Schneier on Security

No worries, the database is still perfectly useful for finding dirt on specific persons. Instead of trawling facts for suspicious persons, they’ll trawl to find suspicious facts for persons. And as earlier intelligence agencies have demonstrated, that works just fine.

Data Mining is valuable when you already have a group of potential terorists, but not when it's used to scan the whole population.

For example suppose there's a good successful test for terrorist tendencies (1% false positives and 1% false negatives).

If you already know a terrorist and want to filter the 1000 people they have any contact with, to find the 1 who is another terrorist, this test will probably filter out that one person plus 10 innocents. This ratio is a good starting point for more police work.

But if you just run the test on all 300 million US citizens, to search for 100 terrorists, this test will filter out most of the terrorists, plus 3 million innocents. A worthless starting point for police work, because you have 30,000 innocents per terrorist.

The same logic applies in many other fields. For example in medicine, because a drug or a screening test is valuable to treat people who are already ill, this does not mean it should be applied to the whole population to treat the undiagnosed ill, because any side effects are multiplied in the same way by the large proportion of well people who cannot benefit but might suffer. Or in welfare, because money donations help disaster victims, this does not necessarily mean that hand-outs should be given to the whole population, because side-effects such as a disencentive to work are multiplied. Whenever you apply a technique more widely, it is likely to be less effective.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This farcical exercise is re-made every few years, with the same results.

The NRC conducts this sort of exercise periodically, calling out the Federal government for the shamefully stupid magical thinking that underlies it's bad-guy detection programs. The report is typically scientifically careful, and marshalls the available evidence to produce an unarguably sensible set of judgments and recommendations.

The report is then promptly round-filed by the securocracy, which merrily carries on, safe in the knowledge that this sort of technomagical bullshit unlocks all kinds of budgetary treasure-troves in Congress and within the Executive. We've seen the exact same script play out with polygraphs as loyalty-screening tools, despite the fact that their effectiveness has been demonstrated to be about comparable to that of ouija boards.

The past is prologue: not one of these recommendations will be implemented in any meaningful way. This bullshit will continue to reap budgetary rewards from credulous appropriators and government accountants.

It is the same as listening to the phone calls of 300 million Americans to find 3 terrorists. Sort of like as described in this article:

Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=5987804&page=1

Off-topic for this post, but have you seen this yet, Bruce?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f86a290a-959a-11dd-aedd-000077b07658,Authorised=false.html

Another example of anti-terrorism laws being used for entirely unrelated purposes (economic ones, this time).

May be the title of the item should be
"Current data mining programs for terrorist don't work"

The current title is trying to prove something patently unprovable i.e. that data mining can't work.

This appears to me, is an opinion based on social cost/benefit "feelings" rather than true scientific underpinnings.

I wonder what constitutes inappropriate harm. Do you actually have to be arrested or disappeared, or does it suffice that (as with the new NSA disclosures) your private conversations are passed around the surveillance office for amusement?

I was going to bang on about "follow the money" and "pork" but not only have I been beeten to it I noticed something realy worrying,

"...meaningful redress to any individuals inappropriately harmed by their operation."

It sounds very laudable except for the "inappropriately" bit.

Basicaly who decides what is and is not "inappropriate".

You obviously cannot use judges as it will get appealed up to the SCourt by the Gov.

And bassed on some of the ludi-crass findings they have made in recent times I would not be surprised if they sentanced the "harmed party" to life for "wasting police time" or "Government resourcess" or some such...

from boingboing, a little more info on William Perry.

"That's Bill Perry, former SecDef from 93-97! It's not just some ivory tower analysis then .... "

The National Research Council obviously lacks anyone on its staff with serious Security credentials. Anyone involved in planning and fighting the Global War On Terror knows that all aspects of any widespread surveillance or data-mining operation needs to be classifed at the highest level to ensure its effectiveness against the enemy.

(The enemy, of course, includes the many Liberal members of the public, press, and Congress who hate America and will pounce on any rumors of "ineffectiveness," "abuse," or "waste" to undermine the effort and aid terrorists. Loyal, patriotic Americans will naturally be grateful and completely supportive of anything the Unitary Executive does to protect the Homeland and our children from Unspeakable Evil. They know that if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about if the government sweeps up their data.)

@Muffin

I enjoyed "cracking" the ad-wall by changing the authorization to "true".

@George

If you have nothing to hide then please give me your name, debit card number and its PIN please.

Everyone has things to hide. Those that think they don't are idiots and are a danger to themselves.

can data-mining be done with the IP encrypted?
that way the identity of innocent people would be ensured, but IF there is probable cause to believe the IP belongs to criminals a court order could allow/enable decryption of the IP

Documents like this are political, not technical. Someone who used to be president of anything is a long way from technical work.

Such panels come around for briefings to our labs but usually can only make metaphors about what they see, usually incorrect ones.

Heavy on Seattle, low on recent knowledge. I'm not an expert on this subject but I've seen their kind on the subjects where I am expert and it wasn't pretty.

it's good that abc featured adrienne kinne's account about the evesdropping practices, but it's neither new nor exclusive. democracy now had an interview with her as early as may '08.

their interview might be far more interesting than the one on abc, i don't know.

.~.

and here's a link:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/10/headlines#14

Here is a relevant paper from the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2008) on this topic:

The Economics of Covert Community Detection and Hiding

http://weis2008.econinfosec.org/papers/Nagaraja.pdf

@ Silly Ratfaced Git,

Not sure if you or George are attempting to take the **** more ;)

However you did leave out one point in your,

"Everyone has things to hide. Those that think they don't are idiots and are a danger to themselves."

Which is they are even more of a danger to others...

Which being the slightly selfish g** I am worries me the most...

The 9/11 commission took a hard look at this and related issues. Notably, wide-spread data mining did not come up as a recommendation. However, information sharing between domestic and foreign intelligence, network analysis of associations with known enemy actors and better deployment of human intelligence assets were all incorporated in their recommendations.

The GIGO comment was interesting. I'm as concerned by the prospect of anyone using data mining techniques as the next man. But surely the argument about OpSec applies to any and all methods of policing / counter-terrorism. If all criminals/terrorists had perfect OpSec they would never be caught by any strategy, from data mining to walking the beat with your eyes open. We rely on THEM being as human as US, always have. By that argument we should just give up and wait for anarchy to bloom.

@fairb

Your perfect OpSec comment has to be right.

The real fallacy is the belief that something has to be done about terrorism. It doesn't. The terrorist problem is too small to bother about.

Unfortunately, life is full of unpleasant twists of fate. They cannot all be avoided. Resources are limited. Efforts have to be focussed where they can do the most good.

The snag about most anti-terrorist efforts is that they don't do much good (because the problem is so small), whereas they do substantial harm (loss of civil liberties).

Unfortunately, all discussion of this is hopelessly skewed because Joe SixPack thinks risk/harm is proportional to amount of media coverage.

Of course, various groups in society have much to gain from scaring Joe SixPack in this way.

I have a great faith in the ill-educated masses, and in the positive side of technical developments like the internet. I also tend to think that more information, more discussion is the right way forward.

But at the moment we are not doing a terribly good job. It took years for the public in the UK and the US to realize they had been conned on Iraq, even now substantial minorities wrap themselves in the flag and think it their duty to "support the government". It looks as though the 42-day detention may finally be sunk in the UK, but it has been a long tough struggle.

@ John Scholes

"It looks as though the 42-day detention may finally be sunk in the UK, but it has been a long tough struggle."

Only for now...

Bruce has a saying about cryptography and the way attacks against a system only get stronger with time.

I think it is perhaps time he re-worked it for civil liberties...