Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Times Square Bombing Highlights Limitations of Federal Data Mining
May 11, 2010
With all the data mining the federal government does, a lot of folks have wondered why it didn't (apparently) have a clue about the existence of Faisal Shahzad or his plans to detonate a bomb in Times Square. Without question, the federal government has spent tens of millions of dollars on data mining programs to identify terorrists and their plans. We have hundreds of data mining programs operating, some so covert that we see no more than hints of them in public.
For example, the Total Information Awareness (TIA) was abandoned in 2003 after public outcry, but it is widely believed that components of the program are still operational.
Along with many others, I've speculated that these programs are doomed to no more than very limited success. There is simply too much data to sift through, too little historical data upon which to base sound predictions and no "exact science" to pinpoint useful methodologies to uncover terrorist activities.
John Pescatore, an analyst with Garner and a former NSA analyst has said, "You definitely need to do it, because it gives you warning of major storms, but it's not going to tell you about individual raindrops."
Even the National Research Council issued a report in 2008 calling pattern-seeking data mining tools too unreliable in identifying potential terrorists.
Bruce Schneier, the chief security officer at BT, has speculated that our current data mining system will generate one billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Hence the famous line in The Simpsons Movie: "We've got one!"
Even a blind squirrel finds the odd acorn . . . which gives me little comfort about the ability of our data mining programs to stop terrorist plots.
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