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Total Information Awareness, For One 197

Posted by timothy from the aggregation-nation dept.
Jason writes "This guy has created his own TIA program for his electronic transactions around DC. He writes, 'Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements... and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made.' A small vignette into what could be done with your electronic droppings."
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Total Information Awareness, For One More

Total Information Awareness, For One

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  • Wow (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He even included his online porn purchases!
  • as they spy on you.

    Wasn't it: " We'll spy on *them* as they spy on us"?

  • doesn't seem all that TIA... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rumpledstiltskin ( 528544 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:29PM (#7019868) Homepage Journal
    looks like he just took quicken or MS money or some equivalent application and added addresses and posted the locations on a map. This doesn't seem to be nearly the scope of ashcroft's wet dream come true (TIA).

    • Re:doesn't seem all that TIA... (Score:5, Informative)

      by guardian-ct ( 105061 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:40PM (#7019925)
      Click on the "Click for PNG link".
      Then click on some of the icons on his map. It's more involved than you think. Scanned receipts from that location, including what was purchased, and how much he paid for it. It's not just a map, and it certainly wasn't generated by Quicken or MS Money, unless those two programs have gotten significantly more powerful than I thought.
      • Oh I SEE... spends a lot of time hanging around Dupont Circle and Kalorama, frequents decidedly pedestrian restaurants, frequents 17th St, buys mango smoothies at Whole Foods, eats tofu bought in Chinatown, hangs out on in artsy-edgy 14th street clubs and coffeehouses... prefers mexican food and salsa dancing. Rounds tipped bills to the penny. Most importantly, never, EVER, for any reason, leaves Northwest.

        Houston, we have a profile.
    • Not really because he also saved his receipts and scanned those in. So it was slightly more work. It's also interesting to try this on yourself, not from a GIS perspective but to try and account for where you spend money or how often.

      I tried to manage my money by tracking where I spent money and over the course of a month I'd racked up around 50 different vendors. After six months (had I kept it up) I could probably go to the Brickskeller (like this guy did) and open a corporate account with a 10% discount
    • I think you missed the point. OF COURSE, big government would be able to create more detailed maps and logs of our activities. The question is: would you want them to be able to do even the little he showed us? Take that map and add a few thousand more data points, add in the locations and times of all your cellular phone calls and see just how private you feel. And further suppose that some spook analyst (or government supercomputer) somewhere takes a personal interest in you (for whatever reason) and
      • "And further suppose that some spook analyst (or government supercomputer) somewhere takes a personal interest in you (for whatever reason) and requests that a GPS device be attached to your car."

        Got a mobile telephone?

        Ever wonder how the network knows where to send the signal when you get a call?

        You're already carrying a GPS tracker equivalent.

  • WHAT ARE YOU SUGGESTING?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:31PM (#7019874)
    You seem to be suggesting that perhaps it is wrong for the US Government to operate a repressive and opressive system like the TIA. Well, you are entitled to your opinion. After all this is America. At the same time, this is America, so your implication is treasonous. Please remain seated until federal agents have come to a complete stop and John Ashcroft has arrived at your domicile.

  • Welcome to the Global Village (Score:5, Insightful)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowardNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:31PM (#7019877) Journal
    Where everyone knows all your secrets...

    When personal data is confidential, only governments and big business will have access to it. When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.

    The genie is out of the bottle, and it seems that only laws to mandate total and full access to all data by anyone who wants it will protect us from those who would seek to use such power against us.

    Yes, I know it'd be a nightmare if anyone could monitor my phone records, but the nightmare could become quite fun if it went both ways.

    • Re:Welcome to the Global Village (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmigaAvenger ( 210519 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:41PM (#7019930) Journal
      When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.



      Interesting assumption, but wrong... You assumed the corrupt officials will 1) allow their own CORRECT information to be made public, as opposed to cleaning it up first, and 2) that the public information released on you is actually true, and not replaced with previously mentioned corrupt official's info...

      • Re:Welcome to the Global Village (Score:4, Interesting)

        by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowardNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:55PM (#7020007) Journal
        All data is suspect, but data that is kept secret is most suspect.

        By mandating total transparency of data, the community can actually act to verify and "clean" it. Think of reputation management systems. Think of journalists: professional reputation managers, to some extent.

