Slashdot Log In
Homeland Security Tests Snoop Computer System
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Mar 09, 2007 06:07 AM
from the return-of-tia dept.
from the return-of-tia dept.
Parallax Blue writes "The Washington Times reports that Homeland Security has developed and is testing a new computer system called ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement) that collects and analyzes personal information on US citizens. Relevant data 'can include credit-card purchases, telephone or Internet details, medical records, travel and banking information.' The program apparently uses the same process as the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project, which was aborted in 2003 due to privacy concerns."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Aborted? (Score:5, Insightful)
If by aborted you mean "renamed, swept under the rug and kept secret this time", yes, it has been "aborted".
Re:Aborted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously they just made an announcement to divert public attention from it. Nothing new I would say.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Newspeak (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Aborted? (Score:4, Informative)
The system that is described in the article is not new at all (many others have pointed this out already), the cost is generally between 1 and 10 million USD depending on the number of inputs needed. It is not a single black box, but made up of a collection of hardware that is far from small in size.
Don't take my word for it though - I can neither confirm or deny anything I say.
-- Ex Them.
Parent
ADVISE (Score:5, Funny)
1) Choose a word you like. Or better, that the boss/sponsor likes.
2) Reverse engineer an acronym to fit. Sort of.
3)
4) Profit!!!!!
Don't tell me it ain't so.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Very, very irritatingly, instead of referring to acronyms by saying the letters, people try to say "the word" that the acronym is trying to spell out. For acronyms that have been designed for this
Re:ADVISE (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I detest acronyms. If you dislike writing something out all the time, use a macro. If you need to say something, please don't use some ridiculous string of consonants as a word. It's insulting to your audience.
I for one, welcome your non-acronym agenda and from 12:00 post meridian today I shall no longer use acronyms, Exempli Gratia I shall hereby only refer to Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation devices, Radio Detection And Ranging devices, Et Cetera.
I think the above proves how much better it is to not have acronyms. Anybody with an Intelligence Quotient over 50 could see this, so Quod Erat Demonstrandum. Using my International Business Machines Corporation computer, I have created an HyperText Markup Language docuemnt linked to a My Structured Query Language database showing this which can found at the following Uniform Resource Locator:
HypertextTransferProtocol:\\worldwideweb.letsallp
Parent
Yeah, but it's ok (Score:4, Funny)
But TIA was part of the military. This is for the defense of our homeland, so the trade-off in liberty must be worth it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, so this is the Semantic Enhancement part, right?
Supposing the Insight part is taken caren of by the moderators (hint, hint) because of my Analysis and Slashdot's Dissemination, we're only lacking the Visualisation part.
So do you think they've actually put up a fancy name for a bunch of Slashdotter-equivalents, who Visualize scantily clad girls during their short and scarce breaks?
Bad, bad, bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, data mining can dig a lot of interesting info out of big databases. But to me, there are two big problems with these type of programs:
1. Guilt by association: When they are doing "linkage analysis" using your phone records etc, how many people will be swept up in the "terrorist" net because they visit the same library as a "terrorist", or got called by accident, or shop at the same Wallmart?
2. Mandate drift: We all know that now it is "the terrorists", soon it will be "the terrorists, the child abusers, the drug dealers, the guys who hit little old ladies, ...". But with the sorts of data mining they are doing, they could just as easily pick out groups of probable (insert political affiliation here). How would you like the FBI showing up at your door because some data mining program thinks that you are probably going to protest a visit to your hometown by the president?
Everyone is a terrorist. (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you ever forget to report that extra income you made mawing lawns in that summer, well you hid money from Uncle Sam and you probably used it to fun al-Qaeda which makes you a terrorist.
Did you ever think bad thoughts about the president? Well are definetly a terrorist.
Did you ever use encryption? Only pedophiles and terrorists use encryption so you are probably a terrorist.
Taking all this into consideration, we (the D
Right. Except....not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly -- lay off the Kool Aid. Take a look at the amount spent on the Iraq war sometime. It's a vast sum; easily enough to have just bought Saddam's cooperation (and let's face it, he was desperate for friends anyway) and all the oil under Iraq.
If you're going to come up with conspiracy theories, at least make them plausible. The "OMG it's blood for oil BLOOD FOR OIL" thing just doesn't fly. If oil had been the goal, it could have just been purchased. It's not like the U.S. has a ethical problem with funding repressive dictators when it suits us.
I'm not really justifying the war per se, but you're going to have to look a little harder if you want to find its root causes. As usual, it's not something that can be rendered down to a three-word slogan. I think in large part, it had to do with the American populace wanting their government to kick the living shit out of some brown-skinned somebody's (and the government only too happy to oblige -- war being a far easier condition to manage than peace), and when the whole thing in Afghanistan didn't look like it was going to go anywhere satisfying in a hurry, Iraq was a convenient target for our collective spleen-venting: it was big, flat, filled with people we either didn't like or didn't care about, and we had good maps from the last time we'd taken a stroll through. Kind of a no-brainer.
