster's post....It sounds like an argument in favor of war vs. Al Quaeda, not vs. Iraq.

Speed Racer
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[kallend 2,148]

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If there are 1000 terrorists in the country and TIA is 98% accurate, then 20 terrorists will go undetected and about 4 million innocent people will be fingered in error. Can you name any large scale government program that is even 98% accurate?

Yeah, that makes sense........if we investigate every single person in the US. We don't. We only investigate people who are suspected of being involved in something illegal. BTW, whip out the numbers and show that our justice system is less than 98% accurate on guilty verdicts.

I think you do not understand how the TIA program is planned to work. TIA does look at everybody. That is exactly what data mining is all about. TIA stands for TOTAL information awareness. That's TOTAL as in every transaction you and me and anyone else makes.

As far as guilty verdicts go, we know for sure that Illinois has a much worse record than 98% in sentencing its citizens to death, and that's with all the "safeguards" of the legal system in place. TIA will not have those safeguards.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,148]

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re. Dumpster's post....It sounds like an argument in favor of war vs. Al Quaeda, not vs. Iraq.

And why not?

"Finding Osama bin Laden is our #1 priority", President G. W. Bush, September 13, 2001

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kmcguffee 0]

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I think you do not understand how the TIA program is planned to work. TIA does look at everybody. That is exactly what data mining is all about. TIA stands for TOTAL information awareness. That's TOTAL as in every transaction you and me and anyone else makes.

No, I understand how it is planned to work. It gives you access to the information. It does not mean that you will actually investigate everybody. We do not have the manpower to investigate everybody in the US. Even if the information is available we do not have the manpower to analyze all of it.

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we know for sure that Illinois has a much worse record than 98% in sentencing its citizens to death, and that's with all the "safeguards" of the legal system in place.

Please show me numbers that support your accusations at the Federal level. I don't think you will find that they suuport your theory.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[kallend 2,148]

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I think you do not understand how the TIA program is planned to work. TIA does look at everybody. That is exactly what data mining is all about. TIA stands for TOTAL information awareness. That's TOTAL as in every transaction you and me and anyone else makes.

No, I understand how it is planned to work. It gives you access to the information. It does not mean that you will actually investigate everybody. We do not have the manpower to investigate everybody in the US. Even if the information is available we do not have the manpower to analyze all of it.

New York Times columnist William Safire, former Nixon speechwriter and generally very conservative, notes the potential of the TIA program as follows:

"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

Here is how John Markoff of the New York Times describes the capability of the TIA program:

"...it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant. Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States. Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to 'break down the stovepipes' that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers."

Admiral Poindexter was convicted on 5 felony counts of lying to Congress as a result of Iran-Contra, but served no jail time because the appeals court ruled his testimony had been granted immunity.

Did you ever read "1984"? I think Orwell got the date wrong by about 20 years.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,118]

>It gives you access to the information. It does not mean that you will
>actually investigate everybody. We do not have the manpower to
>investigate everybody in the US.

We will certainly have the computer power to do it once TIA is fully funded. And yes, everyone in the US WILL be investigated; every electronic transaction you make will be screened by a computer program for possible links to anti-american activities. Hence the word 'total.'

>Even if the information is available we
>do not have the manpower to analyze all of it.

That's correct, so many of the initial hits will be made by computer pattern matching, and the most likely ones will be followed up by human investigators. For example, if you regularly send email or BBS messages mentioning Al Quaeda, Iraq or terrorism (which several of us do) you may be selected for screening by a computer. An operator will then look at the material and decide if you are a threat or not. I would assume that 99.9% of the time, things like rants about Al Quaeda or Iraq will be recognized as simple ranting and not as support of a terrorist organization. Of course there's still that .1% - we better pray that the operators at the TIA are better than your garden-variety government employee.

[kallend 2,148]

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>It gives you access to the information. It does not mean that you will
>actually investigate everybody. We do not have the manpower to
>investigate everybody in the US.

We will certainly have the computer power to do it once TIA is fully funded. And yes, everyone in the US WILL be investigated; every electronic transaction you make will be screened by a computer program for possible links to anti-american activities. Hence the word 'total.'

>Even if the information is available we
>do not have the manpower to analyze all of it.