        It would change the world we live in, but the only alternative I see is more of what we have today, namely data as a weapon of oppression and exploitation for those with sufficient money and power.

        • By mandating total transparency of data, the community can actually act to verify and "clean" it.

          Just like we can "clean" our credit records of errors, right? In case you missed it, that statement is dripping with sarcasm. If you've ever tried to fix your credit history you know it's damn near impossible.

          • If you've ever tried to fix your credit history you know it's damn near impossible.

            Send a demand letter to the reporting service demanding that they remove the offending item. They now have 30 days to respond and either justify it or remove it. Send one demand letter for all of the disputed items, and send it every 30 days until they miss a deadline or remove the item.

            • Right. And then later they import the same bad data from another reporting service that you managed to miss last time. I don't think I have enough time in my life to work for a living, have a family and a house AND chase down every possible avenue of bad information into the credit system and correct them all simultaneously so they don't pollute each other.
        • Think of reputation management systems. Think of journalists: professional reputation managers, to some extent.

          Professionalism places different requirements on us regarding privacy, and most people are able to distinguish their private life from their public life.

          ...data as a weapon of oppression and exploitation for those with sufficient money and power.

          Add that the data is for those who have the power to make things illegal to suppress people with political differences of opinion.
      • Also, he is assuming that the corrupt officials care if they are caught.

        In the US at the moment, it is still a scandal, but becoming less of one. Buying your way free of justice is possible, in most cases. When 'scandal' becomes norm, and buying free of justice is accepted routine, then it does not matter if corrupt official is publicly known. They'll just be corrupt in public.
      • he also makes the assumption that the public will have equal ability to parse that information. even if everything were made public, only the government and some large corporations would have the computing power and programs to cull some of the really useful information.
    • The TIA concept is not new, it's been explored in the sci-fi genre ad nauseum. However, one of the less examined aspects of implementing such a system in our society is the fact that we live in a representative republic. The people responsible for this system must be re-elected every few years by the very people they're oppressing.

      So, the rights of the people must be respected to the extent that the people want them to be respected. If the people, as a whole, don't feel like they're being treated fairly,

    • To start, I would like to give the author credit presenting his case (notably the .png images)

      However I cannot really grasp the concept of what he is trying to get across. I could draw a map of all the digital (non cash tranactions) I have made in the past week, or I am likely to make next week.

      If this is a paranoia issue then why use digital money transfers / store cards? OK the ATM/POS transefers will still be logged (cash withdrawls) and so will the video evidence that you used them.

      However add to the
      • "The amount of number crunching needed to integrate these systems together would be astronomical even for a small island like the UK (unsure of the current population)."

        Take a population of 10G at a 1000 tpd each transaction 1kB ==> 10^15B - 1 PB/day ==>365 PB/y

        1kB does not seem like a lot but all it needs to be is a link to the store where the data is kept (2^1000 should cover foreseeable address space needs).

        Your life history is 36.5GB.

        Compare CERN LHC:
        otn.oracle.com/products/oracle9i/ grid_comp
    • Back when I was in junior high school, I ran across this book of short science fiction stories...

      One of them was about a pair of scientists who was researching time to invent a chronoscope -- the device would look backwards in time and space. One of them had a noble dream, to look back in time to study the ancient greeks and egyptians, so that mankind could learn our lost histories. The second scientist had a child who died in a fire, and he only wanted to look back 15 years, to see him alive again.

      They
      • The story you're referring to is Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past". Google keywords asimov "dead past" [including quotation marks] for pointers and reviews. Add keyword cigarette for DMCA-violation.
        • And also, "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Not quite the same plot, but basically the same chronoscope. The difference is that while Asimov's short story ended implying that the impending 'opening of the past' would end civilization, TLoOD went on to see what a world utterly without privacy or secrets kept outside one's own head would be like.

          Consider: a 99.999% success rate in investigating any crime. This is good when you consider just how many go unsolved and what an in

    • Where everyone knows all your secrets...

      So by your own words, you then know everyone elses secrets. Everyone knows everything about everyone. Well there goes crime-- that's certainly a secret even before you do it. Sorry were you trying to scare me or make a Utopia?
    • When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.

