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U.S. Pressing for
High-Tech Spy Tools
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![3DAP](3D"UsHeadingforHighTechSpyTools_files/image009.gif")
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By
MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer
=
WASHINGTON - Despite an outcry over privacy
implications, the government is pressing ahead with research to create
ultrapowerful tools to mine millions of public and private records for =
information
about terrorists.
=
Congress
eliminated a Pentagon (news
- web
sites) office that had been developing this terrorist-tracking
technology because of fears it might ensnare innocent Americans. <=
/o:p>
=
Still,
some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information
Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices,
congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press=
.
=
In
addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million
research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Resea=
rch
and Development Activity, or ARDA, that has used some of the same
researchers as Poindexter's program.
=
"The
whole congressional action looks like a shell game," said Steve
Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work b=
y U.S.
intelligence agencies. "There may be enough of a difference for th=
em
to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identi=
cal
work is continuing."
=
Poindexter
aimed to predict terrorist attacks by identifying telltale patterns of
activity in arrests, passport applications, visas, work permits, driver=
's
licenses, car rentals and airline ticket buys as well as credit
transactions and education, medical and housing records.
=
The
research created a political uproar because such reviews of millions of
transactions could put innocent Americans under suspicion. One of
Poindexter's own researchers, David D. Jensen at the University of
Massachusetts, acknowledged that "high numbers of false positives =
can
result."
=
Disturbed
by the privacy implications, Congress last fall closed Poindexter's off=
ice,
part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and barred the
agency from continuing most of his research. Poindexter quit the govern=
ment
and complained that his work had been misunderstood. =
=
The
work, however, did not die.
=
In
killing Poindexter's office, Congress quietly agreed to continue paying=
to
develop highly specialized software to gather foreign intelligence on
terrorists.
=
In a
classified section summarized publicly, Congress added money for this
software research to the "National Foreign Intelligence Program,&q=
uot;
without identifying openly which intelligence agency would do the work.=
=
It
said, for the time being, products of this research could only be used
overseas or against non-U.S. citizens in this country, not against
Americans on U.S. soil.
=
Congressional
officials would not say which Poindexter programs were killed and which
were transferred. People with direct knowledge of the contracts told th=
e AP
that the surviving programs included some of 18 data-mining projects kn=
own
in Poindexter's research as Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery.
=
Poindexter's
office described that research as "technology not only for `connec=
ting
the dots' that enable the U.S. to predict and pre-empt attacks but also=
for
deciding which dots to connect." It was among the most contentious
research programs.
=
Ted
Senator, who managed that research for Poindexter, told government
contractors that mining data to identify terrorists "is much harder
than simply finding needles in a haystack."
=
"Our
task is akin to finding dangerous groups of needles hidden in stacks of
needle pieces," he said. "We must track all the needle pieces=
all
of the time."
=
Among
Senator's 18 projects, the work by researcher Jensen shows how flexible
such powerful software can be. Jensen used two online databases, the
Physics Preprint Archive and the Internet Movie Database, to develop to=
ols
that would identify authoritative physics authors and would predict whe=
ther
a movie would gross more than $2 million its opening weekend.
=
Jensen
said in an interview that Poindexter's staff liked his research because=
the
data involved "people and organizations and events ... like the da=
ta
in counterterrorism."
=
At the
University of Southern California, professor Craig Knoblauch said he
developed software that automatically extracted information from travel=
Web
sites and telephone books and tracked changes over time.
=
Privacy
advocates feared that if such powerful tools were developed without lim=
its
from Congress, government agents could use them on any database. <=
/o:p>
=
Sen.
Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who fought to restrict Poindexter's office, is tryin=
g to
force the executive branch to tell Congress about all its data-mining
projects. He recently pleaded with a Pentagon advisory panel to propose
rules on reviewing data that Congress could turn into laws. =
=
ARDA,
the research and development office, sponsors corporate and university
research on information technology for U.S. intelligence agencies. It is
developing computer software that can extract information from database=
s as
well as text, voices, other audio, video, graphs, images, maps, equatio=
ns
and chemical formulas. It calls its effort "Novel Intelligence from
Massive Data."
=
The
office said it has given researchers no government or private data and
obeys privacy laws.
=
The
project is part of its effort "to help the nation avoid strategic
surprise ... events critical to national security ... such as those of
Sept. 11, 2001," the office said.
=
Poindexter
had envisioned software that could quickly analyze "multiple
petabytes" of data. The Library of Congress (news
- web
sites) has space for 18 million books, and one petabyte of data wou=
ld
fill it more than 50 times. One petabyte could hold 40 pages of text for
each of the world's more than 6.2 billion people.
=
ARDA
said its software would have to deal with "typically a petabyte or
more" of data. It noted that some intelligence data sources "=
grow
at the rate of four petabytes per month." Experts said those proba=
bly
are files with satellite surveillance images and electronic eavesdroppi=
ng
results.
=
The
Poindexter and ARDA projects are vastly more powerful than other
data-mining projects such as the Homeland Security Department's CAPPS II
program to classify air travelers or the six-state, Matrix anti-crime
system financed by the Justice Department (news
- web
sites).
=
In
September 2002, ARDA awarded $64 million in contracts covering 3 1/2 ye=
ars.
The contracts went to more than a dozen companies and university resear=
chers,
including at least six who also had worked on Poindexter's program.
=
Congress
threw these researchers into turmoil. Doug Lenat, the president of Cyco=
rp
Corp. in Austin, Texas, will not discuss his work but said he had an
"enormous seven-figure deficit in our budget" because Congress
shut down Poindexter's office.
=
Like
many critics, James Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology =
sees
a role for properly regulated data-mining in evaluating the vast,
underanalyzed data the government already collects. <=
/p>
=
Expansions
of data mining, however, increase "the risk of an innocent person
being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of having rented the wrong
apartment ... or having a name similar to the name of some bad guy,&quo=
t;
he said.
=
___
=
On the
Net:
=
DARPA:
http://www.darpa.mil
=
ARDA: http://www.ic-arda.org
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