That's correct, so many of the initial hits will be made by computer pattern matching, and the most likely ones will be followed up by human investigators. For example, if you regularly send email or BBS messages mentioning Al Quaeda, Iraq or terrorism (which several of us do) you may be selected for screening by a computer. An operator will then look at the material and decide if you are a threat or not. I would assume that 99.9% of the time, things like rants about Al Quaeda or Iraq will be recognized as simple ranting and not as support of a terrorist organization. Of course there's still that .1% - we better pray that the operators at the TIA are better than your garden-variety government employee.

Do you recall a few years ago when a media outlet (might have been Time, can't recall) took the same financial information to about 30 different IRS offices, and got 30 different answers?

What I find really funny is that the party that is usually the loudest in criticism of government ineptitude is the one making these proposals!

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Skyrad 0]

What a load of egocentric over emotional PAP!

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[kmcguffee 0]

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We will certainly have the computer power to do it once TIA is fully funded. And yes, everyone in the US WILL be investigated; every electronic transaction you make will be screened by a computer program for possible links to anti-american activities. Hence the word 'total.'

You and I seem to have a different understanding of the word "investigate". A computer cannot investigate anyone. The decision to investigate will still be left up to an individual "garden-variety government employee" (of which, I am a member). Right now, I can go online and get your social security number, current address, date of birth, driver's license number, and numerous other personal items from a commercial database. I only have slightly more access to information that the general public can get at this same database. All that you have to do is sign up for it and pay a monthly fee. All of this information is coming from public sources that you gave the information to. By your definition we are already investigating everyone in the US. So there is not really a big change. You'll just add in financial transactions which don't require that much to get right now anyway. It will just cut through the administrative BS that we have to go through right now.

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An operator will then look at the material and decide if you are a threat or not. I would assume that 99.9% of the time, things like rants about Al Quaeda or Iraq will be recognized as simple ranting and not as support of a terrorist organization. Of course there's still that .1% - we better pray that the operators at the TIA are better than your garden-variety government employee.

The operator of the computer will not be the one who decides to investigate. They do not have the authority under Federal Law. Only an 1811 series special agent of the government can investigate violations of federal law.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[kmcguffee 0]

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it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.

That is funny. You don't need a search warrant to get those right now. You need a subpoena which, if you know the process, is a joke anyway.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[cloudseeker2001 0]

good points. what really gets me is that only one of the planes(that i know of) had people who were willing to fight back. the idea in america is that you, as an individual, are not supposed to fight and if you do, you will get into big trouble and probably pay out the ass and go to jail. then find yourself in a real emergency where you must fight for you life and people clam up and think the police will handle it, you know, don't take THE LAW into your own hands........ people who read this board will fight no doubt; we are people who survive under pressure but your average person is spoon feed-TV generation feed for doors fans! i have worked in a hotel that caught fire one night and filled the halls almost completly with thick smoke and believe it or not, while i was knocking on doors at 3am telling people to get out they actually said, "no, i am staying!" imagan that, a hotel employee(maintenance person nonetheless) telling them to get out because of fire and they say no! mainstream america did not believe things such as 911 could or would ever happen and the average person STILL thinks it is safe. but, if i am on a buss, in a mall or on a plane and someone is trying to do harm of any kind to the masses, i will fight back and hopefully win.......of course i hope i not left trying to land the damn jumbo jet! the only thing i have ever flown was a really big PD navigator! but think of the rush it could be and probably the last!

"Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance,
others mean and rueful of the western dream"

[bobsled92 0]

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What a load of egocentric over emotional PAP!

O.K.
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[kmcguffee 0]

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What a load of egocentric over emotional PAP!

Thought provoking. You must respond more often.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[Push 0]

I've studied data mining. The professor is making sense. Let me see if I can explain.

Data mining is an area of computer science that develops algorithms that search extremely large datasets for patterns. Imagine seeing patterns in the static on TV. Now imagine doing the same thing with a computer. Without boring you too much with techincal details, we are talking about heuristic algorithms that attempt to fit predictor functions on subsets of the data and see if they can use those functions to predict largescale patterns in the entire dataset. At least, this is one way to do it, and is probably the way it will be done in this case, since the data lends itself to subdivision easily. Obviously, this will require enormous computer power, even with the optimizations currently available.