      But the data isn't public. In fact it is classified. What's to stop those corrupt officials from changing your data? Remember, it's a national database...it need only happen once.

      Another interesting conflict: how many Slashdotters support both the WWW and TIA? How can you cope with yourselves?!? (hint: the "soul" of the WWW is its highly distributed architecture, where no one organization can control the flow of data--it'

  • Electronic movements (Score:4, Funny)

    by mst76 ( 629405 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:32PM (#7019879)
    > a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements

    So is he an Autobot or a Decepticon?

  • no surprises (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:32PM (#7019881) Homepage
    Why does this surprise him? It need not take that much work to figure out that writing checks or using the "card" can get you mapped out, especially if the govt. has the warrant to track you (and with the patriot act, it shouldn't be too hard). Redundant to say the least.

  • Having reviewed your activities..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:33PM (#7019893)
    I can't help but come to the conclusion that; You don't get out much, do you?

  • sounds a lot like LifeLog (Score:5, Informative)

    by noahmax ( 534339 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:35PM (#7019898) Homepage
    This "personal TIA" sounds a whole lot like LifeLog [darpa.mil], the DARPA uber-diary program to catalog every aspect of a person's life.

    There's more info on LifeLog here [defensetech.org] and here [wired.com].

    nms

  • Now, what was that late-night dining escapade into south-east for?

  • So, from that information ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:36PM (#7019906)
    document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made

    ... have you manage to determine whether or not you're an Al Qaida money launderer yet?

    If I were you, I'd watch myself real close, in case I turned out to be a real terrorist.

  • Interesting experiment but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:38PM (#7019918) Homepage Journal
    So, while this is interesting, from an illustrative standpoint (how much info can be retrieved from receipts and such), the site seems superficial and a little voyeuristic. I was hoping for some insight into the problem such as how to fight TIA, or from a CS perspective, even how to deal with disparate data from medical records to dinner transactions.

    However, this site should illustrate to us that one should realize that because of TIA, once these databases are created, they never really go away. They will be mined eventually by corporations looking to expand market share by tracking individuals shopping or lifestyle decisions. In fact, there is already precedence for this in recent history. And they will be used for alternative governmental purposes other than that originally intended. There is again precedence for this as well already.

    Finally, perhaps its the medical training but every time I see TIA, I think of transient ischemic attack which conceptually I suppose, total information awareness could induce in some folks. :-)

    • Here's a freaking news flash for you on TIA (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I was hoping for some insight into the problem such as how to fight TIA

      Umm... just a shot in the dark here - but how about not electing governments interested in implementing a defacto police state and pursuing imperialistic foreign policies to prop up an obsolete oil-based economy?

      But, hey, what do I know. No pity for you. My government tried this shit and enough people cared to stop it.

      Or.. perhaps you welcome your new overlords.

  • My better TIA for one.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by legoburner ( 702695 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:41PM (#7019929) Homepage Journal
    I too have been working on this sort of thing out of interest, but to a much larger degree. Since all my emails, chat logs, financial transactions, contact details, photos, etc. are digital and I have a record of them, I am able to place keys between them and come up with all sorts of useless info (which I will not share :P). Such things as:
    Can look at a photo, then see how much money I spent on that date, where I spent it and what I said about it to my friends online using regexps.
    Can map out (like this article) my location at any one time, with photos if it was since July 2003 (when I got my digital camera)
    Can at-a-glance see all communication with any one person, and who that person knows through CC'd emails, group chats, etc.
    Can get a calendar style day by day breakdown of time spent online, amount spent and where, amount I spoke to people online that day, etc.
    The system is pretty cool but needs a bit more work before I am happy with it, and it is probably going to be just for me since it is a mess of SQL, shell scripts, perl and java.

    Needless to say, the amount of data and stuff I can do with it is very scary. I cannot factor in recorded phone calls, precise supermarket purchases, etc. TIA and it's inevitable bigger brother (think patriot act then patriot act2) could store a lot more of my life than I would ever want to give out.
    • I'd love to see what you have since I've been thinking about similar things in a completely digital realm (only email, web pages, files on my (several) machines and so on).

      So, let this be a bit of encouragement for you to put the code somewhere where it can be looked at and experimented with.

