Analysis: data mining doesn't work for spotting terrorists

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081009-analysis-data-mining-doesnt-work-for-spotting-terrorists.html


Earlier in the week, the NRC published a report about data mining and how it could possibly be used to prevent terrorism. This article talks about how the NRC thinks it works, how it actually works, and how it is bad for the American people. The first thing that the author says is that betting national security on data mining is basically praying for the incompetence of the terrorists, and with today's increasing sophistication of all people, that just isn't every likely. He describes the data mining technique as a action where you "vacuum up all of the world's information into a giant computer and mine it for terrorist clues". And this type of thinking, as he and many others say, has happened only recently after 9/11.

The biggest concern that he has about the inefficiency of data mining is exactly that. It IS inefficient, ineffective, and random at best, and it seems even unconstitutional. They are using an astronomical amount of power to suck up as much data as they can, and then using just as much, if not more power, to sort through all of that data searching for "terrorist clues" which usually don't even exist. They end up sucking up private information for honest people who have done nothing wrong. The author points out how ineffective it is in catching terrorists as well. Because most terrorists have no criminal past, and are usually just ordinary citizens, you are not able to find them like that. Little is known about training, so looking for training clues is out of the question. And even if we did know about their training or anything, it would still be nearly impossible to find them using data mining because of the use of "code words", that make it seem like they are just having a typical conversation with someone, and information hiding.

I thought that this article was very interesting, mainly because it showed that the government has recognized that technology is a good way to search for terrorists, but there is a right and a wrong way to do it depending on the case. The biggest concern I had while reading was whether or not they filtered the data that they collected, or if they just took all of it, i.e. They could get data from my computer, and then get data from a terrorists computer as well, but since its all there I could get jumbled in with his data. And the fact that, given to the wrong person, anything collected could be used badly.