The computer, not the operator, is deciding whom to investigate. It is doing so by trying to guess what the life of a terrorist looks like from the data that is collected from every little detail of the life of every American. There is no operator deciding whom to investigate. Because this is a computer, it will have an error percentage (a human will also, since you are a law enforcement officer I don't need to tell you that). This percentage will be twofold: false negatives and false positives. A false negative would be not finding an active terrorist. Worse, a false positive would be labelling an innocent person as a terrorist.

Allow me to emphasize again that this process in entirely automatic. We can only hope that the claims of the computer will be investigated by a real human officer before they are acted upon.

If you think this is harmless, allow me to remind you of the fact that credit card companies mine your purchasing data for patterns regularly, and sell the result. The predictive power of this approach has proven so useful that marketing firms pay rediculous sums of money for these results. A data miner running on the complete database of every detail in the life of every American can predict large scale trends with remarkable accuracy. Dr Kallend's 98% estimate was very conservative for a good data miner. Elections will become a joke.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[Push 0]

The need for a subpoena removes any hope of applying an algorithm. If this requirement is removed, I can write a miner in the comfort of my own home and win the next election. Well, not really, not unless I have a Cray or some such, but you see my point.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[kmcguffee 0]

That was extremely informative. You are hereby designated "Official Dropzone.com Computer Geek" or ODCG for short.

Anyway, I still see this as a screening process and not an investigation. A person (special agent) will still have to take the information that the computer provides and conduct further investigation to determine if there is enough evidence to prosecute. Until an agent looks at the personal information of someone to determine if a law has been broken, an investigation has not occurred.

You might have some innocent people investigated with this process but you have that now. The purpose of an investigation is to collect evidence to determine if they are guilty or innocent. "Beyond a resonable doubt" is the standard for conviction not investigation. The investigation standard is much lower.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[Push 0]

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That was extremely informative. You are hereby designated "Official Dropzone.com Computer Geek" or ODCG for short.

Whoa. What do I get?

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Anyway, I still see this as a screening process and not an investigation. A person (special agent) will still have to take the information that the computer provides and conduct further investigation to determine if there is enough evidence to prosecute. Until an agent looks at the personal information of someone to determine if a law has been broken, an investigation has not occurred.

You might have some innocent people investigated with this process but you have that now. The purpose of an investigation is to collect evidence to determine if they are guilty or innocent. "Beyond a resonable doubt" is the standard for conviction not investigation. The investigation standard is much lower.

In terms of searching for terrorists, it will probably be a screening process only. The dangers of mining a database like that are more in the manipulation of the American people than anything. On the one hand, it sounds like a conspiracy theory type of idea. On the other, the US has routinely tried to manipulate entire countries to produce a more favourable position in different areas of the world. The Taliban were pretty much created by the US when it provided the Mujahedeen (sp?) weapons. I believe this was done as a counter to the Russians invading Afghanistan, a noble goal actually. If a government can undertake something like that, the scenario I describe doesn't sound so unreasonable anymore. Even if this is not what Bush intends, someone after him could use this database for their own purposes.

Seems to me though that the safeguards in your system of government that are meant to prevent these kinds of things worked.

Ah, technology.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[kallend 2,148]

Sometimes it seems that you have forgotten that the purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect the people from the government.

I may have voluntarily given my DOB and other information to the State in order to get my drivers and pilots licenses, but I do not voluntarily give my credit card bill to Admiral Poindexter - a man convicted of lying to Congress.

1984 comes 20 years late!

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[PhreeZone 20]

I work for a company that does some data mining and marketing. Its scary whay all I've seen some of the things that they've ran through the system come up with as a predicter for the future. Using just credit and transaction information they were able to guess the persons shoe size, when she would be needing shoes next, what style of shoe she was most likely going to by, even what store she'd be most likely to shop at. They created a custom marketing campaign to offer her a unique discount on just a certian style of shoe that would be in stock on a certian promotion then they waited one week and they nailed the transition to with in a few hours of when they thought she'd use the coupon. Based off a few different internal programs like this we were able to convince our partners to collect more info and they are coming up with even better uses for the data.

I know that they are working on an idea that will send to a page/text message when you are most likely to be needing to refill your tank of gas in your car, the message will let you reply with if you want to take advantage of the "offer" (everything from money off per gallon to a free car wash has been added as "rewards") as long as you redeem it with in X minutes at certian gas stations in your area. They are mining the data to predict how long each driver goes between fill ups, time of day, stations they hit and about 50 different factors based over as much data as we have (2 years for this project). There was also thoughts about trying to tie into the GPS system on new phones so they could reduce the time limit to even less time and direct you to just a specific gas station instead of anywhere within a few miles in the future. The tests so far are spookey, one person reported they recieved pages 4 times as they were pulling into service stations to gas up.