  • Solution to TIA. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:41PM (#7019934)
    I don't think I've seen this mentioned before so here goes...
    As an act of civil disobedience, as a group flood TIA, Carnivore, etc with false information. Start referring to your online contacts as "terrorists", make references to "picking up the fertilizer and diesel", instant message each other with false meeting points you never actually go to, and generally throw a wrench into the cogs of the machine by making the signal-to-noise ratio more noise than signal.
    Some may call this unpatriotic, others may see it as patriotic, it's a personal judgement call as I see it.

  • And now everyone on /. knows where he's been. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jin Wicked ( 317953 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:42PM (#7019940) Homepage Journal
    I don't really think he needs a computer program to do this. Judging from some of my male coworkers, this sort of thing has been going on for years. If anyone wants to know exactly where he is at any given point in time, he should just get married... and then they can call his wife. ;)

  • meh (Score:2, Interesting)

    by c4ffeine ( 705293 )
    I pay cash for pretty much everything now, but that's just because I don;t have a credit card yet (i'm too lazy). I'm wondering exactly what else the Total Information Awareness thing will be collecting; if I take out a big chunk of money from a ATM every week (like I do now) and pay in cash for everything that week, how much can they learn? i'm afraid of being a suspected terrorist now; I "hide my tracks" from the government, read slashdot, and am learning chemistry "to make bombs". That, and I've started

    • Re:meh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
      On the other hand, by simply paying for everything with cash and using your ATM that way you are probably just fitting yourself into some profile. Hard to say what that would be, though. It might simply be "anti-government whacko" (harmless) or "drug dealer" (call Bob at the DEA) or "terrorist" (throw him into a locked room and throw away the room.) In some respects you're probably better off just trying to fit in with the rest of us and hope that the Justice lightning doesn't strike too close to home.
      • In some respects you're probably better off just trying to fit in with the rest of us and hope that the Justice lightning doesn't strike too close to home.

        She spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said, it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.

  • Same old problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:48PM (#7019974)
    The ability to gather the data about you has long been there. Commercial sources have been able to do this for nearly two decades, anyone remember the late and not lamented Lotus Marketplace ?.

    The real trick is to turn the raw data into meaningfull information. Its that lack of discrimination thats truly scary in letting the government assume that kind of power.

    I have no wish to have storm troopers drilling holes in my ceiling because my name is one letter off from a terrorist, or because I bought a pint of humous at the supermarket. Untill there is sufficient discrimination in the system to be intelligent about who it singles out, and Unless there is further the mandatory requirement for human investigation and discretion before acting this type of technology will be nothing but a loose cannon.

    As things currently stand this type of information will just be used to harrass and persecute people that have been flagged by or have annoyed some government beureuacrat. Terry pratchet in his truly insightfull manner summed up the relationship between the populace and the law, "Commander Grimes surveyed the crowd of people and amused himself by trying to figure out what each one was guilty of". Everyone is guilty of something, with the current level of litigation and legality within our society most people are guilty of many things they aren't even aware of.

    If TIA raw data is available for call up on any individual, suspicious material will be found, and nominally innocent people will have their lives made a hell. If however it can be predictive and then mediated with severe limits it could actually serve a valuable purpose.
    • "I have no wish to have storm troopers drilling holes in my ceiling because my name is one letter off from a terrorist"

      Hmmmmm, your name wouldn't be "Buttle'" by any chance, now would it?

      I have a memo here about you.

      KFG
  • So, what bothers me, is not so much the fact that the data's out there; face it. Every time you use plastic, you become a foreign key in SOMEBODY's database. Every time you spend money and get a receipt, somebody knows that somebody fitting your biometric patterning bought $X worth of FOO.

    That's irrelevant.