Parent
Nothing to see here, move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
http://infowars.net/articles/march2007/080307TIA.h tm [infowars.net]
The part I really love, is their logo. A giant eye of Horus with beams coming out of it encompassing the Earth.
Is it me or does anyone else find that just the slightest bit odd?
Re:Nothing to see here, move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you all realize how many Congressional representatives are being blackmailed. Those phone taps aren't going to waste. Look how effective J. Edgar Hoover was blackmailing people, and he didn't even have computerized help gathering dirt. So, yeah, creepy eyeball.
Parent
U.S. Democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as good (old) Europe is free(until you bring us democracy too;) I'll just stick to my side of the atlantic (and the channel).
But seriously, U.S. citizens, aware of their surroundings, must be pretty frustrated by these moves.
The problem is we're *copying* it (Score:3, Interesting)
There's examples with SWIFT.
SWIFT violated Belgium banking law and EU privacy law, and USA FISA law when it handed all it's data to the NSA & CIA. UK banks were complicit in this, and would also face prosecution.
Instead, the EU Commission took over the case from the Belgiums to 'coordinate the response', and are curre
Coward for what ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The British Version (Score:4, Insightful)
We've got something similar to this, it's called:
Assimilating,Reasoning,
Statistical,
Enhancement,
Highlighting,
Online,
Linkage and
Encryption
Luckily no-one cared about our version as we've already got CCTV everywhere [bbc.co.uk].
Welcome to the surveillance society. Come on in, just don't say anything that might result in your arrest. Things like: 'I'm not too fond of our current administration, I may vote for someone different next time,' are a definite no-no. Just stay on-message, never have anything to hide and you will be fine!
The question that should be asked... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the answer to this question is NO then the question must be asked, is it worth giving up our civil liberties for a program or law that would not have stopped the terrorists in the first place. And the answer to that should be a resounding NO.
Unfortunately as long as we have politicians who are more willing to listen to a man named after a plant than after the people who voted for them in the first place, we will continue to see anti-terrorism programs and legislation that erode our civil liberties without even doing anything that would have actually had an effect on the September 11 hijackers in the first place.
I would say "thank god I don't live in America" but given that our prime minister will do anything Bush says and then some, we too are seeing all sorts of nasty laws that we don't need and that do nothing to benefit our country or stop terrorism. Thankfully there is an election coming up later this year or so and I can go and do my bit to vote the bastard Howard and his party out of office (I just hope more people follow suit)
Just another Loyalty Card (Score:5, Insightful)
The sooner Homeland Security start offering discount points and a frequent flyer program the better - to reward loyal citizens - otherwise it's just a rip-off.
Solving the wrong probem (Score:5, Interesting)
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but the point is they had the intel necessary to predict and prevent this, but it was lost in the noise. What they need is not more electronic noise to sift through (and electronic wild goose chases to go on) but better human intelligence. Grepping through all of the worlds internet traffic and phone records is not nearly as useful as having a single agent embedded with a terrorist group or even paying a couple of informers in the "extremist Muslim" community.
One can reasonably argue that flooding the TLA agencies with this data will make their jobs harder and the overall counter terrorism situation worse. What it will accomplish however is pumping mullions of dollars into the private contractors, while allowing the intelligence agencies to justify raising their budgets and hiring more people to run this program. Which do you think is the real goal?
This is not about catching terrorists OR spying on Americans in an effort to turn us into a 1984 police state. It's about money, plain and simple.
Finkployd
Just follow the algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to our 'democracy'.
You cannot control a democratic country by force but you can easily do it with fear and lies. Here is the algorithm:
--Fuck up a country algorithm:--
Input: Country founded on freedom, democracy, individual privacy
Output: Complete government control, 0 rights, 0 privacy
1. Make the people afraid. Could be anything, terrorists, communists, mexicans, chinese, witches etc.
2. Tell them that you can make the fear go away if they just willingly relinquish a little bit of their rights and freedoms.
3. Repeat 3 until no more rights and freedoms remain
4. Done.
Parent
Re:Where do they find the assholes... (Score:5, Insightful)
i love this stentence..
as a college student i get something similar where they say "oh you need some 'real world' perspective".
apparently "ideology" stands for having a soul, while "real world perspective" stands for selling it down the river for a quick buck.
i dont know but im really considering remaining poor simply to retain some modicum of morality... maybe start a business building real wood furniture (even major vendors are using particle board now adays)
Parent