The age of being monitored is here. Right now Corperate America is doing the monitoring... if the Government takes it over it could get scary in no time.

Cash is untracable for the most part

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[kmcguffee 0]

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Sometimes it seems that you have forgotten that the purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect the people from the government.

I may have voluntarily given my DOB and other information to the State in order to get my drivers and pilots licenses, but I do not voluntarily give my credit card bill to Admiral Poindexter - a man convicted of lying to Congress.

No I haven't forgotten what the Bill of Rights is for. I work within the limits of the BoR every day. You just sit in a classroom and debate its issues in a sterile environment. What I see 99% of the time is people doing illegal things and using the BoR as a curtain to hide their illegal ectivities. Admiral Poindexter has no and would have no access to your credit card information. Your information would only become available to agents of the government if you come under investigation due to suspicious activities.

Right now, if I want your credit card bill I just have to get a Grand Jury Subpoena from the court. That requires about 4-5 days of waiting and no proof on my part (only an investigative need). Then I have to send that GJS to your credit card company and they have about 10-20 days to respond with the information. How is this system protecting your privacy from the government? It is not. It is only slowing down the investigative process and wasting my time. The new system would allow me to access the information without the paperwork but would still require an investigative need. This system would not allow me to read your e-mails or listen in on your phone calls, or search your house. Those still require a search warrant which requires at least "probable cause" to get authorization.

The best thing that could help terrorism investigations would be to authorize Administrative Subpoenas like they use in drug cases. That slows the process down considerably but still not as fast as this proposed system would allow.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[happythoughts 0]

I have worked on a few mining projects myself. They have been used to determine corporate spending, not individual. The telecom industry uses it extensively. My last project detailed all revenue on a national level for a company and then grouped them by national company (think Sears).

I also worked for a credit card clearing house. The data is used for fraud detection. I love it. Whenever I go to the convention, I get a call from my Visa company saying that "someone is using your card in Illinois and has spent $800, is it you?".

There are several methods that the govt uses currently. One, Signals Intelligence, the NSA listens to all overseas telephone traffic. They've been doing it for years. Next, police departments use "fuzzy" logic to find suspects. Example: "medium height" is used to assign a range of 5'7" to 5'11" when doing a search for suspects. These are standard database queries.

However, if you want to think of scary, think of the facial recognition software. Everyone's drivers license picture is digitized now. If you live in a particular city and are wanted, a series of well place cameras could find you in days. I don't think that day is too far off.

[kallend 2,148]

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Sometimes it seems that you have forgotten that the purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect the people from the government.

I may have voluntarily given my DOB and other information to the State in order to get my drivers and pilots licenses, but I do not voluntarily give my credit card bill to Admiral Poindexter - a man convicted of lying to Congress.

No I haven't forgotten what the Bill of Rights is for. I work within the limits of the BoR every day. You just sit in a classroom and debate its issues in a sterile environment. What I see 99% of the time is people doing illegal things and using the BoR as a curtain to hide their illegal ectivities. Admiral Poindexter has no and would have no access to your credit card information. Your information would only become available to agents of the government if you come under investigation due to suspicious activities.

Tell me how this is different from the FBI and CIA abuses of the 50's and 60's? Who defines "suspicious"? Why is not Poindexter's supercomputer system an agent of the government?

The whole thing stinks of "1984".

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[happythoughts 0]

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Who defines "suspicious"?

Why do you want to know? Please tell us your complete name and a person will contact you and explain it.

[wmw999 2,588]

The best thing about the current system is that it's a little more of a pain in the rear and time-consuming. If it's enough hassle, it makes you think twice.

With a huge database of already-mined and already-analyzed information, it would be less hassle. More productive sometimes, but, you know, I DON'T WANT IT. Let's say I disagree with someone in some analysis section or another. Maybe I'm a (gasp) peacenik. While my constitutional rights are just as important as anyone else's, the edges to those rights aren't always hard.

And the person whom I disagree with has access to a whole lot more data, with a whole lot less effort, than before.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)