    What's worrying is the potential for abuse. If, say, I spend $800 in a certain part of town by withdrawing it from an ATM, then make no transactions for 24 hours, what are the conclusions that 'they'

    • Re:Worrying (Score:3, Informative)

      by legoburner ( 702695 )
      From my unreliable, tertiary sources I believe that the UK has 6 months for standard data (eg; if you dont use your blockbuster card for 6 months they delete you from their database), CCTV in towns is removed after 2 days (if you ever need the police to review some, or want to get a copy then you need to be quick or you are out of luck), credit card data I am not sure about, though banking data disappears from my online statement every quarter and credit card data disappears after a year. One cant help but

  • Useful Illustration (Score:4, Informative)

    by maomoondog ( 198438 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @04:57PM (#7020020)
    He may be short on datapoints, but I think this gives a great illustration of how intrusive even a fraction of TIA's capabilities would be. This locational data could point probibalistically to hobbies, spending habits, sexual habits, organization membership and plenty of other things your employer / insurer / unfriendly regime (not talking just about USA) / local con artist / direct marketer / stalker would love to know. These systems will be made and abused, so if you care about any of the above, you should join efforts to condemn them socially wherever you are. I'm relieved the US Congress seems to be doing this by reconsidering funding TIA with taxes!

    If you live outside the USA, you should take special interest in [former TIA chief] [and felon] John Poindexter's recent open letter [nytimes.com] in the New York Times.

    It's pretty handwavy, but he makes a couple of interesting claims:
    • He says military research is free of moral content. His scientists are
      responsible for discovering what is possible; other agencies will be
      responsible for determining its correct use. I'm all for free exploration,
      but this is calculatedly naive. I think this project in particular was
      created with use in mind, and I think tax funded research should reflect
      what taxpayers feel is in their best interest.

    • He says TIA is aimed exclusively at foreign surveillance (and zeroes in on an
      American hotspot, claiming that American financial data isn't analyzed).
      I doubt this*, but even if it's true, citizens abroad should be letting their governments know about how they feel about the US accessing their data.


    *: DARPA funds a lot of research into how to appease American privacy laws while conducting surveillance.
  • I did this on myself also, and I found out the following:

    - 5 visits to 8-ball's bomb shop in Harwood
    - 45 visits to various branches of AmmuNation around the city
    - two purchases of rocket launchers from Phil's Army Surplus

    I don't see what the big deal is. What could anyone infer from that?
  • The amount of data thatis available is much to large to even store on a single or any group of machines available to the kind of money that has been allocated to the project.

    In fact, I was involved with a project to capture the billing records of AT&T for a 3 month rolling store some years ago. The largest theoretical system at the time was too small to handle the amount of data, by a factor of 1/3.

    Scale this up to all transactions by all people. No computer in existance can handle the volume of dat

    • Re:And it just goes to illustrate... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:27PM (#7020155)
      Yes, but on the other hand no commercial interest has even a fraction of the resources available to it that the Federal Government has, and would cheerfully misdirect to this end. And you also don't realize that long-term archival storage of this information isn't the point. The fact that you bought a box of doughnuts ten years ago is irrelevant: the fact that you bought something yesterday that is considered relevant today is the point. What they can do is require organizations that do collect personal information (credit bureaus, banks) to look for specific information and forward it to the TIA systems. There is already precedent for that: banks are required to report cash transactions that exceed specific limits, for example.

  • Not a new idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:14PM (#7020091) Homepage Journal
    This isn't exactly a new idea. The most prominent antecedent for this is Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits [microsoft.com] project at Microsoft Research. But even that isn't original -- Bell is working against ideas first presented in an article Vannevar Bush wrote for the July 1945 issue of Atlantic Monthly, As We May Think [theatlantic.com].

    Bush's essay is really fascinating to read: he envisions a magical desk that could record all a person's thoughts & encounters, and provide the ability to browse that library through a special screen on the device. Keep in mind that this was in 1945, right at the beginning of the computer era, when these machines were the size of buildings, far more complicated to operate, and nowhere near powerful enough. Now, half a century later, Bell feels that the technology is finally at the point where Bush's ideas can be implemented. Think what you will of Microsoft, or of the "big brother" implications of such a machine -- the very fact that this sort of thing is being put into practice is quite impressive.

    Anyone working on such omnipresent recording & retrieval systems needs to be aware of this prior art.

  • I've audited banks... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JRHelgeson ( 576325 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:16PM (#7020101) Homepage Journal
    I can tell you now that any time you swipe your card - that information goes first to the credit card processor where a few pennies go to the card issuer. Not the bank but Visa, Mastercard, Amex or Discover.

    Then the data are sent to the bank. OF COURSE they track all this info. THEY HAVE TO! THEY'RE BANKS!!! There is a money trail/information trail that is left behind any time you ever do ANYTHING with electronic banking.

