Mood:
lyricalNow Playing: Hey Z3 Readers Let Me ADVISE you
Topic: CIVIL RIGHTS
(the following article is copied from the christian monitor, only a part of the article has been copied)
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 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.
The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots.[sic] 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
read more here HERE!
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.
"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.
"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.