    If the FBI or local police get a subpoena, they have access to all this information NOW. STOP THE PRESSES!!!

    What blows my fuse is that people think that this is NEW, and it is being put in place by the Dept of Homeland Security. Can you say FUD?

    If the data is already out there, and its already retrieveable once they get a warrant/subpoena. What is wrong here?

    • Re:I've audited banks... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @06:31PM (#7020531)
      No only do they want it available with judicial oversight, they want it available on-demand, conveniently, right on their desktops. No waiting ... just point and click. No thanks ... I want these people to have to work to find out anything of consequence about me.

      The other, bigger, danger is in the centralization of information. Yes, certainly, someone with a stack of subpoena forms can go make a bunch of phone calls, find out where your accounts are, and get what he wants. The data is stored all over in different systems by different organizations ... anyone wanting to find out everything about you specifically will have some work to do.

      Now imagine that same information being stored on a massive government system or network. Even if it isn't stored there, but is simply available upon-demand by that government system it means that your personal info can be grabbed by a Fed, special agent, hacker, cracker, terrorist, or foreign government at a single point of entry.

      That's risky at best. Given the government's track record on security (and the Department of Homeland Security's recent choice of Microsoft products for all it's in-house needs) I think it's fair to assume that unauthorized access would occur.
    • If the data is already out there, and its already retrieveable once they get a warrant/subpoena. What is wrong here?

      I hope you answered your own question. The government wants to do away with those pesky warrants. The Bill of Rights just gets in the way.
      Stupid Bill of Rights trying to protect the People from a tyrannical government. How silly.

  • Not just "no big deal" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zachlipton ( 448206 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:19PM (#7020116)
    When I first looked at this, I thought (as a lot of people here have commented) that this wasn't much of a big deal: so what? This guy scanned in a few receipts and plotted them on a map, big deal...

    However, as I started to look more closely at his patterns, I thought to myself: wow! Based on just this tiny swatch of information, I already know the aproximate area where he lives. If I wanted, I could find the average household income in his neighborhood. I know what he eats and I can tell if he's going to have a party next week based on what he got at the grocery store.

    I know what date and time he went to the market, so if I had a few more data points, I could probably predict when he's going to be there.

    He got a map of Central America at Borders, perhaps a statistical model shows that people following his patterns are likely to be terrorists who want to commit atacks in Central America? Or perhaps we can market cheap airline tickets to him?

    While this may just look like a guys random map, you can piece together a whole lot from this.

    • Based on just this tiny swatch of information, I already know the aproximate area where he lives.

      That, or you know that he likes hanging out in the Adams Morgan [adamsmorgan.net] neighborhood of DC, which might or might not tell you anything. A similar sort of area in the Boston area might suggest that a lot of people "live" in Harvard Square, because there are a lot of shops & restaraunts there. Similar analysis would be similarly skewed for any other big city.

      Adams Morgan and Harvard Square are both districts wit

      • I agree, exactly. My conclusions were just guesses, but if you were doing this for real, you could build statistical models based on the actions of real people and process the results from there.

        If you got a big enough sample, you could feed the results into a special Naive Bayesian algorithom and classify people by the data that he presents.

        I was pointing out how easy it is to gather data just by looking at his map let alone using specialized models.
        • Yes, but add in a few hundred thousand more datapoints, some supercomputer equipment with advanced statistical modeling algorithms, some profiling specifications written by bureaucrats with no conception of actual reality, and an assistant prosecutor in need of a few big wins. Then we see just how useful this information can become.
  • Anyone notice the fact that this guy leaves some pretty shitty tips?
  • In a way, I think it's incredibly appropriate that his electronic trail puts hime just a few blocks from the White House...
  • Q Ari, how much does the President know about Mr. Poindexter's total information awareness program, and does he fully support it?

    MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I think that the President supports his efforts to prevent terrorists from engaging in any attacks against the United States, while making certain that the constitutional rights and liberties of the American people are protected. That's what the President is going to make certain what is done.

    Q Specifically on that program, that's been a bit controversial

  • Looks like a terrorist to me. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sir Holo ( 531007 ) * on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:53PM (#7020313)

    Take a look at his purchasing behavior at Safeway - Goya rice, three separate purchases of mangos.

    And what's this? Kim-chee? Bean paste, pickled bamboo, and guava? Any connection to North Korea here? Has he purchased any maps of North Korea lately?

    Also appears to be an avid news reader, and heavy user of public transportation. Definitely a troublemaker.
  • The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that they intend to make a national network of computers whereby they can converse secretly regarding issues of national defense. Specifically, the research and development of nuclear weapons.

    DARPA officials are calling this top secret project ARPAnet and they believe that it could possibly grow into a world wide network of interconnected computers, whereby they can use a central search engine to cull information about every single person

  • You know, since you're using a loyalty card (at Safeway), then they already know quite a bit about you.

    I'll just leave it at that. :-)

  • The one thing I noticed about this guy, from his receipts, is that he pays for very inexpensive items with credit cards. I didn't even know they would accept a credit card at Subway... for one sandwich? Or using the credit card for one mango smoothy for less than five dollars? Don't the cashiers give him dirty looks?

    The one piece of advice I would give is to carry around a little bit of cash with you. The rest of us don't want to stand in line behind a guy buying a quart of milk with his AMEX Gold card
    • It was probably a debit card (i.e. a mastercard tied to his bank account). Merchants that accept credit cards at all are supposed to accept them for purchases of any size, although many try not to (they get REAMED on fees).

      What is more appalling is that he took $40 out of the atm and paid a $2 service fee! Ack!
  • Total information awareness? Reminds me of Robin Williams' live on broadway...

    Bill Gates: Yes, Mr. Senator, it will be called Total Information Technology, or TIT. And when you're sucking on the tit, I have you by the motherboard!

    Senator: Mr. Gates, but what about Monopoly rules?

    (In tiny, ridiculous voice)

    Bill Gates: Monopoly is a game, Mr. Senator. I want to control the fucking world!

    Or something like that...

  • TIA won't scale (Score:2, Insightful)

    by GoldenBB ( 703833 )
    While interesting, I lose no sleep over TIA because it simply won't scale into any sample size big enough to actually be useful for catching terrorists. As with baggage screening, face recognition, and pretty much every other system the US Goverment has been thinking about or implementing, the false positive rate is far too high. If terrorists were 50% of the population and easy to identify, it might be useful. And what does this example prove? If you "game" the system, in other words, actively try to t
    • The fact that it wont help us catch terrorists is exactly why you should be losing sleep. What it will do, however, it make it a lot easier to dig up dirt on political activists. Much like the FBI files on Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon, etc. but on a much larger scale.

  • Too much flack (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ScrotumLegs ( 709579 )
    I'm surprised how much hell this dude is catching from you all. First, he's not coding something for a competition, it looks like a project he's done on his spare time just to put a picture to how easy it would be to compile info and track people. He's not claiming anything about its quality. Second, to the bright one who wrote "sounds like a terrorist to me," just because someone buys oriental food, doesn't mean they are from N.Korea. And in case you are still prone to unhealthy non sequitur, if someon
  • The real question to me is, how long until they do away with the TIA blocker: cash? I use cash to by stuff I don't want tracked (2600 at B&N, lunch with a friend I don't want someone else to know about, etc.).

    I'm not really worried until they decide to abolish cash. Then you'll have no choice but to have everything you purchase or anything you go being tracked (think toll booths, subways, buses, taxies).

    Of course, all they really have to do is just strap a GPSr on the bottom of your personal transpo

    • Heh, then it occured to me, no need to strap a GPSr on your car if you have a cell phone and keep it on... I wonder how well you can track where someone is going or has been by looking at what cell towers they've been connected to as one travels? Yeah, nowhere near as precise, but still a very good vague idea when you piece other bits of info together.
    • Ever consider that using cash frequently is in itself a suspicious activity?
  • I'd like to see more people doing what the various news stations do occasionally and take all the relevant steps to build, say, a rocket launcher, or bomb etc, but not actually use it of course!

    So you build your "bomb", buying parts etc you would need to actually put it together, then put it together in inert form and take it somewhere. Write a clear, concise notice of intent on the device, and before you begin the project, sign and seal a letter describing the same and give it to a solicitor to hold. Once

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